Writing Mirrors The Interior Self.

What Is A Scene? A) A Scene Starts And Ends In One Place At One Time (the Aristotelian Unities Of Time And Place-this Stuff Goes Waaaayyyy Back). B) A Scene Starts In One Place Emotionally And Ends In Another Place Emotionally. Starts Angry, Ends Embarrassed. Starts Lovestruck, Ends Disgusted. C) Something Happens In A Scene, Whereby The Character Cannot Go Back To The Way Things Were Before. Make Sure To Finish A Scene Before You Go On To The Next. Make Something Happen.

It Was Her First Book, An Indigo Cover With A Silver Moonflower, An Art Nouveau Flower, I Traced My Finger Along The Silver Line Like Smoke, Whiplash Curves. ... I Touched The Pages Her Hands Touched, I Pressed Them To My Lips, The Soft Thick Old Paper, Yellow Now, Fragile As Skin. I Stuck My Nose Between The Bindings And Smelled All The Readings She Had Given, The Smell Of Unfiltered Cigarettes And The Espresso Machine, Beaches And Incense And Whispered Words In The Night. I Could Hear Her Voice Rising From The Pages. The Cover Curled Outward Like Sails.

The Decor Bowled Me Over. Everywhere I Looked, There Was Something More To See. Botanical Prints, A Cross Section Of Pomegranates, A Passionflower Vine And Its Fruit. Stacks Of Thick Books On Art And Design And A Collection Of Glass Paperweights Filled The Coffee Table. It Was Enormously Beautiful, A Sensibility I'd Never Encountered Anywhere, A Relaxed Luxury. I Could Feel My Mother's Contemptuous Gaze Falling On The Cluttered Surfaces, But I Was Tired Of Three White Flowers In A Glass Vase. There Was More To Life Than That.

I Felt Beautiful But Also Interrupted. I Wasn't Used To Being So Complicated.

A Book's Flaws Make It Less Predictable.