Boy, that stuff from last time sure is crap! Maybe find about 10% that I can extract and use. Just give the general impression that Virginia is a woman who talks in exclamation points.

Third person didn't seem to work nearly as well as first person, but I still think it's right. It just means I have to work on the style a lot more. And that's sort of what I'd like to do now. That's my natural inclination --- once I have a little, start working it over until it gets pretty good, so that it gives me energy to continue.

But I think it's more important to just move forward, get the whole story sketched in. Because I think it would be easy to get lost, just meander around, ramble on like that last batch.

Where's that Raymond Carver quote again?

``Dear Allison. Ludwig Wittgenstein once said....''

Okay, now that's the sort of letter this guy would write to a girl friend. He's so much more intelligent, knows so much more than everybody around him. The sort of young guy, when you listen to him talk he just blows you away. You stand in awe of his knowledge, his vocabulary, his allusions. And so there's no way of connecting with him. He's always lonely, because nobody can imagine connecting with him.

Okay, now this is starting to seem good. Because Virginia is just the opposite. Earthy. Not dumb, not by any means, and not uneducated. In fact, that could be a good joke if she could unexpectedly quote Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann or André Gide.

You know, I could start this whole story with a quotation from Schopenhauer. Or start by mentioned the ideas of Heraclitus & some other Greek philosophers.

This is good, I'm starting to get interested in this story now. This guy is no longer seeming like a total zero.

So here's this guy trying to write a letter to his girl friend, and throwing in all these philosophers because he's trying to impress her and also because that's his frame of reference for the world. That's the way he looks at the world, in terms of abstract principles.

Okay, this guy wants to be a writer. But that's okay, that's sort of the point. He really doesn't understand what writing is all about, he doesn't understand that you can't become a writer through looking at the world the way he does.

And the thing is, Virginia is just as smart as he is, just as educated. But she's coming from the opposite approach, seeing everything in terms of individuals instead of abstract concepts.

What a joke. This guy wants to be a writer, but all he talks about are philosophers. And Virginia is... Well, she's a walking disaster, for one thing. But she can quote writers just as readily as our protagonist. can quote philosophers.

Now that was interesting. I like having quotes from his letter in progress be part of the story. Maybe even be the opening.

Okay, here's the Raymond Carver again:

Raymond Carver: ``I like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories. There has to be a tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, or else, most often, there simply won't be a story.''

Okay, so where's the tension here?

Scene One: He's in the coffee house, trying his best to write the damned letter, but no matter how hard he tries he can't seem to get it right. We've got to see that it's important. He's racking his brain

Interesting point here the dictionary makes about the usage of ``rack'' and ``wrack.'' It might be fun to include that in the story. But would he have a dictionary with him? Or could he ask for one from the coffee house?

Okay, he's racking his brain trying to figure out how to write his letter. And then engaging in another form of mental torture by trying to decipher paragraphs of Wittgenstein. And Al and Virginia come in, and are loud and distracting. He keeps paying attention to them, although he's trying to force himself to concentrate on his letter and on Wittgenstein. Point counter-point. This could be fun, but maybe it's a bit ambitious, considering how much time I have.

Scene 1. He's trying to write his letter & read Wittgenstein, & doing his best to ignore Al & Virginia, who are much more interesting.

Scene 2. Virginia makes contact, asks him to follow her back to the restroom. Then he leaves & Virginia intercepts him outside, on the sidewalk.

Scene 3. The taxicab.

Scene 4 (and 4 1/2?). They have lunch together. Getting-to-know-each- other dialog. I've been thinking that then they go to a bar next door, where Virginia collapses. But maybe that's too much, keep it all one scene. Say they have lunch in a bar.

I imagine her having a number of friends in this bar. Why do I want that? I don't know. Might be better if there are a bunch of friendly strangers.

Okay, now the first issue is to keep up the tension. We don't want just a rambling aimless conversation showing her as a fascinating eccentric. There has to be that sense of conflict, of imminent menace.

Step up the time pressure. Don't give him time to burn, that robs the story of all its tension.

Right. So how to make this work? If he's having lunch and his date is for that evening, that's too much time. Maybe it's an afternoon date.

