Previously Unpublished

I’m sitting in lawyer ethics class and within an hour I will be at work for my first full work week, minus the 6 hours of class each week that are scheduled to cut into my time, since I started working a little over 3 weeks ago. Every week up until now has had some sort of break or off day either because I was on a family vacation or because of the 4th of July holiday. So Monday through Friday this week I will be toiling away at the old brickyard. Lifting one brick at a time, splashing mortar onto the bricks below, trying to build this small wall of experience into the foundation of a career.

I woke up this morning early so that I would be in class on time. I hate this routine of flopping out of bed before you are fully rested and then stretched and then satisfied that you are as done sleeping as artichokes should be when they come out of the steamer and are laid out for presentation on a table. No, when you get up for work on Monday morning, even if you went to bed by midnight, you are never fully prepared to tackle the day properly when you are awake before 8. I know I’ll get used to it eventually: the shower where the water seems to be doing more work than you are, the morning news where nothing the anchors say seems to matter and you get tired listening because they seem to be working so hard to make it big and move to a bigger market, the english muffin that makes you feel comfortable, but at the same time is deceptive as to how easy the rest of your day will be.

And I like my job and I don’t mind going to class.

I can’t imagine what people do who hate their jobs. The All-Star game is tomorrow night. Sure, I’d love to watch baseball all day and then maybe blog about it or write a daily column on baseball and just live in baseball utopia forever. But even that would have drawbacks because I’d have to either move to Connecticut to work for ESPN or else write for our smaller newspaper and have to write about other sports as well. For instance, about the great Italian football team and the great French team and then their captain who is good at giving head. But, other than the small, sadistic, and paradoxical love I have for the mechanical nature of toiling at work everyday, there is no way getting up on a Monday morning to go to work for 5 days just to get to the reward of a lightning-quick 2 days is ever going to be something I look forward to. I’d like to write a book about it instead.

Anyway, since I’m in class, I guess I’ll try to pay attention. Even if it is the beginning of the week.

-jd

I’m starting summer school in about 7 hours. The class is at 8 AM and is professional responsibility. There’s a pretty good chance I’m on call based on prior experience. I did the reading about an hour ago. It was actually okay, and fairly interesting even if it was sort of dense and stupid writing. Most of the concepts I have already been exposed to in other classes. For instance, we talked about civility and hardball tactics a little in Negotiations. We talked about leaving out authority, frivolous cases, non-cases on appeal, and skewing facts in Lawyering Skills and Crim Pro. We talked about penalties in Civ Pro. So I guess I’ve been preparing for this class for two years now.

Speaking of time passage, I noticed in the “One month ago” category in the right hand column of this blog, I posted that I was officially a 3L. That would be because it has been a month since my last final, last semester. Yeah, a month. I have no idea what the hell I’ve been doing. Well, I have one great positive to show for that period of time, but beyond that, my room is a mess, I never fixed my budget with all the receipts I save in the tin by my desk, I still haven’t consolidated my loans or decided whether it is worth it, I don’t have a job even a whole month in, I’ve worked minimally on the paper that I’m going to steer in the fall, I haven’t finished one chapter of my great american novel. It’s a disaster. But I’ll recover, I always do…

…Due diligence that is. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. School in the summer at 8 in the morning. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Crazy time. C R A Z Y. I feel like I should start drinking espresso shots right now.

-jd

On the other hand, I imagine being in a classroom with my computer will mean I will post more often again. (No! Amjur, amjur, amjur!!!)

As with most finals periods, I find that the number of entries into my creative writing journal increase exponentially. Usually it is some of my best stuff too; in terms of more unique ideas or ways to describe things or bits of dialogue or anything really. Moreover, in the midst of this sort of side-effect of procrastination (mixed in with a healthy dose of wishing I was a financially successful writer so I didn’t have to bank my future on finals), there is always a peak day where I come up with a number of things that I think are at least slightly better than crap.

Now usually, when I come up with story ideas, they do one of three things and I categorize them as such in my digital folders (or on spare napkins, torn papers, gum wrappers and the like): supplements to established story ideas, new story ideas, or general filler. Now I’m just killing time until I can stop this vicious procrastination cycle, so I’ll elaborate. Currently, I have 3 story ideas that I have fleshed out as book plots that I have worked out in my mind pretty completely. After that there are maybe 4-6 other ideas for book-length projects that I have sort of fleshed out over a long period of time. Out of these, I have not come up with a new one in over a year. They have all been fermenting for between 1 and 7 years or so in my mind and are written down here and there. A lot of the time, I try to focus on the one of the three main ideas when coming up with subplots and filler material. Occasionally, I get distracted or find something for the others.

