New Project

Part of the reason I've felt so energized since my catharsis on Monday is that I have a new writing project. Or at least the idea for a new writing project. I haven't actually sat down and started writing yet.

Considering I've had so many girlfriends in my life, and I'm so fixated on them, I thought I could write a loveography: a chronology of my love life. I'd had this idea before, but a comment by reader Single Mom in New England (with the awesome acronym SMINE) replanted the idea in me a few weeks ago.

But a straight-up loveography by a common librarian seems like it would be boring to all but my closest acquaintances.

Then I remembered a story I wrote right after my first heartbreak.

My first serious girlfriend, J, was dating her former boss when we first met. (She was 24 and he was 41, which seemed super creepy to me back then, but now, as I'm pushing 40 and getting crushes on college girls, doesn't seem as bad.) For a short while she dated both of us, and made me think that I had nothing to worry about and that she was crazy about me. What made me believe that was her saying explicitly, "You have nothing to worry about" and "I'm crazy about you."

Well, when she told him about me, they had a big fight and she decided she couldn't break it off with him. So she broke it off with me. I was devastated, but I got over it and spent a summer abroad in Austria, and then four months later we reconnected, and by then she'd broken up with the old creepy dude and was single, so we got back together and dated for another 1.5 years. Then I had to be an asshole and break her heart, but that's another story.

But during that time when she had dumped me for the creepy old dude, I wrote a story. It was a fairy tale about a knight who rescues a damsel in distress from an ugly, dangerous, fire-breathing dragon and wins her love. But soon after she decides that she misses the dragon and goes back to him. Perhaps you can see the parallel between the story and real life.

It's one of my favorite things I've ever written. And I thought, why couldn't I write a similar fairy tale for all of my relationships? And put them all together in a book? Sir Snarkalot and His Quest for Love. Or something like that.

I'm excited. I haven't had a writing project (other than my many blogs) in several years. And unlike many other things I've written, this has the potential for a wider audience than just three or four people who know me.