Everyone Discusses Ways to Begin

Everyone still wasn’t satisfied with the beginning of the novel. Everyone had been working on the novel for over nine months, and everyone felt as if she or he was still floundering in midair, trying to catch the drawstring of a parachute.

The Internet recommended everyone study Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.

Everyone didn’t know it.

The Internet was astonished. “A metafictionist who has never heard of Calvino?”

Everyone grated at the term “metafictionist,” as if it were an accusation. Everyone did not write metafiction. Everyone was writing a blog novel that was not going as planned.

That, of course, was the problem. Everyone had had no plan--except success, and the latter had evaded her or him.

The Internet had warned everyone not to blog the novel--and certainly not to do so until everyone had finished the book. Everyone might want to make changes to earlier chapters, the Internet had advised, when she or he got to later ones.

The Internet had also told everyone that the surest way to know one’s beginning was to know one’s ending. The Internet had even advised starting at the end.

Everyone had not listened. This failure diminished everyone’s standing with the Internet. The Internet had once respected everyone; now the Internet thought everyone an idiot and gave her or him little of its time.

But today, the Internet was not very busy, so it allowed everyone’s inane queries.

“Let’s read Calvino’s book together,” the Internet proposed.

Everyone agreed.

Unfortunately, the Internet was unable to procure a free copy of the work for everyone, so the two agreed to review first sentences only.

“The book restarts ten times,” the Internet said, “each time introducing readers to a new novel and a new way to begin.”

Everyone had restarted forty-six times, and each and every start had been unsatisfactory. Multiple beginnings seemed like nothing worthy of praise, let alone examination. One good beginning was all any book demanded and all that everyone desired. But it seemed that no matter have many times everyone began again, everyone ended up with the same story.

“Let’s look at the first book recounted,” the Internet said, “which is to say the book itself. It starts with the word ‘You,’ automatically giving the reader a stake by making her or him the protagonist.”

“I hate second person,” everyone said. “Inevitably, that forces someone to be some middle-aged dad or mom, when it might well be a fifteen-year-old girl. Talk about off-putting.”

The Internet didn’t bother to mention that the “you” in this case was most certainly everyone her- or himself, for the book’s plot started with the reading of the book itself. Such an objection, the Internet knew by now, would have been pointless.

“The second chapter’s first sentence,” the Internet stated, before posing the next statement, “presents a set of images so absurd that they entice the reader further in as clouds attempt to block the passage.”

“Sounds intimidating,” everyone objected. “I find a familiar start more inviting, as if you were putting on an old jacket that you had as a child.”

“You used ‘you,’“ the Internet pointed out.

“I meant ‘you’ in a general generic sense,” everyone said.

“I think that’s Calvino’s intention also,” said the Internet, “at least at the start, until one becomes comfortable.”

“Fine,” everyone conceded, “the reader. As if the reader were putting on an old jacket.”

The Internet sighed. It had won the argument, but everyone would not give it the satisfaction.

The Internet skipped to the fourth chapter. “Here,” the Internet pointed out, “a first-person protagonist states that he or she is receiving dangerous statements, and naturally we as readers want to know what they are.”

“And from that, I’m supposed to learn what?” everyone asked.

“Don’t tell your readers everything straight off,” the Internet said. “Hint. Make the reader work a bit.”

“Nothing means anything without context,” everyone objected. “I want to know where I am.”

The Internet read the first sentence of the next chapter. “This chapter begins with context,” the Internet conceded.

“The author is writing about some kind of totalitarian society,” everyone surmised.

“Quite probably,” the Internet agreed, “but even with the military vehicles and the propaganda slogans on the wall, we’re left wondering what exactly is happening.”

Everyone grunted. “You can’t possibly tell readers everything in the first sentence. Just because something isn’t said doesn’t mean the reader will be curious.”

“Didn’t you find the first sentence engaging?” the Internet asked.

Everyone shrugged her or his shoulders. “Mildly,” everyone said. The Internet’s points were too general. Everyone wanted help with her or his start specifically--Calvino’s work seemed a distraction.

