Writing in La La Land

One of the things writing teachers tell you is to take notes, be observant, jot down ideas, record things you see, however insignificant, write out dreams you can remember--you just never know when those thoughts, ideas, observances or dreams might be just what you are looking for when you are writing.

OK. So get this. I'm standing in a lobby of a very tall building. I'm very sleepy, groggy, fighting desperately to open my eyes. I'm standing in front of a window that is a credit union in the lobby of this building (like an order window)...you don't go in and talk to the loan officer, you just order it at the order window. But I needed to wake up enough to explain to the loan officer at the window why I needed to borrow the money. I told him I was working for an organization that did compassionate shipping and clothing for morbidly obese people. We made boxes they could be shipped in (OK this part confuses me just as much as it's confusing you) and we make clothes that have to have support around the waist. The only thing we've come up with to use is what I keep calling "cotillion wire". The credit union loan officer does not know what "cotillion wire" is. I keep saying, "You know, like in the movie 'Gone with the Wind', the women wore the big hoop skirts to the Cotillions. The wire hoops held the skirts of their dresses out in a big circle." I kept repeating that, but they never could understand. In the meantime, I am still so sleepy, I can barely keep my eyes opened. I sit down on a chair in the lobby and doze off. Occasionally I wake up long enough to hear a voice on a loud speaker saying "My number is 3378 (or whatever 4-digit number they were) and the reason I want to be heard on the afternoon salute to Joel Ward is (and they'd state their reason) (Joel Ward is a man I used to work with years ago who recently passed away). I could rarely remember what they'd say past their number because I kept dozing off.

I finally woke up enough to realize I was very very late from returning on my lunch break and tried to find my way to the elevator (stopping at another counter to see how to get a number so I too could be on the afternoon salute to Joel Ward). But as you can probably guess by now, I found the elevator, stood in front of it and dozed off. I could barely see the up and down button. I heard a man's voice asking if I was going up or down. "Up", I said. My eyelids were weighed down like tiny bricks on each eyelash. The doors of the elevator opened and I was moving in slow motion like in the movie "10" where Bo Derek runs across the beach, like my feet are stuck in sludge. The doors are closing and I'm trying to get on. I turn sideways and slide in--but the elevator is 2-part, one compartment behind the other and I miss the first compartment and slide into the second. The second compartment is an express elevator that goes directly from the lobby to the 64th floor. There are two men on the elevator with boxes of 'packing popcorn' and bubble wrap. The 'packing popcorn' is all sticky and full of glue and it keeps flying out of the box and sticking to me. The two men act like they don't even see me in the elevator. At one point I am frantically trying to get a piece of this sticky gunk off my finger that has attached itself to me and feels like a leach sucking the blood in a jungle river. They get off on the 64th floor with all their boxes. I, of course, have again gotten very groggy. I can barely see the numbers on the elevator to go back down--on the ride down it appears the elevator stops on all the floors. I hit a button that seems to show floors 10-11-12. The elevator bypasses 12 and 11 and stops on the 10th floor. I get off, look around still in a daze. I am in an office I am familiar with but haven't worked in since 1995. A man whose face is familiar (from that time period), but whose name escapes me completely says "Hey Peg" and seeing how confused I look follows up with "10th floor". I ask him how to get to the 12th floor like it's my first time ever to be in this situation. He giving me a look like he thinks I'm two fries short of a happy meal, points to some stairs and says, "Up two flights, just like everyday". I'm fully awake now and run up the stairs wondering how in the hell I'm going to explain taking so long for lunch. I open the door to the 12th floor, look at the clock over the receptionist's desk and realize I'm only 3 minutes late.


OK. Now I know you're probably either laughing your head off or wondering where I slipped off the deep end of the world into La La Looneyville. But that's how dreams work. I can relate to Joel Ward. I worked with him. He passed away. But where the heck did the 64-story building, the "cotillion wire", the shipping obese people (to who knows where and why), the sticky 'packing popcorn--bloodsucking leach' scenes come from? And for that matter how would I ever fit any of that into a novel. Well I guess stranger things have happened. I've read some pretty imaginative books with some pretty far out scenes. So who knows. I'll stick these notes away and maybe one of these days, when I least expect it, I'll be looking for a character or a building or a box of sticky 'packing popcorn' to put in a chapter and I'll refer back to that wacky dream. That's what make fiction writing so much fun. It doesn't have to be true. It just has to fit into the story that is believable enough for the reader to want to read on.

'til I write again. Take care.