What I want is the sense of him gradually losing it. He shouldn't be having lunch with Virginia at all, but he can manage that if he cuts some corners, skips something he should be doing instead. At first, it seems that he has enough time, but he has to watch it, be careful. But then, lunch takes much too long. And he definitely should not stay and talk and drink with her afterwards. But he does and even so, he can still barely pull everything out of the fire if he really tries. But now he's cutting it really really close. And then she collapses.

And that's why I want her to have friends in the bar. First of all, somebody has to tell him that there's a place he should take her to, to some friends' house. Not to the hospital. Somebody has to explain to him that taking her to the hospital or calling 911 would not be the right thing to do. And somebody is there to put pressure on him to stay and take care of her, not to just walk away from her.

But this is not an easy choice, because if he chooses to take care of Virginia, then his date for the evening is definitely shot to hell. He tries calling his girl friend. Probably tries several times, and when he finally gets her, she tells him that they're through: she's not going to give him another chance.

Okay, now up the stakes on this date with the girl friend. Make it really important to him. Maybe they were going to get married, and something happened, and tonight he's hoping to salvage the situation.

Or maybe she's arriving at the airport, expecting him to pick her up! Yeah, that would be good.

So why does he let himself get sucked in by Virginia? Because she's so fascinating, yes. But more than that, she seems to offer him something he's always wanted. Yes, that's what drives the story. There's the relationship that he's committed to, and it will be a real disaster if he doesn't make it to his date this evening. But on the other hand, there's Virginia, who seems to offer him a chance at everything he's always really wanted. But even so, he's not willing to accept total disaster for her sake, he's going to give her as much time as he can but still make it to his date. But he keeps cutting it closer and closer. And then there's the moment of climax, where he has to definitively choose --- where whatever choice he makes will definitely cost him a lot.

And what makes it worse is that at this point, he realizes that Virginia is a fraud. She won't deliver on any of her promises.

Right, right, right. He keeps spending more and more time with her, skirting on the very edge of disaster. And then he realizes that that everything she's been seeming to offer him is just a swindle. He needs to get out of there quick and try to salvage his date for the evening in the nick of time. But just as he is about to extricate himself from this disastrous situation, she collapses.

So now if he does the right thing and stays with Virginia, he loses big; he loses everything. But at this point, he loses everything no matter what he chooses, because this story cannot have a happy ending. If he stays with Virginia, his existing relation becomes a write-off and there's nothing for him with Virginia either. But if he abandons her, his existing relationship still goes bust and he also has the knowledge of having abandoned a woman when she badly needed him.

Yeah, I like that even better, almost. Because when we get to the end of the story, we realize that despite all the desperation, there were never any good choices for him to begin with. The idea that disaster could have been averted was an illusion from the beginning.

Now if that's the theme, maybe there's something besides Wittgenstein he could be reading at the beginning that would forshadow that theme.

Have to find concrete details to make all this abstract stuff come alive.

And then wonder: is this deperate hopelessness really the right theme for a protagonist so young? This story might work better for a married man in his thirties, just at the age when he's starting to realize that he's never going to get anywhere in life, at least not according to his own younger expectations.

But I want to write this story about a young college student. So maybe I can't make it so hopeless.

The other important thing about his conversation with Virginia is that what she keeps telling him, her lies about the world, are precisely the things that attack his insecurity. Implausible though they might seem objectively, they have power for Sean because they are exactly the things he is afraid of.

In any case, I lost a scene.

Scene 5. Sean takes Virginia to some friends who he expects will be able to take care of her. (Friends of hers, not of his.) At this point, there's still an outside chance that he might be able to salvage his date for the evening. But the friends are not willing to stay with her, and leave Sean alone in their apartment with her. And now he's stuck with her for the rest of the evening. There's no longer any possibility of averting disaster. He gets his girl friend on the phone, and disaster ensues.

This business of how a story starts is still a mystery to me. All this abstract planning doesn't seem to be much help. I need words, words, words. Especially I need an opening. I can't seem to get anywhere until I have a workable opening.

Sean Myers was a virgin. It was a source of acute shame for him. It was 1974 and according to the newsmagazines he read, something called the Sexual Revolutionary was happening. He was in the midst of it, and he couldn't seem to become part of it.

What made it worse was that his girl friend Leslie was not a virgin. She'd had sex with two men already in her life. Both experiences had been very bad. After the second one, she had come to a Great Revelation. She had Changed Her Ways.