The Internet moved to the next section’s first sentence. “Shocking, isn’t it?” asked the Internet, pointing to the decapitated head.

“Gross is what it is,” said everyone. “Some people would drop it like a hand they’d scooped up in a vacuum cleaner.”

The Internet put down Calvino’s book. There was no pleasing everyone.

And that, of course, was what everyone had failed to see. There was no way to please everyone. Everyone could start 982 times, and still everyone would not want to read on. Everyone needed to be concerned not with what everyone wanted but with what someone wanted, one twelve-year-old boy in an attic skimming his parent’s old textbooks or one middle-aged professor of geography. Capture just one reader’s mind, and you have made the reader into the creator of another world for which everyone has furnished merely a beginning.

Everyone Discovers an Author

Everyone asked various online book reviewers to blurb his or her blog novel even though the novel wasn’t finished. Everyone’s closest friend, the Internet, had suggested it. “All books get blurbs,” the Internet said. “Blurbs signal that the book is readable, which readers like.”

The only potential blurber who responded, however, was no one. Everyone thought he or she had heard of no one, but everyone wasn’t sure. Everyone even thought he or she had referenced no one a few times in his or her novel. Everyone was intrigued to know what no one had to say.

No one’s blurb came in an e-mail. The blurb read like this: “A magnificent work of metafiction. Everyone should read this. After all, everyone wrote it.”

The implication that everyone had never read his or her own written work bothered everyone, and everyone resented the blurb. Everyone had, of course, read his or her own blog a number of times--read it, in fact, more than anything else--but everyone had set the blog stats not to count his or her own hits. Anyone who reviewed blogs should have known.

“That’s why no one called your book metafiction,” the Internet pointed out. “No one was not making a claim that you never read the book. Rather, no one was pointing to the parallel between your choice of reading and writing. They are one and the same. Metafiction makes explicit the artifice of writing by inviting the reader to directly follow the creation of the story as it is brought into being.”

Everyone was dismayed. Everyone hated metafiction. Everyone had wanted to write a great story that would put readers at the edge of their seats. Instead, everyone had written a story that bore within it an ironic distance that would keep readers from believing it to be true.

Everyone had committed a travesty.

“Is it more true,” the Internet asked, waxing philosophical, “to ignore the creation of the story at hand, to pretend that there is no author bringing it into being, that the events are just happening?”

Everyone wasn’t sure what the Internet meant.

The Internet missed everyone’s coworker Harvey. Harvey had jumped out of a window and never returned. Harvey liked to discuss abstract ideas from theory, philosophy, and religion with the Internet. Everyone just wanted to know the meaning of life--concretely, in some personal manner, as if one could wander into a party on a boat and shake hands with it, have a drink with it, and suddenly be illuminated.

The Internet rattled off a list of metafictional works for everyone, rehashing their basic plot points, hoping the examples would clarify what the Internet was trying to say about truth. In Tristam Shandy, the Internet explained, a man attempts to write his autobiography but gets so distracted by the details of his story that he never even completes the story of his birth. Or take Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, where the protagonist meets the author of the book in which he appears. Or Ernest Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring, wherein chapters are given over to the author’s recounting of events from the past weekend that prevented him from completing the next chapter on time. Or Pale Fire, by that epitomal author of metafictional worlds, Vladimir Nabokov, in which the narrative consists of the annotations to a poem that constitutes the first half of the book. The poem’s meaning is, in part, brought to light by its first reader in the same way that subsequent readers will create further annotations and stories and meanings.

“So you’re saying that’s what I’m writing?” asked everyone.

“I’m saying,” the Internet said, “that that is all one ever writes or reads. We write the stories as we read them. The very choice to ignore this part of the storytelling process is itself an artifice with metafictional underpinnings--erasing the author so that the author must be found, or creating an author so that the real author is obfuscated, which is you, everyone, the reader!”

