Be Brave Project, Day 38: Get Down To IT, but How?

There really is one big thing I have to do with the Be Brave Project to complete my original list from nine weeks ago--work on that novel.

I have an incomplete manuscript that sit in my desk drawer. This manuscript won me a fellowship and a grant, and was my thesis project for graduate school. It is however, at this point, impossible to complete due to the fact that there is no coherent plot. It's all voice, 2 opposing voice driven first person narratives. So what I need to do before I get my ass out on the street and find a full time job so I can pay off those student loans and perhaps start eating meat again, is figure out A PLOT.

But I just don't know what to do about it--recently took a few books out of the library on plot, and they gave me some different styles of plot (For the Revenge story, for the Epic, for the Search story. . .). That gave me some ideas but isn't concrete enough. I want some very solid plot to sort of pin my story to, stretch out its fabric and show the light through the words, give all that narrative structure. In the way that satire is pinned to the skeleton of a previous text (Shamela to Richardson's Pamela, Swift's Modest Proposal to political and religious tracts of the time), I want to use an established form to make a comment.

I just don't know how to find a plot. That's the thing--I don't know how to find a plot right now and I cannot figure out where to start.

So I'll just have to take the BBP and shake it down a bit, cut the chunks into smaller bits and move forward from there. By next week at this time I want to:

-Have one P written that is a synopsis of a classic FILM plot I really like.

-Have a synopsis written that is a classic HARD BOILED MYSTERY (novel) that I like.

It's tough when moving to keep these other irons in the fire, plus family keeps coming to town as people do in Autumn. BTW the essay I wrote has now been turned down by the Times' "Modern Love" column, and by Marie Claire magazine. It's with Self now, and is destined to be sent to Psychology Today next. I really would like to sell this puppy--must think of English Publications to send it to.