Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

The Princess Gang rolled into the cul-de-sac on the same day Mr. B’s plum tree decided to bloom.

That’s the first line from a story that started flowing yesterday. Remembering, of course, that (say it with me) all first drafts are crap, it’ll obviously go through some revisions, but the important thing is that it was followed by a thousand words of a quiet little story that’s been pinballing around my brain for over a year.

The reason I share this is because nothing like this has happened for a long, long time.

Yes, I’ve written some fiction in the past handful of years. Most of it has been in posts on this very blog—vignettes, word imagery, poems—all meant for immediate consumption. I’ve also been slugging my way through a championship bout with a new novel which, though reportedly of good quality (especially for a first draft), has been the most difficult fiction project of my life. But a short story, a for-real short story? It’s been years. The last one I wrote was “The Book of Solomon.” It’s good, and it found a home in The Timberline Review, but I wrote that story years ago, and there has been zip-a-dee-doo-dah since.

Then yesterday: Boom. My pen began to work. My brain began to conjure. It was like my voice suddenly returned after a decade of muted trauma.

Why?

It’s this new job I start next week or, to be more precise, it’s that I am leaving my old job.

The changes that this shift has engendered are many, and have been all the more remarkable because I have been cognizant of them while as they happen. The day I got the news, I was elated—that was to be expected—but the day after, and the day after that, I felt things begin to change, both physically and emotionally. And those changes have continued.

One of the more profound internal changes has been a resurgence in both my desire to write and the confidence I have in my ability to do so.

For years, I’ve approached the writing of this novel, my work-in-progress, as a fight, as a battle. My fear of it—of my inability to complete it—has been an epic conflict between equally lethal forces, and the result has been that I’ve essentially been at a standstill. At times, when I have been able to meet the enemy on ground of my choosing, I’ve been able to flank the opposition and win some creative ground, ending up with a scene or even a chapter completed. In the aftermath, though, my own negativity has rallied and knocked me back into a months-long retreat.

Just in this past week, though, since learning that I’d be leaving IT and the on-call world forever, my internal conversation has changed. Suddenly I’m saying things to myself like “I’ve written nine novels. Of course I can finish this one!” and “I want to finish this book, and I think it’ll be pretty good, too.”

So, why a short story instead of actually working on my WIP? Well, it’s like a training run before a marathon. This will limber me up, exercise the voice that has been quieted, and prove myself to myself. Plus, it’s a sweet little story that I think will help me explore this new genre (literary/mainstream fiction) that I’ve decided to try.

Onward.

k