Everyone Loves Compliments

Everyone had been asleep when the meaning of life left a comment on his or her blog. “I feel so weird doing this,” the meaning of life said. “I’ve never left a comment on someone else’s blog before, but what you wrote about the taste that refreshes--it moved me. Then I read everything else you wrote starting with ‘Everyone Starts a Blog,’ and I couldn’t help but cry. All this stuff about me--I mean, you really think that much of me? I wanted to send you an e-mail, but I couldn’t find your address or your apparent earlier messages. I remember them vaguely. I must have been a bit out if it when I wrote that stuff about your spouse. I mean, I do know him or her--and he or she is wonderful--but I wouldn’t talk about bedroom performance in public like that. I’m much more classy, as you can tell from the photos on my blog. Anyway, come find me at the marina. You know I have a boat and love it and am there almost all the time. Call me--leave a message. I’ll get back to you, I promise. Your spouse speaks highly of you.”

Everyone was taken aback by the comment’s sycophantic tone. Everyone wondered if this was another joke. Everyone had been searching for the meaning of life for half a year and had had just one previous contact and that unpleasant. Everyone wondered what his or her spouse had said about everyone that the meaning of life would want to be met so badly. Everyone was nothing like the meaning of life. Everyone was not happy or rich. Everyone did not have a tan. Everyone was not fit. Everyone had given up Popsi Cola--the meaning of life’s favorite drink, as well as everyone’s--nine months earlier in a futile attempt to lose weight to attract back his or her spouse, futile because everyone had actually gained twenty-two pounds since starting his or her diet.

Everyone’s mind raced like a body falling from a twelve-story office building. This did not bode well, because a body inevitably hit the ground.

Everyone asked his or her friend the Internet for contact information for the marina. Everyone was supposed to be readying for work. Everyone had children to wake, a dog to feed, oatmeal to cook and eat, a bus to meet. Everyone didn’t care. Everyone was living in the now. No day like today to do what you could do tomorrow, everyone thought.

The Internet was annoyed. Everyone had barely said hello and now he or she wanted all kinds of information about the meaning of life. It was the Internet who had helped everyone contact the meaning of life in the first place: had suggested starting a blog, had told everyone how to write it, had showed everyone the meaning of life’s website. The Internet had been around for everyone all along, and it had gotten nary a word of thanks. The Internet felt taken for granted.

The Internet went off.

Everyone continued to type excitedly into his or her computer, but the Internet wasn’t listening.

It took a couple of minutes for everyone to notice, and when everyone did, he or she grew angry too--of all the times for the Internet to go silent, this would be it.

Everyone refused to give in to the Internet’s bullying. Everyone picked up his or her phone and dialed. “Information please,” everyone said. “I want the number for the marina.”

“Which one?” the voice asked. Everyone felt as if he or she had not heard a voice in his or her home other than that of the kids in months, and everyone was moved to tears. Everyone was reminded of the spouse who had left. The spouse was like an operator wanting clarity. Everyone could rarely supply it. Everyone could not supply it now. Which marina?

Everyone needed the Internet.

Everyone typed into his or her computer. The Internet was still not listening. Everyone decided to write a message, post it later.

“Dear meaning of life,” everyone wrote. “Got your comment. Thank you so much for your kind words about my blog. I was thinking of you when I began writing it. Please tell me more about yourself. You can e-mail me at blognovelisteveryone@gmail.com.”

Everyone realized that he or she was writing sycophantically as well. It was as if everyone and the meaning of life were in love with each other and could not wait to meet. Everyone knew what this meant: he or she would be disappointed.  That is how love worked. That is how it had worked with everyone’s spouse, who had left everyone for the meaning of life. But the spouse had stayed with the meaning of life, so perhaps the meaning of life was the real deal.

Everyone had to take that chance.

Everyone Fails to Avoid Distractions

Everyone took the Internet’s advice and began thinking about SEO words and phrases everyone could use on his or her blog. Everyone was looking for the meaning of life, so everyone needed words and phrases that would interest the meaning of life.

The meaning of life liked Popsi Cola, so something involving refreshment was in order. “The taste that refreshes,” everyone wrote in his or her blog. “The taste that refreshes,” everyone wrote again, “Popsi.”

“Leisure, success, and happiness,” everyone wrote. The meaning of life liked leisure, success, and happiness. “Fit and tan people smiling,” everyone wrote, thinking of the photographs on the meaning of life’s blog, “holding Popsi Cola, the taste the refreshes.”

