A Lesson Well Learned

There’s nothing like doing something incredibly stupid in public to wake you out of a funk. A beautiful day today. Breeze, sun, the leaves are doing their brief turn before they crumble to brown and hang onto the trees until spring comes and buds shoe them off. During lunch, I paid more attention to a poem composing itself in my head than I did to what I was putting in my mouth. By the time I had to leave my apartment, I was flying out the door with my purse in one hand and coffee mug in the other.

I live about ten minutes from my office, depending on traffic, and by now, the car can drive itself, and this afternoon, I let it. I was thinking about the binding of Isaac and the banning of Ishmael, how the two boys, as adults, might discuss their father. How it seemed that a few of Abraham’s tests, though difficult for him, might have been more difficult on others. Imagining how the conflicts could be worked through in a poem, it was enough to keep from giving my full attention to those little piddling everyday things, like putting the car in park, taking the keys out of the ignition, and walking back to reopen the office. And so, without realizing quite how I had done it, I was standing outside of the car, purse in one hand, setting my coffee mug on the roof, and looking for my keys. Which were not in my purse, either of my hands, or on the roof of the car. A peek through the windshield proved that the keys were still in the ignition.

Ah, pure genius. Since I am the only employee, I had to call my boss to let him know that I would not be able to open the office until I found a way to get my keys out of the car.

As things turned out, I was granted a two-hour lunch break, as it took the locksmith another hour to get to the parking lot where I was jovially leaning against the car, reading the current issue of The Writer’s Chronicle. And what was more, I got to be watched as every person who had lunch on the square left to go back to their jobs and everyone who worked on the square came back from lunch. Whether they were actually staring or not, wondering what the crazy lady was doing loitering in the parking lot, it sure felt like every person was looking.

But what of it? That’s the precise reason I always keep reading material in my purse, and I got to jot down a few notes about my impending poem, but did not finish a draft. Yet. The moral of the story? Don’t lock your keys in the car, dummy.

There are more lessons to learn. Such as how to fit a smaller narrative arc within a larger one. Say, for example, that one is writing a comic book series called Ex Machina, a particular part of the series which has been collected into the graphic novel Dirty Tricks, and within this section there is a story about a renegade dubbed Trouble that falls quite flat without reaching its potential. The showdown between Hundred and Trouble just kind of happens. And that’s that. No addressing her obsession or Hundred’s own shift in objectives, both of which are built up, and when the climax comes—well, suffice to say that the constructing of the subplot was more trouble than it was worth.

Granted, writer Brian K. Vaughan always has multiple story lines working and the graphic novel is an artificial anthology of those lines, but even so, a plot should not just die, it should end with at least a little satisfaction. If not for the characters, then at least for the readers. Don’t lock your keys in the car, dummy.