ArcticFox

Hi, 2nd actual post here...

This is something I started last night, I wrote most of it and went to sleep. Woke up, read it again and tweaked things that I missed when I was sleepy, then went into town and wrote some more.

Fire away if you will, I'm expecting "it's boring" because I feel it is. I do not know where I am going with this, but I will tell you the inspiration came from bending real-life events in my head and then putting them on paper to form the start of a story. Yes there is a young woman I am interested in where I go for my usual brew. No I am not a newspaper photographer, nor do I have my own apartment with wooden statues.

Suggestions on how to make it more interesting would be nice, i.e. add to the main's personality in some way, but without making him anything special.
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Prologue

Before the café was even open, before the sun even rose from its place from under the horizon, and certainly before any of the scones cherished by the entire Maplewood populous were ready to be put into the small oven, Jensen Andrews was awake and thinking. Night after night and always on the left half of his queen-sized bed, he gazed up at the ceiling where he had scrawled a large question mark above his sleeping quarters. He had drawn that several months ago, four or five maybe. It stood for what he was living for; the unknown.

As a photographer for the city paper, he was familiar with the concept of not knowing what the next step in his walk would bring to him. Being on the Maplewood Log’s editorial staff, his job was to carry a pager and cellular phone so that when time-constrained issues pertaining to the public arose, he was on the scene with a Nikon in hand and extra batteries in his tote. He told people it made his life interesting; he didn’t say it made his life a joy.

This Tuesday was already set in stone however. The pager battery would be removed, the cellular phone set to silent, and his bag filled with papers and a laptop would be lugged down the street to the Brighton Café where concentration could be found. He knew what he wanted to do, how he was going to do it, and when he was going to stop.

His manager expected this trip, as he did every Tuesday. The reports on what stories were photographed and reported on were due by 3PM, and as expected nothing was started on any sort of report because it wasn’t drop-dead time yet. Crunching was the associate’s specialty; nothing got done unless it absolutely had to. Procrastination was not the preferred term for this practice, however, the correct phrase used was “strategic deferment”.

The alarm clicked off, putting a sudden end to the thought processes and concentration stirring inside him. The tasks at hand were not changed, however for the past 2 hours the question mark above the photographer’s resting place had been providing a new sense he had not felt before. Maybe this day, he could add just one more goal to his list.

Chapter One

Jensen frequented the Brighton Café in what some would consider a too-often ritual, just a bad habit to run alongside the Benson & Hedges purchases that he requested be delivered to his office on a weekly basis. It wasn’t enough to be at home and concoct his own extra-hot drinks with the industrial brewing station given to him as a promotional gift last January. He wanted a different atmosphere, however familiar it was becoming as the days came and went. Each time he walked in the door, he told himself it was going to be for a different reason. No reason was assigned to each trip, however.

Home itself was a dreamscape for others and a hell for Jensen himself, who had to deal with it more than anyone. Bamboo torches and meticulously carved wooden statues of cats in perfect pose bordered the number of bookcases he had, which held everything but what they were originally intended to hold. A desk in the corner next to the bay window provided supporting legs for the entry-level saltwater aquarium kit he bought at the mall, suspending numerous colors and shapes of aquatic life in saline liquid.

Like he did upon each visit, the landscape of the Brighton was quickly scanned for an empty table, preferably near a corner next to a source of light. The café, at least to most, was more on the depressing side than the cheerful side in decorations and ambience, but that proved to be no bother to Mr. Andrews who cared not about material things in an establishment but rather the comfort it provided to him. Nothing ever really got done in Capitol Hill apartment 219 where all his mail was delivered; it was but a place of rest and relaxation that so happened to contain a bed and kitchen.

Seconds after both feet had passed the doorway and onto the dark tile floor, Andrews found himself slouched in a slightly uncomfortable wooden dinner chair, in discrete sight of the barista counter. Outside of his norm now, ten paces away from the padded bowl chair most were accustomed to seeing him in, the blood pressure was rising.


When Jensen described himself to another person, he put it in a dramatic way that created a halo of envy around him, hiding the reality. He did that because no one, not even himself, knew who he really was. The psychologist that he visited once per quarter had put the phrase “identity distortion” to the issue, stating that it is just an elaborate way of saying “you just haven’t discovered who you are yet”. On the surface he agreed with what he was told; inside, the idea was cast aside to join such nonsense like medication and yoga.