Then there are lots of ideas for short stories or works of prose. Sometimes it is as diminuative as a title or character name and sometimes I jot out a whole little mini plot. A lot of these are probably crap or I would have actually finished the story or else thought I could make it into a novel or else integrated it into one of the existing novel ideas. I have over 200 of these in my folders on my computer since law school alone. I have lots more on paper in a giant bin in my closet. Those will probably never get published in any form because I’ve tried to sort through them even with voice recognition and basically get no where. Obviously if they were a really good idea, I figure they have filtered in my mind to my more recent ideas. I do have a lot of themes that are repetitive.

Finally, there is just filler stuff that I save in an actual document called creative writing journal. It is in its second incarnation digitally and probably 5th or 6th overall. I use it as source for basically all of the above and it helps organize my writing in general, such as to keep track of stories, poems, and the novel ideas I currently favor most. So now that the stage is set, I’ll explain today, briefly. At this point all my energy is on Copyright since it is my first final and I am much more confident in Will and Trusts (Surely this means it will be my worst grade and I’ll ace Copyright…okay, I’ll get something half a grade higher in Copyright.) Well, so much focus on one thing is what usually lets my mind race. Almost everything I see will contribute to this steady stream of ideas that seems to pour from my head. Usually, like I imagine it must be for everyone, this thinking is just sort of in the background. However at other times it gets really loud, though exciting if I like the ideas it is producing.

Well today I got three new ideas that fit into all of the above categories. Plus a number of pretty cool filler ideas which will go into the creative writing journal because I’m not sure whether they go with the ideas from today or should be applied to other, existing ideas later. I have three categories of stories for potential novels: literary (teachers may one day assign to students in my dreams), experimental-personal (someday cultish groups will get really into it and declare me a genius while everyone else wonders what the hell went wrong in my dreams), and experimental-post modern (academics might reference my work because they combine contemporary theories from the fields of architecture, city planning, law, economics, education, etc. into the story lines. Think of how Ayn Rand uses themes.)

I got a rarity today for the post-modern novel category. It has to do with religion. Moreover, it has a paradoxical twist that I always strive for, but often end up frustrated because new ones are hard to think of. But I like it; a lot. In the current order I envision finishing my stories (keeping in mind I have yet to complete the first one), it is probably last. On the other hand, the idea is really good. Enough to make me think delusionally that if I ever finished everything and became even semi well-known, this would compete for the title of one of my best just because it is clever and concise. I usually write out long, lush, complex sentences. This could be done simply and to-the-point and people who like that would really like it a lot, I think. So there was that.

Then, almost an hour later, I got this idea that really fleshed out a story idea from the experimental-personal that I used to consider the masterpiece idea I would finish when I was 40, that no one would get except for some isolated future heir (probably a grandaughter) who would constantly defend it when everyone else who knew me had died, as the work that most defined me as a person even after the Bank project had become the soft face of my work and the Mistake (see above) project had become the institutional face of my work. It is very abstract and it goes by the nickname B (Blue) SP. It now has a companion and parallel piece called R (Red) SP. The breakthrough idea was something that I had been trying to figure out for a long, long time. I wasn’t sure how to do it before and now I do. The combined project will be numbers 6 and 7.

Finally, I got a clever little short story idea that I could probably finish in half a day. It also has a twist gimmick in it like the Mistake project. These are hard to come by and that’s probably why I’ve been much more excited about my little writing pastime today than I have been about studying for Copyright law. I wish I could get this excited all the time about writing, but there is some weird alchemy in that way the brain handles deadlines and pressure that only seems to make it worthwhile when I have other stuff to do. On the other hand, as life has picked up the pace in the last couple of years, I’ve realized how important it is to me to get these ideas fleshed out even if they turn out to be utter crap and no one else cares. Not sure how that is going to play into a legal career, but I’ll find a way.

