Small Talk

Believe it or not I quite like small talk. At the school with the Moms, or with the opera people at shows and parties, I quite enjoy the inconsequential chatter with which we try and fill the micro-longeurs between this and that. I'm not saying I'm any good at it. And it's not entirely stress-free either. Especially with people I don't really know, it can feel like a determined act of transmutation, grasping the wordless nothing that we have to say to each other and spinning it into a conversation about nothing instead. But then I like it because of the inconsequentiality. It is possible to talk freely because I am saying precisely nothing.

So, speaking the other day to someone I've met only a few times, I was not in the least uninterested, despite being heavily disinterested. At least I was until they started talking about me.

"Oh yes," they said. "Someone was saying about the November book writing thing. What a wonderful idea! I can't wait to read yours!"

With these words, my coffee turned to cold, slimy dread in my throat. Read my story? I don't think so! If the prospect of writing 50,000 wasn't daunting, then the idea that they might have to be 50,000 readable or interesting words certainly is. In fact given the parameters of the competition (an average of 1667 words a day for 30 days) I'd be amazed if I produced anything which made any sense whatsoever. What it will be, hopefully, is extant, possessing a beginning, middle and end. This is the lowly state of my ambitions.

Like my small talk, the story I'm going to write came out of nothing. One morning, about a week before I found out about NaNoWriMo, I woke up having literally dreamed a book. It was a very strange feeling. I often remember my dreams and they are regularly vivid, albeit normally fragmented and surreal. This dream was oddly organised and comprehensive, filling like a thick and hearty soup, and it stuck with me long enough for me to scribble down a summary. It was all there, unfolding in order, protagonists, antagonists, imagery, conflict and something that certainly would have done as an ending if I wasn't worried that it might need a bit more. As I mulled it over I even realised that there was a crude allegory to it: the damn dream even had subtext.

But that makes me nervous: if it ends up being a story 'about something' then it stops being small talk. The more consciously I think about it, the more contrived it feels and I realise that I only want to write the story because I have so little investment in it. By writing the dream story I have deniability. I am insulated from some of the responsibility for it if it turns out to be rubbish whilst still being able to take all the credit if it is actually, you know, good. Hopefully I can write freely enough that I can take a dream, the most insubstantial nothing, an unconscious notion, and spin it into the comparatively solid nothing of a story, even one that is not to be read.

As for the person I was chatting to who scared me so, I don't think they'll be disappointed if they don't get to read it. It was just small talk so, in a nice way, I take great comfort from the fact that they weren't really interested at all.

581 words. Hmmm.