As an associate of the paper for two years and soon to be three, his social life had all but faded. His duties made him feel like some sort of firefighter, just without all the danger. Time and again people would request his presence for an activity or a paid dinner, but they were politely declined before the embarrassment of having to excuse himself to return to work was faced. His love life was a few paces behind the one reserved for mere friends, which made him wonder if he ever had one. It was something that he wanted without a doubt, but Jensen Andrews felt commitment would be suicide if he ever had to face the concept in reality.

In the same span of time, between the drawing of the question mark above his bed and the present, a young woman had a grasp of his day-to-day thoughts. The new barista, college age and coincidentally attending the local university, caught his eye one autumn afternoon as she was preparing the same extra-hot vanilla latte with whip that he always requested.

It was a conflicting feeling for Andrews, because in her eyes he saw both certain failure and a hope for something more in his life besides stressing over a paycheck. That in and of itself presented a problem; his previous approaches to women usually consisted of silence and smiles. Guilt clouded over the could-be couple as he racked his mind to think of something interesting he did last week, and she thought what a dud the guy really was. After more attempts than he had fingers and toes that led to nothing but good-bye’s, he wrote off dating for an indefinite period of time. Perhaps one day he could find a cure for cancer, or direct a blockbuster movie and then amaze others with the tales, but it was all fantasy and dreams.

Today would be different, however. Today was Tuesday, and the feeling of a new beginning he had that morning failed to leave his thoughts. He had more ideas for change than what was in his pocket.

Foxee

Hey, ArcticFox,

Your writing's good enough that I read the whole thing. I did nearly give up on it right about at the 'Chapter One' mark but that's mostly because it didn't feel like it was going anywhere yet. However.....!

Okay, so this is mostly backstory. I'm going to tell you the same thing I have to tell myself over and over... Keep Going. Just write the story...a lot of what you have here will be reiterated later, within the more exciting parts of the story. THEN (note: not now or I will throw the switch that sends a strong electric current through the seat of your chair) you can edit a lot of this out so that it's not redundant.

But it's important that you write the whole thing first. You've got some good things going with it...questions raising, decent writing.

I look forward to seeing it develop.

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ArcticFox

Thank you Foxee, always nice to get another opinion..

Okay, so it is mostly backstory, a preface to something else. I might have set myself up for something bigger than originally anticipated. Now, the question is, what is this "bigger" thing?

Guess no one else can answer that but myself. I might have to refrain from writing anything else until I at least have an idea of a direction. I have never read any love stories or whatnot, it's always been scifi/fantasy/suspense except for unpublished works and short stories on forums like these.

Obviously at this point all we have is a description of a character and the hint that this guy is interested in some as-yet-unnamed girl who makes his lattes. The door is wide open for options, if I saw this in the start of a full-length book but had no idea of the title or any concept of the rest of the story, I could see myself thinking:

Will this guy fall in love, buy a house but then get called into a war and face peril?

Is this the start of a sci-fi book, where this woman is actually an alien/cyborg and keeps trying to kill him?

Is this a fantasy tale, where she is a beautiful wizard inside and shows him amazing things?

How about her as an undercover detective trying to set him up for a crime he didn't commit?

All I'm saying is, now that I think of it, I have some choices to make. My worry is that I will get to far, and then come to some great thought mid-way and have to go alter something in the beginning which ripples down to stuff in the rest of the story. I suppose things like that happen.

Foxee

hmmm...maybe stop trying to overthink it and just keep writing. What happens next? He could go try to talk to her... a bullet could shatter his coffee cup... she could disappear with a muffled scream from just around the corner...

Stop worrying so much an write it. You'll find your way. You're dangerously close to 'paralysis by analysis' in Dr. Foxee's opinion.

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If the staff were bent on policing your thoughts there would be nothing but a smoking hole where the debate forum used to be.

ArcticFox

I see I have orders now, to write that is. I get my inspiration (for this particular piece anyways) when I see the woman in question which is farily often as I tend to go the Coffee Cottage here in town before and/or after work. This week my schedule permits me Tuesday and Thursday off so I'll grind away then.