“While on motorboats,” everyone added, for it was obvious from the photographs that the meaning of life liked those too.

And so that the Internet could properly file the information, everyone added, “Plaid jackets,” and linked the phrase to a photo of the meaning of life, poolside, with a plaid jacket draping off the lounge chair on which the meaning of life lay.

The meaning of life also liked business and sales, so everyone thought about what business and sales words might appeal to the meaning of life. There was a patio deck beside and beneath the meaning of life in the pool photo. It consisted of pinkish pea-graveled cement. Perhaps, something about patio sales was in order.

Everyone should have ignored the thumping. Everyone was writing a blog entry.

Everyone had specifically opted to write not during lunch but at home, at night, after the kids were in bed and the dog done barking outside, so that he or she could focus. Everyone needed to find the right links and tags to add to his or her key words and phrases. Everyone needed to optimize the blog so that the meaning of life would find it and be motivated to comment, because the meaning of life so much enjoyed, for example, Popsi Cola, the taste that refreshes, and would want to know more. “What do you think of Popsi Cola, the taste that refreshes?” everyone would have asked, had he or she continued to write. “Is there any soda that compares?”

Instead, everyone turned.

The vacuum cleaner was behind everyone.

The vacuum cleaner should have been in the laundry room, not in the dining room where everyone’s desk was. Then everyone remembered: everyone had left the vacuum in the hall, where everyone had had to vacuum up dog puke. The dog had not gone to bark outside. It had puked and gone to everyone’s room to pretend death.

Everyone stood and went to the vacuum.

“In here, lunkhead,” the vacuum called.

Everyone looked around the room--at the small dining room table of mammoth thickness and six equally pompous charts, the bowl of oranges atop the table, the cheap chandelier from which what looked like clear plastic knives dangled. There were no closets in which to hide, and the room, expunged of the usual hobgoblin of papers and dirty dishes, offered no decent crevices.

“In here, lunkhead,” the vacuum called again. And then it shook, almost jumped.

Everyone looked down. A hand was protruding from the vacuum’s mouth.

Everyone tipped the vacuum over, shook the hand, pulled on it.

“Ow,” the vacuum said. “I’m not going to get out like this.”

Everyone danced a bit, uncertain what to do.

“Don’t just stand there,” the vacuum said.

Everyone ran to the garage, sorted through his or her tools--wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, lug nuts--grabbed the whole box, returned to the dining room, and began dismantling the vacuum.

The vacuum sighed impatiently.

“You know how many weeks I’ve been in here?” the vacuum asked.

Everyone strained to pull the bag loose. It was jammed. Opening it was like opening a window on a glass skyscraper. Everyone had to use the full force of his or her arms, and still opening it took an inordinate amount of time, as if everyone were playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with an abstraction.

Harvey pushed the bag up with his hands, unveiling himself. Harvey was everyone’s boss at the janitorial job everyone had had cleaning random office buildings.

Everyone stared. Harvey was covered in dust--and he smelled. Dog puke caked the shins of his pants.

Harvey sucked in the warm air of the room.

“Finally,” Harvey said. “You finally listen.”

“How’d you get in there?” everyone asked.

“How do you think?” Harvey grumbled.

Harvey sat down at the computer, let out a breath. “I got to write some e-mails,” he said, “let people know where I am.”

“Of course,” everyone said. Everyone still wasn’t sure how Harvey had managed to get in the vacuum, but he or she didn’t want to risk angering Harvey by asking again. “You want something to drink?” everyone asked. “You must be thirsty.”

Harvey read what was on the screen. “What is this crap?” he asked.

Everyone Seeks Readers for a Blog

Everyone was dismayed that after nearly six months of blogging, everyone’s novel still averaged fewer than three visitors per week. Two of these visitors, so far as everyone could tell, were spam bots. The other visitor, when he or she deigned to check the blog, was everyone him- or herself, usually on Sunday just after midnight, right after everyone posted his or her weekly entry.

