Olivia

In the mood to write something something something. Got to think of something quick before I lose the urge, before I feel tired, before I check Facebook and get lost, before I run out of booze. Should I write about my life?
No, that's boring. I think I can put a good spin on it, but everyone who would read it already knows about my life.
Should I write a poem? No, I hate poetry.
Should I write a piece of fiction?
Maybe. I hope to write fiction one day, and be a successful novelist and live in a fancy house and wake up whenever I want to and just write and make love to my wife and play with the dogs and the kids but what fiction do I write? Do I start the idea I had the other day when I was half-dreaming/half-hallucinating on the couch? Where characters came to me that I was actually interested in and wanted to know more about? No, I shouldn't write that on here. I should save that and work on it for myself, in preperation for me being a successful novelist. Should I write some little piece of fiction?  A short story perhaps? Perhaps... But mostly I feel like rambling. Stuck in the place where I'd rather talk about what I want to do or don't want to do instead of doing or doing something else.
Crafting a short story is hard. Do you fill it full of action, or do you make it a meditation on a very small subject; or not neccessarily a very small subject, but a small fragment of time that pertains to a large subject? Let's give it a try.
Thinking (smoking a cigarette and drinking my gin).

(finding some good background music)


(Mozart, but still smoking.)

Lay down. Soft. Adjust. Exhale. Was that a noise? No. Voices. Engine. Is she home? Oh my God. Go to the opening! Wait for opening to move. Is she here!? I hear you! I hear you! I'm here! Where have you been? I'm here! How did you leave why did you go come here now i want you i need you

That was a dog. That was my dog. I'm not happy with that. It's the creative process. I really don't want to leave it up, but it's already there. Don't judge me.

It would be a lot easier to just write about what happened with my day. Because it happened, and I don't have to make it up. The older I get without exercising my imagination every day, the more it goes away. What did I imagine as a child? Well, mostly fighting scenarios... pirates vs. pirates, good vs. bad, ninjas vs. anyone. Any plot could be written, you could make up anything from the wild west to space to dinosaurs to war..., to love. But does the plot really matter all that much? My favorite novel is about a 40-ish man kidnapping and raping a 12 year old girl repeatedly (I can't believe I just wrote that sentence). It seems like the story is secondary to the style of the writing. Nabokov said something to that effect, so did John Popper. "It doesn't matter what I sing, as long as I sing with inflection."

Olivia. (looked up most popular girls names last year, and that's my favorite of the top 5) What does Olivia do? She's a bartender. Maybe she goes by 'V'. She really doesn't care that much what you call her. She's about 5'5", and thin. She doesn't try to be thin, it's just the way her metabolism and her genetics have worked out. She's 26 years old. She has dirty blond hair. It's naturally curly, but not to the extent that she usually styles it into. When younger, she kept it long, and straightened it in the morning before she caught the bus for high school. Her parents couldn't afford to buy her her own car, she never had a boyfriend with a car in high school, and she didn't get along with many girls. She likes her hair shorter now, and if straightened it might reach her shoulders but she loves her curls, and every ex that she respected at some point liked her better in curls. After she gets ready to leave her house her hair reaches down just below the tops of her ears. It's a dirty blond color, but it looks more like brown with lots of blond streaks on top. She doesn't dye it, but she knows that there's more of a contrast in her hair when she stays in the sun for an extended amount of time and she loves the contrast in her hair without having to do the work of dying it. She likes to wear t-shirts and jeans. She is caucasian, but has a skin tone on the darker side of that spectrum. She spends a lot of time outside, and is pleasantly tan. She loves to wear pastel colors on top, and they compliment her skin very well. She's not a fan of wearing black. She wears t-shirts with ironic messages or pictures.

Okay. That's Olivia (for now). She works in a bar. What does the bar look like?

This is a suburban bar (meaning it's in a shopping center). It used to have more than one entrance, but the other has been closed off so that one of the dining areas can be semi-secluded. The main entrance is in the center of the space that the bar has taken up. It has a double glass door, but the right side stays locked and only the left side opens and closes. When you walk in, the first thing you notice is the dining area. It is immediately to the right. There is a floor to ceiling wall on your left. You are in between 2 walls; the large one to the left and the half wall to your right. The 'hallway' is 6 feet wide and lasts for about 15 feet. The half wall abruptly ends and the dining area is open. The dining area is probably 30 feet wide and 40 feet long. There are 12 tables, circular, low, and made of a richly stained wood. Directly in front of you is the main bar (of the front area).

Listening to Pandora, and the ad just totally threw me out of it. Dammit. I can see this bar, but there's so much to it I don't know how to describe it the right way. Maybe I should take a narrative walk into the bar, in someone who has been there before, not someone who is new to it. Look at it through the eyes of someone who sees it as a feeling more than a place.


So this is me doing work. I'm inventing my life, and the life I want to invent is that of a writer. I'm trying to write every day, no matter what it is. Fiction, non-fiction, reviews, critiques (yes, I think there's a difference between those last two).

And now I'm tired of writing. If writing was my job I think I could pump out a whole lot more, but it's not, so maybe I can pump out more in a shorter amount of time with more practice.

I wrote something something something tonight, so I'm happy for that. I like Olivia, or V. I'm going to spend some more time with her.