Yet another early morning flight: I had a wonderful weekend with Doolies. I stayed an extra day, which was worth the $100 change fee and the missed meetings. We went walking along the beach—remember, it’s the first day of February and only in California is the weather this perfect. The beach was beautiful, of course, as was Doolies. We shopped at an overpriced crystal shop, climbed beach rocks to peer into the ocean, and ate oysters and shoestring fries that could have deliciously laced my shoes. It was a wonderful four-day weekend and I relish Doolies’s visit to Houston next week for her vacation.

You might have noticed that I now use a single space after an end-of-sentence period. (Okay, you probably did not notice this, as only someone as anal about writing form as me would care about something so unimportant. More particularly, after doing more research, HTML removes double-spaces, so there is no way, anal or not, that you could have noticed this.) I have been told this is the new style by the Chicago manual of style, which moves away from the typewriter rule of two spaces of a period. I’m still not a convert, but I will try it for a bit. It only took two musings before the spacing became natural.

At this rate, I might decide to switch over to the Dvorak keyboard layout. For those who have not studied the history of the keyboard, the Qwerty keyboard is not the only layout available, it is only the most popular. The legend goes that the Qwerty typewriter triumphed over other keyboard layouts for two reasons: the first was that salesmen were able to show the speed of the keyboard by typing the word “typewriter,” which has all of its letters on the top row. The second reason was the very inadequacy of the layout. The keys of early typewriters would stick if struck too quickly. By designing a difficult layout to learn and type on, the designers of the Qwerty keyboard were able to slow the typing speed and avoid keyboard jams. For whatever reason the Qwerty keyboard succeeded, the computer keyboard followed in its cousin’s footsteps and the generation of computer users have accepted the Qwerty layout, as the powers of the dreaded status quo are difficult to overcome.

Dvorak, on the other hand, is a statistical approach, where the most frequently used keys are placed at the home keys, and the less frequently used keys are placed on the far pinky keys. Supposedly, once a typist switches, their speed may increase by thirty percent and their typing fatigue decrease. There is, however, a rather steep learning curve. I didn’t say I was going to do it, just that I’ve thought of doing it, and easily switching from two spaces after a period to one space after a period might be just the first step.

Now, back to the real reason for this musing (and most musings now that I’ve decided to go from aspiring writer to aspiring bestselling writer): I need to settle on a short story to draft. I’ve been writing snippets lately and I’ve gotten away from my goal of writing seven (I think it was seven) short stories trying the different styles. I no longer need to do that (try the different styles), since the right style for each story should be dependent upon the story itself, not an arbitrary decision on the style. The style is just an artifact of the story, a way of presenting it to the readers, not a clever intonation. I now have many tools at my disposal for writing the story. The only thing left is the actual writing (and storytelling).

I’m racking my brain trying to decide what story I will tell next. My choices are infinite: I was thinking that it’s time to go back to the boy lost in the mall story. While I’m again focusing on a child character, I think it’s the logical next story to write. What follow is the storytelling, the planning, thinking, and interrogation necessary before the writing can begin. It’s not a terribly interesting read, but it is important for me get these ideas down on paper to develop the story.

Let’s interrogate the characters and see where it takes us. There are two main characters so far. (As the story develops, there might be more. Once the boy is lost, we might want someone to find him or help him find his mother.)

What do we know about the boy? He’s around seven or eight years old. He lives in Brooklyn with his mother (very original, by the way). What does he want to be when he grows up? That’s an interesting question to ask a child. Their answers are always interesting and skewed by what they know or what they see on television. Sometimes they want to do what their parents do. Other times, they want to be athletes or movie stars. For this boy, we need something special, something different. He wants to be…. Something I’ll come back to. My initial thoughts are fireman, policeman, etc. This might have more relevance later.

This story takes place back in the 1980s. There will be hints throughout, but it shouldn’t make much of a difference for most of the scenes. This is the pre-9/11 era, the pre-media domination. Life is good, but not as good as the 90s because of the Russian threats, which are only slowly dissipating. Shopping malls have not reached the sizes they will twenty-years from then. The narrator knows what will happen in the future, and he’s looking back with almost a nostalgic view.

He sounds like a first-person narrator. Why would he be telling this story? What makes it special? Why should the reader care about it? It’s something that happened in his past. Perhaps it’s something that changed him. How can he be changed by his experience getting lost in a department story? Are you going to focus on courage again? No. I’ve gone down that path and failed. Does that mean you don’t want to go in that direction again? I want to try something new. I’ll return to the questions of courage on another story (this will probably be a theme throughout your stories).

Okay, so the narrator is somehow changed by his experience. Is the narrator the young boy? It has to be. The mother would not make a very good narrator, since she’s absent for a large part of the story. What about a narration from the perspective of the man or woman who rescues the boy? How would he be changed? Ah. The rescuer moves from a man who is married, but does not want children, to someone who (thinks he) understands what children can bring to his life after he meets the lost boy. There we go. Now the story is getting interesting. His wife wants children, but he thinks the monsters would slow him down, ruin his style and his independence. Helping the boy find his mother changes him. Or perhaps it doesn’t, but it does make him think. It is a pivotal time in his life.

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere more interesting than a boy lost in a mall. Should we still be in a mall? It might be limiting. The boy has to be with the man for a bit for him to be influenced by him. Or does he? It could be a short experience. But why would he help him? Why wouldn’t he walk by him, like all the people walked by the screaming girl who couldn’t find her mother at the mall this weekend? There has to be something about the boy that makes the man stop and help (after those around him ignore the wailing boy). There also has to be a reason that the boy is lost. Maybe his mother is not caring or young or just a bad mother. I’ll pursue that separately when I interrogate her.

So, the boy does not have fears about shopping malls, the narrator does. Or at least he did when he was younger. And seeing the boy screaming, lost, confused, brought back memories of his youth. (This story should not have flashbacks, it should become apparent without them.) That’s his motive for helping.

What happens when he helps? How does the boy change the narrator? We’ll get back to that once we know a little more about the narrator. We know about his marital state and his fear of monsters. Let’s try not to define him by his job. I’m trying to get away from that. What else is he going to talk to his wife about? Obviously, he’s going to talk about the monster question, but we need more. I don’t want the discussions to become too clichéd. We’ll make the wife an interesting character as well. She won’t be the nagging type; she really wants what’s best for both of them. She believes that he would be a great parent and would be happier with them.

Does she have to be his wife? She could be a girlfriend, someone who’s wondering when marriage is going to happen. This could be about more than just monsters; it could also be about commitment.

What’s the point of view? It can be first person, past. He’s using the narration as a way of explaining, perhaps to his children, why and when he decided to have children. You could use a frame story to convey this. But if you do this, you’ll lose the intimacy that he would have in disclosing his discussions with his wife. Is she going to leave him if he doesn’t come around? No. She went into the marriage knowing his believes, but hoping that he would change his mind.

So, what narration? I’m leaning toward first person, present. It’s an accepted narration style for short stories, and although it loses a bit of time immediacy (however contradictory that appears), it will allow me to use my clever (so clever), second person asides to the reader.

With that settled, what type of person is the narrator?

I still have work to do. I have to figure out motives, develop the character’s history, habits, and what makes them unique using twists and exaggerations. The name is also something that needs to be thought of. I’ll let all of that steep in my head for now. This is a good start (I hate saying that because I never know if I’ll return to make it more than a start).