Moving right along . . .

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http://www.kmwalsh.com

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Thank you.

-Management

I’m writing a book.

For much of the past week, I have been stuck in the mind-numbing quagmire of routine and repetition that is jury selection.

In addition to bestowing upon me the newfound identity of Juror #5 on an upcoming case (on which I won’t elaborate obviously), the selection process provided me with some much-appreciated reading time, during which I plowed through the strangely comforting The Courage To Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes.

A few months ago, I decided to write a book. The thought had been bubbling in my brain for a while, but finally, one day, out loud, as God — or rather, my husband — as my witness, I declared, “Damn the torpedoes, I’m going to write a book.” Or some words of the like.

I won’t pretend this was the smartest decision of my life. I’ve made some boldly-gone doozies over the years, so this particular one has some stiff competition; but evaluated on its own merits, it’s likely fairly stupid. Exhilarating, but stupid. To make this decision’s worth really stand out, it managed to schedule itself just as the US was creeping ever-so-quietly over an economic hump in order to toss its arms wildly into the air and send itself freefalling into decrapitude.

One would think that, in addition to a strong sense of determination and dementia, it would take a bit of courage to turn away from any hope of a paying career or financial solvency in order to pursue a dream — and, in a way, it does — but tossing off a casual “what the hell” or a defiant “carpe diem” at the idea of drafting a literary masterpiece is a great deal easier than sitting down at the desk and actually, you know, doing it. Just gathering the strength to say “I’m writing a book” has taken many months, gin and tonics, and a thousand deaths, yet the words still send liquid streaming down the back of my throat.

“I’m writing a book.” It sounds so pretentious. Self-important. Over-inflated. “Book” is just too big of a word for a project with no actual future. No literary agents or publishing deals wait breathlessly for a manuscript. No audience exists outside of the 150ish people who already know the plot because they were there. This “book” is just me and a computer and a story that I’m compelled to tell. But “thing” is too vague and “huge-ass mother-fucker writing project” is too huge-ass to repeat, so although “book” in these circumstances falls short in the “public pages bound between two covers” sense, it comes close enough in the “writing project that is bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a wiki” sense. As a word, “book” is mostly accurate and economical, an important quality to have these days.

So, suffice it to say, I’m writing a book. Which to a romantic mind sounds very exciting, conjuring up images of hard-boiled lighting angles, smoky ice clanging against stocky glass tumblers, and multiple cigarettes lit and burning down to varying lengths; but which in reality, isn’t.

I read the forums. I surf the net. I empty the dishwasher. I load the dishwasher. I research. I write. I empty the dishwasher again. I pick up milk and try to remember to water the plants. I write some more. I check my email. I write some more. I check my email. I reach a decent clip of writing, then find myself on Wikipedia wondering how I got halfway through an article about The Troubles. I make soup. In the morning I brew moderately upscale coffee; in the evening I uncork definitively downscale cabernet. At my left hand Whitman, Wordsworth, and Wallace complain of my gab and my loitering; outside lies the ‘burbs. And in the middle is me — am I — trying to write. Sometimes trying to write something good. Mostly just trying not to suck.

I’ve spent months writing, unwriting, and rewriting posts for this blog in an effort to determine its purpose; most posts have been revoked with no warning but with plenty of self-disgust. This blog should reflect what I’m doing, but what I’m doing is not easily described, an amorphous, often pissy process with scores of flailing arms and half a dozen contentious heads. But there must be something to say; there must be some sort of value in trying to record this process, if only as a warning beacon to others on how not to go about writing a book.

I’m not especially comfortable writing about myself, let alone as a work-in-progress. I’ve never written a book before. I have no real idea what I’m doing. But I’m doing it. Or at least I’m trying.

This is me trying.

Kellie tries to burn the house down

You’ve got this friend. She’s a pretty smart cat. Well-rounded. Good head on her shoulders. Responsible. Not especially forgetful. Not generally insane.

After a day of migraine pain, she wakes up to discover that the migraine was menstrual in nature. Her head still hurts, but at least the throbbing and sparkly lights have subsided, and she can breathe easy in the knowledge that she doesn’t have to give up gin as a potential trigger. Now the ache-and-throb is concentrated in her gut and has her walking like Gollum, but the day goes on because it must.

