great white shark

  1. new story.

    I have 500ish words of a new story. It seemed like longer because I handwrote it, so it was kind of sad just now to type it up and watch all the lines fit on a single page in Word. I really like writing in the present tense. It makes me feel like kind of a douche, but I think it also makes my prose really shine—and isn’t that what’s it’s all about?

    Here’s a party that more past-tensey, when the character is remembering this girl she used to know:

    We set up lemonade stands together, staved off tsunamis building castles at her parents’ timeshare, chugged honeysuckle nectar in my neighbors’ front yard. In the spliced and liny footage of my childhood videography, she’s in almost every frame.

    But from movie to movie, sequel to sequel, there’s always that undocumented segment, the spring break, the summer vacation—times when the cameras weren’t rolling.

    I wish I had a better story—an earthquake, a death in the family, an alien abduction—but the truth is our friendship played out like so many Judy Blume novels, without the happy ending. Marissa emerged one summer—blossomed, really—while I remained the same stick-figured tomboy she’d parted ways with in June. Fast forward past however many lemon-juice highlights and clumpy mascara lashes and there we were—her first sip of beer, first kiss, first g-string pair of panties; and my first, well, I don’t know, the first time I cried and felt a fire in my lugs, the first time I looked out the window and saw the spaces between the stars. There we were—on separate sides of an Atlantic fucking Ocean, writhing and snapping in a red plastic cup.

    I really like that bit about the spaces between the stars. Yay Sarah!

    Today’s the last paper of the year, and I’m not going to be a total fuckup! I’ve already edited everything and written 90% of the one (read: not four) article I signed up for—I have to call somebody to get an extra quote, but sue me.
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