Hers and His: The Book?

With the first 50 blog posts under our belt I've been feeling a bit frisky to start something of a larger project. While our door isn't necessarily being knocked off its hinges by publishers looking for a fresh new franchise that will pander to that niche tween/sorority girl demographic that missed the Harry Potter boat, but has too much pride to pick up the Twilight series; that doesn't mean we shouldn't give it the old college try. Certainly the market is saturated with books on coupling and learning to cope, but I can't help but think we may have what it takes to bring something new to the table.

Now I can't speak for Julie, but I am no master linguist. With a complete lack of knowledge as to what a comma is or how it's used and no desire ever to write in the 3rd person, the options for me are pretty slim. I suppose we could write a guide on how to avoid awkward silences with the incorporation of musical instruments in daily life, or our experiences in going through the motions... uh I mean 'paces' of starting a life together; me, no longer under the watchful eye of my parents, and Julie, giving up the need to be right for the first time. The possibilities are limited!

Julie and I have always stuck by the principal of never embellishing or writing any falsehoods. Often times I'm temped to make something up purely for humor, then I think to myself "Zane you are writing a book, not some sort of blog where you can tell bold face lies to make the reader feel like some gullible, unaccomplished, dolt!" With a book this vow is more important than ever. It is not simply something people check in on when they're not surfing porn or old civil war memorabilia on ebay. It's something I'm expecting people to go to the store and spend their hard laundered money on.

It's silly, I know, but all my crippling insecurities tell me that I should leave the literary fame to those with little things like achievements and talent. Despite my better judgement I don't think I'll be able to resist plagiarism. No matter how hard I try I feel nothing sounds as good as something someone else wrote. The first draft shows this all too clearly:

"Julie and I have always shared so many great laughs together, but as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between. If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it.

Often Julie wishes that I'd tell her when she has something in her teeth, but no one mentioned such things; it was not a rule but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals. Her scorn was too terrible for me to take. When she introduced physical abuse into the relationship I wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

It did not go over so well with the people I asked to proofread it. They complained it was too convoluted and nonsensical. Sure I had never been to Venice or the 16th century but come on! It's a metaphor! They were also confused as to why the third chapter was entirely in Russian; I couldn't explain to them that that was the only copy of Crime and Punishment I could find, for that would be admitting that I was a fraud.

I suppose now is not the time to think about turning this blog into something that will gather dust on the shelves of Barnes and Nobel next to the books on weight loss and overcoming the metabolic demon that makes you smoke cigarettes. No, perhaps we should wait for after our 100th post.