Are you there Blog, it's me Lana

Dear reader, in a departure from the social commentary which I enjoy so much, I have decided to use this blog as a venue for continuously examining my journey to becoming a "serious" writer, hopefully without taking myself too seriously. I have long since been aware of how much I enjoy writing, and also aware of how little I actually know about the technical side of it. I can't even say specifically what I'd like to write about, but I know that whatever I do, I need to practice.

For my first entry into this blog/notebook, I really wanted to do an exercise that I read about recently. The goal is to take a scene from a book or short story, and rewrite it in your own words using the original characters and plot. Purely for my own use, it seems like an exercise that would be helpful for me to gauge my progress the more I do it.

I'm going to use a scene from Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. I chose this novel particularly because it's so descriptively set in 1952. My goal here is to convey the same mood and mindset of the main character, yet modernize his speech. The following scene is when deputy sheriff Lou Ford starts to recount for the reader his version of events occurring right before he killed his fiancé, Amy Stanton:


I killed Amy Stanton on Sunday night, April 5th, 2009, at just a few minutes before 9:00.

It was the kind of night that you'd expect from April, cold enough to make you wonder if the long awaited spring sunshine actually warmed your back earlier in that same day, or if it was all just your imagination. It was the perfect night for Amy and me to run off together. She took care of her part efficiently and unalarmingly, as is the only way she could have. Her parents never suspected a thing when she surprised them with tickets to the new musical that just opened in the city. She saw them off at 7:00 and came over to my place around 8:30 and...and...

I knew when I saw the Stanton's car drive past my house that Amy's facade of innocence was already being melted away by a hot shower, as she began to make herself ready for her big night. She must have been a whirlwind of activity now that they were finally out of the house. There had to be very deliberate thought put into her chronology of events so as to achieve the perfect amount of preparedness while masking her true desperation.

I can see her rushing from room to room, checking every little detail. She would be sitting in front of her vanity with the magnifying make-up mirror, shaping her eyebrows hurriedly yet effortlessly, the curling iron heating on the table beside her, ready to steam her wispy locks into waves. She's checking her suitcase for all her necessary accessories. She's probably busy with the final decision about which dress to wear, trying on both in front of the mirror. Her mouth must be alternating between a pout and a smirk as she pretends she's walking towards her husband-to-be, I guess. It must be difficult for her to arrange her cleavage just so, turn her head this way and that, lift her arms to check the movement in the dress. And then, that must have been about all, I guess. Then she came over, over to my house and...

I was in the kitchen when she entered through the side door. I wasn't dressed, but I was ready for her. Her chest heaving from running up the steps, and excited about finally getting her way, I guess...I guess...

I guess I'm not ready to talk about it yet. If I talk about it now, then it will all be over and that would be the end. I don't want it to end so soon...