While her husband pours himself a cup of coffee, she drops her menstrual cup into a pot of water to sterilize it. Cool invention. (The cup, not the pot. Or the water.) Comfortable. Latex-free. Top quality, surgical-grade silicone. She has had this thing for a few years: she’s got the routine down.

She punches the heat up to high and carries her coffee to her desk to read some email and forums and other non-essentials. In a few minutes, she’ll go in to check that the water is boiling, take off the lid, and set the timer for 20 minutes. She’ll have to go in and add water now and then because the pot is small, but that’s not a hardship.

Unknown minutes later, she hears a pot lid rattle. Realizing what she has entirely forgotten, she Gollums quickly to the kitchen. Hm. No steam coming out anywhere. But there’s something flickering, bright and yellow. Thinking the burner is sparking, she grabs a potholder and lifts the pot, only to discover that the burner is fine. The pot, however, is empty of all water, filled only with a now-chalky-looking menstrual cup with a small yellow flame attached. It’s nestled inside a clear gold pot.

Pretty, she thinks.

She turns to the sink and fills the pot with water. The flame goes out, and the water sizzles, making strange glurping noises. The water turns milky. She puts the pot down on another pot holder and smells more burning, so she picks it up again. The potholder is now scorched.

After about a minute of standing in the middle of the floor with pot arm hanging in midair, inhaling fumes smelling of sour and ash, she figures the pot has cooled enough to put down again. Husband comes in to assess the situation.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I need a new Diva Cup.”

“I’ll turn on the fan.”

Kellie decides that she is not allowed to touch the stove again for the rest of the day.

But the next time someone tries to dismiss you for being at less than peak performance while in menstrual pain, or — gong help me — tries to tell you that the pain is only in your head, point them to me.

I could use something new to light on fire.

Starstruck — literally.

A random, out-of-context anecdote that I just happened to tell today.

In addition to (hopefully) ending the struggle to unstart and restart this blog because I cannot settle on an acceptable introduction, I suspect that this post may set off some friends’ Google Alerts as well, which should make for an amusing bonus.

A year or two before the turn of the millennium, I was heading down 40th Street along Bryant Park after work. There was filming going on in the park (which we later figured out was probably for The Out-of-Towners), so the sidewalk and street were a mess of sundry film crew detritus. Living in New York, you get used to this sort of thing, but it’s no less annoying, and it was one of those days when you want nothing more than to just get the hell home. So I was booking to the train, staring at my feet, cursing living in the city while trying to dodge and weave obstacles, and scrunched into my coat because it was cloudy and cold.

I wasn’t wearing a hat, but I was wearing black pleather boots, which gave me an extra inch or inch-and-a-half of height. Unbeknownst to me, someone about an inch-and-a-half to two inches taller than I was in a similar mood and stance.

We were like an algebraic train collision: I was heading westward, looking south toward the street; he was heading eastward, looking north toward the park, both traveling at pissed-off miles-per-hour. Then suddenly — just as I lifted my head at the sight of the subway entrance — *CRACK*. Skull-on-skull collision.

Shooting pain. Sparkly silver lights. That horrific cracking sound. And a force so hard that we both stumbled backward.

But we both also instinctively reached out our arms to each other in the way that you do when you crash into something, gasping and leaning forward, catching each other by the coats. Simultaneously a string of expletives came blasting through my lips, while his reaction was more a series of staccato words and groans in the “oh! ah! god! fuck! ah!” vein.

And thus, when my eyes cleared, I found myself locked in an awkward, shaking embrace on a New York City sidewalk with an equally pained and panting Steve Martin, having just called him — quite unequivocally — a mother fucker.

After a hurried “sorry,” “you okay?” “how’s your–?” “right,” “sorry,” “as long as–,” “yeah,” “okay,” “you’re–?” “good,” “sorry” exchange, we each escaped. I wondered later if he thought I might ask for an autograph.

So, as it turns out, as tall, white-haired banjo players go, Stewart Copeland is actually the second one to knock the breath out of me.