So I'm working toward my Masters of Science in Instructional Design and Technology (how to make education better, basically) and I've found that I can't write a research paper every week, do my regular job, and write a novel all at the same time. However, I have a three-month break coming up, starting next week, and I'm anxious to start a new project. I had an idea a couple weeks ago for my very first literary fiction novel. I was itching to write tonight, so I popped off 250 words. Here's a taste.
Where do you begin? It's not an easy thing, when a person asks you “Where do you think it went wrong?” With thirty-plus years under your belt, how do you pick out a day, an hour, an instant and say, Yeah, this is where it went wrong. You could pick this fuck-up or that one, but rest assured there was a whole host of fuck-ups that preceded them. So you say, I don't know. It just happened, gradually, because that's the kind of sage-like cliché that resonates with people and they don't push.
And what's galling is that if I truly had to pick one moment where it all truly went wrong, it's not even my fuck-up that I'd pick. It's my twin brother, Danny's. We were fifteen when he got into his accident and I realized how quick it all can be taken away from you. I got a sense of my own mortality, or whatever. Live each day like it's your last because holy shit, it just might be.
They say no one should die a virgin. They said it, and I repeated it to my girlfriend, Emily, and she agreed with them and me. They also say it only takes one time, which turned out also to be true. So if you want to know where it all went wrong, blame Danny. What we he doing, skateboarding without a helmet? That was stupid.
Pregnant at fifteen, married at sixteen, sometimes I think Danny's the one that got off easy.