A Newsworthy Introduction

Yesterday, in my Editing class--I attend a community college in Florida--my professor got us all into a circle to make introductions. Being a journalism teacher, as well as the head of the VCC Journalism Department, he had an interesting way of going about this. He told us all to give our general information (name, age, place of birth, etc.), and then to think of something newsworthy. "What," he asked us, "would we write about you, if we were to feature you in the Valencia Voice?"

This got me thinking in a manner different from the one I was used to. I started to think from a journalist's angle, and found my life was more interesting than I thought it was, if told in the right way. (Otherwise, I truly am a very boring individual.)

So, here is my headline, ladies and gents. You can learn the boring stuff about me later.

GIRLS WRITE THOUSAND-PAGE MANUSCRIPT IN WORD; LONGER THAN LONGEST HARRY POTTER BOOK

Believe it or not, this is true, though I wouldn't exactly call the project a manuscript--it could never be published in its current state, nor is it worth the intense amount of editing and rewriting it would take to make it even remotely publishable. But it is longer in word count than the longest Harry Potter book, and it is a source of great pride and joy for myself and my friend Tara, the story's co-author. We've been working on what will hopefully be a never-ending story for about two years now--I'll look up the exact starting date later--and, when possible, we add to it daily. We have no delusions (nor any real desire) involving publishing, at least not for this project. We've borrowed from too many things, left too many plot holes, and grown too possessive of our characters to ever really send it out into the world. But we have fun, and that's real purpose of the exercise. We write because it's like putting our imaginations on screen. We save the document because it's like one long, vivid dream from which we ultimately refuse to wake up.

It's kind of neat, too, in a totally mortifying way, to look back at what we've written. We can both say proudly--and with great relief--that our writing has vastly improved in two, almost three years. Words are more fluid, characters are less obnoxious, and scenes are less cliche. (I am more guilty of these errors than Tara is; she is by far the superior writer of the two of us.) Even looking at the really early stuff that makes us cringe with embarrassment, we can smile with lingering affection, because while it's a big, long, winding mess, this story is our mess, and it's something we've worked really hard on without really meaning to. We put our hearts into it. We talk about the characters not only as if they're real people, but as if they're our children--albeit children that would kill us if they actually were real enough to get their hands on us. We plot and scheme and work out details to make the story make sense, even though no one will ever see it but us, because we're perfectionists and would rather die than ignore the rules of the world we've created. We can't let down those characters, even if we do have a fondness for ruining their lives.

The story is nowhere near finished. I think I'm safe in saying it will stay "nowhere near finished" for quite some time. Tara wrote in my yearbook at the end of her last year of high school that she was pretty sure we would continue to write together "until one of us dies." That sounds like a promise to me, and a reason to live as long as humanly--or inhumanly--possible.