Never As Good As You Think. Never As Bad As You Fear.

In 2015, I had taken some classes at New York's Gotham Writer's workshop. The subjects were on fiction writing, and shortly after, novel writing. 

I wanted to get better as a writer. I genuinely thought I had so many good ideas back then, but was also, sort of obsessed over this relationship in my early 20s. A friend, who was also my student (I was 21, she was 19), who wasn't really a girlfriend... but something else entirely. Sort of this idealized version of love that doesn't exist in a very toxic rose-colored glasses sort of way. Youth and mistakes and all that.

I wasn't able to let it go at the time. That moment stayed immortalized in my brain. Part of me wanted to write a 500 Days of Summer type of story because I didn't know what a healthy relationship looked like.  In many ways, I think I still don't. Which is why it's a major theme I explore a lot in my writing. 

I am saying all of this aloud because I'm going to share the beginning of this story I'd written 7 years ago in class, down below. It was a failed writing project called The Tortoise and The Finch and it was the first time, I'd ever gotten real writer's feedback. Most of whom, claimed to care just enough about the characters but recommended I do more prose work.

I think I wanted to write about this story because of how closed-off I felt to the world. Those strange years of youthful, better-than-thou wisdom--the kind that's more a defense mechanism than ever having really existed--all the while, using my spirit animal: The Tortoise, a creature of stubbornness and experience, as an accompanying children's side story metaphor. Something meant to feel significant to run parallel to its themes. 

I wanted to talk about this person I'd found fascinating. This girl I'd sort of fallen in love with in an ideal and unrealistic kind of way. This wild and free-spirited adventurer whom I'd never met anyone like this before... whom I called, The Finch. The most common of birds, who'd just fit into their environment so naturally, while often fluttering away on adventures.

Tortoises and Finches have this strangely friendly relationship. I was convinced that they were trying to get one another...

I was really convinced I was going to change the world in my 20s. I closed myself off so much in my early 20s, thinking it was for the greater good, as I focused in on school and being the best among my peers. But then I met this...dancer...who used to live and work in New Orleans, before volunteering to help kids in India for a year, whom, after backpacking in Eastern Europe, moved back to NJ. 

Re-reading it now 7 years later... the opening of this story is not that good. It's not an awful story, it's just, well, it's written by a younger me who was very obviously trying to capture the moment too exactly. This sort of harms the storytelling elements. As I focused way too much on the scenery, having really approached the story more like a screenplay, than a novel. 

I also acknowledge that above all else I'm a character writer and a poor plotter. This is why every project I do now has an outline.

But anyway,  I'm sharing it mostly because, yeah, it's not that great. It's also not that bad either. And I think it's good for writers to look at their old pieces and cringe and try to do better.

The Tortoise And The Finch: April

It was midday. As grey-colored clouds mustered overhead, a teetering series of trees swayed to and fro across the front lawns of several houses. They were old homes lined corner to corner down Patterson Street, a one-way street dense with dilapidated rows of developments that were decades past their prime. 

The air was brisk and crisp. A warm gleam emanated from the springtime fauna. When the wind picked up, it painted the air with flower petals from the trees most recently in bloom. A natural canvas of yellows and whites and pinks, they danced about and spiraled in the breeze, falling along the edge of the paved road. A would-be beautiful day, if that quiet gust of wind didn’t also send chills down the spine whenever it passed. 

On the front porch outside of a shabby auburn house, a hunched-over guy in his early twenties exited through the front door. He lit a cigarette on the porch. The lighter's flame refracted off the lenses of his thick-rimmed glasses. He was short and tan and lovestruck. Heart on the sleeve. Ready to emo scream kind of vibe.

An everyday-looking girl, of about nineteen years of age, followed outside shortly after. Her hair was light brown hair curling just past the shoulder. She had a runner’s figure, pale white skin, and with a concerned look, stopped him in his tracks before he left and held his free hand.

“Please don’t do this,” she pleaded with a look of sincerity.

“I’m sorry, but I deserve better,” he fumed while exhaling a puff of smoke. He took a few steps forward and got onto the street before she stopped him in his track.

“You do, and I one hundred percent completely agree. That’s why this is stupid. You’re being stupid. I told you I can’t. So why am I the bad person?” she questioned.

She was talking about her vow. The two were together an awful lot the past few weeks, but just moments ago, in her bedroom, she'd confessed to him how she was on an abstinence pledge after sleeping around with more people than she'd liked to admit. Which was something he said he was fine with... while secretly hoping, that he'd be the exception.

“Good and bad are but matters of opinion. The only thing that matters are thought and perspective,” he replied rather smugly. “Tell me, just for once, what are you honestly thinking?”

“That I want to punch you in the face. Why are you making this difficult? Can't you can it with the pseudo-intellectual bullshit and just express a real fucking feeling?”

“You want a feeling?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I love you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Let me finish,” she blurts as she cuts him off, “You act like I’m some god damn saving grace. That if we were together I’d magically fix you and all your crazy insecure bullshit inside.” 

She takes away his cigarette. Pauses. Then smokes a drag on her own.

“But I’ve been in your position before, so many fucking times, and it doesn’t work that way. You don’t love me. You don’t even love yourself. And that’s okay… because I sort of hate myself too. Maybe we’re both just built that way. Just two screwed up and really damaged people on the inside.” 

Silence. The words stung. Deeper than he intended to show. He whispers into her ear: “Goodbye,” as he passes her to leave. Before he can, she wraps her arms tightly around him preventing him from going...

“Why does this feel like we’re breaking up?” she cries, her head now buried on his shoulder.

“We were never together.”

“Yeah. I know.”

She lets him go.

He walks away.

As he nears the edge of the corner on Patterson, she makes one last call from the distance, “You know we’re going to call each other in about a month and forget all about this. Then we can go out and make epic plans for the summer!”

“No, I won’t,” he replied for the last time.

“Yeah, I won’t either,” she whispered in turn.