Sorry that was a long post that probably no one will care about unless I really do make something of the writing hobby. In which case, people will also see how valuable my editors were since hopefully the finished books will be a lot more polished than this very stream-of-consciousness and very unedited blog entry. I just mainly wanted to encapsulate a day in the life of my head when it comes to how I think about writing and capturing ideas while in law school. And during finals. Speaking of which…

-jd

I have had a great year in law school. I have surpassed everything I set out to do - academically at least. However, despite everything I have accomplished, I couldn’t help but get worked up over an opportunity that I never even considered but that was opened up for me sort of out of the blue with an invitation to apply. Then, I found out tonight that I didn’t get said opportunity. So even though it wasn’t on my radar at all for this year or next, I can’t help but to have adopted it as the natural progression to everything I have done so far and it is sort of disappointing not to have gotten it.

I admit I was a little on the fence about it because it would be a lot of work and would prevent me from getting to do the range of things I got to try this year, but at the same time the idea of committing myself to one thing was really growing on me. I guess moreso than I thought it had. Tonight at least then, it seems like everything I got to do this year is stagnant because now the best I can do is just rince and repeat. Well, I know that’s not entirely true, but it feels like it. Rejection sucks, and from your peers even more than prospective employers, even though I know their decision was difficult and there were a lot of “famous” names on the interview schedule who are all more than qualified.

Just indulging in the sting right now I guess. Maybe I can do alternate things like a clinic, be a TA, write that damn book I keep talking about. Oh, I can convert myself into a trial lawyer.

-jd

Oh yes, and worst of all, I missed the West Wing for the interview. Apparently it was quite good too - thank god for Bravo reruns the next day! I will be unavailable tomorrow night at 7.

I like the title of this blog for a number of reasons: 1. I found it in a book of Hemingway short stories. 2. It is sort of catchy and stands out, and it looks good on the page. 3. It could be law related, if referring to the types of decisions that we’re not supposed to cite in our briefs. 4. It could also be fiction writing related if it implies discussion of works I hope to one day publish. 5. Finally, the biggest reason is the sort of built-in gimmick that anything I write in this blog has not been publish before.

Well, for the longest time I have thought I have great potential to be a tolerable fiction writer and I often find myself torn between having gone for probably sure money with the law and more of a struggle with trying to get fiction published. Well it turns out that law is not a cake-walk and although I do enjoy the subject matter immensly, I still have aspirations of being a published author (See: forthcoming post called to be titled, Hiatus). In fact, I consider it one of maybe three or four goals that are set in stone for my future.

Moreover, I have files upon files of word documents on my computer and piles and piles of notes jotted down on paper in a storage tub that are all ideas and character names and plot turns, but I have few actual complete works. Maybe 10 short stories and 20-30 fairly decent poems that I leave along and don’t still manipulate. I talk a lot about writing, especially novels, but rarely do I actually convert the talk into action. This is especially true with three project in particular that I’ve fleshed out a lot in notes, in my head, and in discussion with friends. I call them Bank, Absinthe, and Tree for short.

The characters and most of the rough plots for each of these is pretty thoroughly laid out in notebooks, but not put together. However, I know the characters so well, that they actually act as a comfort at times during law school’s trials and tribulations. The same with social interactions and failures and just about anything. It’s exciting because this is the same way I’ve heard published authors talk about their creations, however at the same time, I feel I sort of betray them by not telling their stories. They live in limbo. I am constantly distracted either by jotting down some new short idea, by jumping between these three projects, or by well, what I’m actually supposed to be doing so I can eat in another year: learning the law.

Well tonight I would like to open up a new section of the blog by declaring that I will begin a determined effort to finish the Bank book project. In the last month, I actually came up with a substantial portion of one of the subplots and this is really the first major idea I ever had for a book. I’ve known the main character since high school and the subject matter is falling further and further into my past so I don’t want to forget it. Although, law school covers such broad topics that I can only say when I’m not too overwhelmed with work, it adds for great filler info, though none of the above mentioned projects resembles anything ever written by John Grisham.

I actually made a new folder on my computer named after the working title and put all the documents that pertained to the project in the folder. I opened a fresh document and titled it chapter one. I then wrote out the opening scene which I’ve known for over four years. I also know how it ends, so I guess the easy part is done. Anyway, to shake up the law component of this blog, and since so many lawyers are often suppressed writers given how many people I meet here say that they too would like to write a book someday, I’ll use “The Book Project” category to group all my posts updating on this book.

Maybe by making such a public announcement of my undertaking, I’ll be more compelled to finish it this time, even if it turns out like crap, just to say I did it. Plus it helps to concentrate on one story and I finally decided the bank one was the most likely to interest a publisher since the other two are a little more complex and “out there.”

-jd