XXV

It was six o’clock. The doorknob turned and the lock clicked several times in each direction, until with a final tired heave, the door swung open. Lisa left the keys in the lock as she came inside and dropped her bags on the couch, deposited her coffee cup and water bottle in the kitchen sink. She briefly considered changing out of her awful high-waisted slacks into something more forgiving, but elected to start rummaging through cupboards instead.

But what was she supposed to do with her writing?

She had recently realized that all this time, she had held the assumption that just writing for herself would suffice, that it would be enough, that it would sustain her for another sixty or seventy years. And it would, as long as her imaginary audience was there, anxiously waiting, poring over every word, validating her efforts with their ravenous appreciation. Today at work, it had come to her with stunning clarity that writing in her journal, saving documents to flash drives, sometimes, rarely rereading anything, constantly adding to it but never building on it, or even revising it, was all to go to waste without them, her faithful, invisible readers.

And now that her audience had disappeared, or rather, now that she realized they had never existed, it dawned on her that she needed to establish a real audience, to reach real people, to make real, living people want to read her writing, so that she could maintain the same feeling of purpose. If she could recreate in reality this imaginary group of people who found her writing so extraordinary, then she could continue to write as she always had—obsessively, passionately, constantly, forward-looking, messy, without direction, negligently, aggressively, gently, necessarily. But it also brought about a new responsibility, a distinct change to her fanatical, unharnessed writing.

Today, out of all days, had brought her the question of what it meant to write for a real audience as opposed to an imaginary one. (Why? What was it about today that made it so different from every other workday?

(Only that today was the latest in a long and continuous progression; since that Tuesday, when she began to teach herself to be happy, she had been coming to so many new conclusions that now they just did not stop coming, using existing conclusions as premises, building on one another. Every minute, practically, she was tripping on a new, self-evident truth, something she could not believe she had not thought of before, something that was immediately apparent and relevant and brought about a tangible change in her mental atmosphere. Today’s happened to be that she had not yet addressed the practical application of her discovery that she needed to make people listen to her, since they would not listen to her of their own accord. She must be heard. But how would she go about getting them to listen? Real people—neighbors, coworkers, strangers, students, curious, bored, hopeless, inspired, tired, desperate, insipid, intelligent, capable people?

(Not by keeping her treasures hidden. Certainly not.)

She pulled out a pot and its cover and put them on the counter. While searching for the elbow macaroni, she came upon coffee filters and assessed her energy level. She glanced at the clock, and determined that any less than three fourths of a cup wouldn’t affect her sleeping schedule, and even if it did, it was worth being able to think clearly in the meantime. She poured some grounds in the filter and hazarded another guess at the amount of water; when the machine was on, she went to get the milk, saw the Velveeta, and remembered her original plan.
Publish it?

Publish what?

She turned on the tap and filled the pan with water, allowing her brain to hold a debate with itself while she tended to her dinner. She placed the cover on the pan and turned on the burner, waited for the click of the gas. She stood against the counter, arms crossed, staring at the flame and listening to the gurgling of the coffee maker.

Publish her thoughts? Like a book?

(This did not seem to be coming naturally at all.)

A series of short stories? A novel? Could it pass as is? What is it, a memoir? Could be a new genre altogether? Should she add characters to be the voices of her thoughts? Would that sound unnatural? How did she know her thoughts weren’t the same as everyone else’s? Which did she prefer: to be a voice that seemed to speak from within, or an alien perspective; would that be fascinating or boring? Would she have a better chance of publishing an assortment of past and present thoughts if they mirrored her audience’s, or if they were on a completely different plane? Do people want to read their own minds or somebody else’s? Do people ever want to read someone else’s?

The dozens of documents saved on her laptop and scribbled in various notebooks around her apartment at this instant were filled largely with her unfiltered thoughts, in whatever form they cared to take at the moment. There were stories and poems and essays and riffs on life and pieces looking for a genre. Almost anything that had crossed her mind while she had access to pen and paper had been recorded. Her brain manifested itself in words, phrases, sounds, plots, rhythm, flow, and sometimes in a discernible structure.

The tremendous task of synthesizing all her previous thoughts into a readable, digestible form that held the slightest chance of attracting another beating heart loomed over her. Was that her only choice?