I can paint her the way I want

I am a perfectionist. See that ^ - it's a picture of my room. Okay, not really. But it could be. I write and edit and re-write and I'm never happy. I'm not talking about this blog. This is where I come to express my most incoherent, disaterous self. This isn't work. This doesn't get edited. But my actual job, writing a Novel, tentatively entitled "That Dating Lives of Butterflies" is fast becoming "The Never Ending Edit." Every night I go to sleep after hours sitting in front of my little Dell laptop, thinking what I've written is brilliant, only to wake up the next day and say, "Oh god, this fucking sucks." And the process begins all over again. I read everything like a script, I attribute voices to all of the characters, Who would play them in a movie? Does this ring true? I will ask myself when reading dialogue I've written. I'm obsessed, everything has to be just right.



I've always been a drama queen. At least in my own mind. An only child, we tend to live in our own little heads, our own carved out worlds. We don't have brothers and sisters to play with, just ourselves.... My mother, not big on playing Barbie with me, would throw me a book and tell me to entertain myself. So I read, and read and read. And then made up my own stories. I never knew I wanted to be a writer. I was a professional dancer up till my twenties and in college majored in Psychology. I wanted to help people. I wanted to save the world. Go into Americorps, Doctors without Borders. For various reasons, that dream never came true. Mainly my mother forbidding me. One day I will rebel against her demands, I just might be 70 before that happens.

I have to finish soon. I have deadlines. Deadlines make me nervous. Very nervous. When I was working as a magazine writer, juggling two to three stories at a time I never met deadline. "I need an extention." I would beg.I was very bad that way. But I refused to turn something in until it was, in my opinion, good enough to bear my name under it. Of course, my editors would take what I wrote and butcher it, infuriating me. But that is par for the course in journalism. Those who can't write, Edit. ( Okay, that sounds a bit harsh, but seriously.... ask most writers.)

Now, this isn't an article. I'm not writing about 50 Cent or Mark Wahlberg or The New England Patriots anymore. This is mine, all mine. I decide what the finished product looks like, even if I have to fight hard for what I want. I have control. So I write, and edit, and write and edit... I come to Barnes and Nobles Cafe everyday, grab my table in the corner, order my Vanilla Latte, Turkey Sandwhich and Fiji Water and get to work. But I'm scared.

I'm afraid my once fabulous Butterflies are starting to look like this. Dull and lifeless. What if everyone hates them. They have to be exciting, crazy, full of life. Butterflies, my metaphor for New York Twentysomething's emerging from girl to womanhood, trying to find their way in the often crazy, senseless city that is New York, dating the wrong guys, wearing the wrong clothes,suffering in the wrong jobs, saying the wrong things. Making your way out of 25 in Manhattan uscathed is harder then hitting the Powerball jackpot.

Soon I won't have any more time to edit. Soon, I will have to let this baby go. But part of me doesn't want to. While I have her I can nurture her, guide her, paint her the way I want. I suppose that the only thing that matters is that I love them. If nobody else does, well....... fuck 'em:)

"The Dating Lives of Butterflies."
- coming soon