I struggled. I really did. I wrote three beginnings that I ditched because I didn't know what happened afterwards and they seemed to ominous to me. They say this really happened to Melanie Kirowitz. After she married the man from Ishpeming. Or was it Oscoda? Well, that doesn't really matter but the two of them moved down state to Bloomfield hills (he was a doctor) and kept a lake house up in Black River. ... And then there were a couple others and all of them felt that with the kind of opening I had given them someone needed to die. Or if a character didn't die that they found a dead body. And ... well ... I'm not Stephen King.
Now when I read that opening that's in italics I'm like
hmm, I see potential there. LOL! When did this happen to me? Obviously it was sometime between Sunday night and Wednesday night. Then it took another couple of days before I embraced my inner Joyce Carol Oates. Argh. Maybe Oates is pushing it too far. Maybe I need to think of it more as the eeriness of poets James Tate and Thomas Lux because the two of them intrigue me but never cross over that line to truly upsetting me or just plain freaking me out.
On that note, I have a problem. I've introduced a switchblade into a story. But I have no idea how to bring it back. It's like Chekhov's gun: if you introduce a gun in act one, the damn thing needs to be fired by the end of the play. But what happens to this little switch blade? I've already figured out how to kill off every one who needs going ... *sigh*