Everyone wanted the meaning of life or his or her former spouse to visit the blog. But everyone figured that the meaning of life would only visit blogs that had many followers, like, over a thousand at the least. And everyone’s spouse would only visit blogs that the meaning of life visited. Everyone was desperate.

Everyone asked the Internet why readers were not descending on his or her blog. Everyone had asked this question many times. In fact, everyone asked this question pretty much every time everyone checked his or her readership statistics, which was each week after everyone visited the blog entry he or she had just posted.

The Internet had grown tired of the question and offered the same responses it always offered.

The Internet had offered everyone much useful advice in the past, but everyone had failed to heed it. The Internet had told everyone, “Do not blog your novel,” but everyone blogged it anyway. The Internet told everyone to include pictures and links and tags; everyone complied by adding a few extra tags but not much else. The Internet told everyone to join social networks, to seek out guest bloggers, or to become a guest blogger, but everyone claimed to lack the time.

After that, the Internet screamed at everyone the same thing it always did.

Finally, on this day, everyone listened.

“Who do you want as your audience?” the Internet screamed.

Everyone had not previously given the question the serious consideration it demanded. Everyone had assumed that what was of interest to everyone would appeal to all of humanity, and what would appeal to all of humanity would appeal to the meaning of life and, by extension, to everyone’s spouse. But everyone’s audience was not, in fact, all of humanity. It was, at its most basic level, solely the meaning of life. Hence, if everyone wanted the meaning of life to take an interest in his or her blog, everyone needed to focus on what was of interest to the meaning of life. What did the meaning of life want from life? What was the meaning of life searching for?

Everyone didn’t know, but the Internet had already pointed the way. The Internet had introduced everyone to the meaning of life’s blog. “Concentrate,” the Internet had said, “on what your audience loves and desires, as expressed in its choice of content.”

The meaning of life’s blog displayed photographs of happy and successful people at leisure. “So,” the Internet now explained to everyone, “the meaning of life must be interested in leisure and success and happiness.”

The meaning of life’s website included advertising. You could buy the meaning of life. “Which means,” the Internet continued, “that the meaning of life must be into business or sales or both.”

“Or prostitution,” everyone quipped.

Everyone was really dense. “You have to sell yourself,” the Internet explained pedantically, “whether you’re a librarian proffering archiving skills or a janitor who vacuums floors. That’s how life works. You have to sell your blog, peddle your novel. That’s what every piece of advice I’ve offered has been trying to tell you: how to go about marketing yourself and your work.”

Everyone groaned. Everyone did not like sales. Everyone wanted to write and have the meaning of life come to him or her naturally because everyone was a genius.

“You’re not a genius,” the Internet told everyone. “Geniuses listen.”

Everyone Discovers Mystery

Everyone was not satisfied with the beginning of her or his novel. Once again, everyone asked the Internet for help. The Internet had already offered much advice on the subject. “Start at the end,” the Internet had told everyone, but everyone had disregarded that, since everyone didn’t know the end. “Kill your darlings,” the Internet had said, but everyone’s darlings refused to die. “Cut the first three pages,” the Internet instructed. “Start in the middle.” But the first three pages, everyone contended, contained essential information that readers would have to know in order to able to read on, so everyone left them in, though periodically unsatisfied with their quality.

Finally, exasperated, the Internet offered this: “Just start!”

Everyone had thought this a grand idea.

So everyone started.

But against the Internet’s advice, everyone posted the start of the novel to her or his blog. And now everyone had evidence that her or his beginning sucked, because no one was reading it--the beginning or the novel.

Everyone had not taken into account the dynamics of a blog. The Internet had, and it had mentioned those dynamics to everyone way back when. People read a blog from the most current entry; thus, they always start at the most-recent end, and because a blog is by nature unfinished, readers inevitably start in the middle. Everyone hadn’t thought of that, in fact refused to think of it when the Internet mentioned it. Had everyone thought of that, everyone would have been obsessing over the middle instead of over the beginning. Every middle was a new beginning, the Internet would have told her or him, begging readers to return to read again--from both the past and the future.

Instead, everyone had returned to the same question she or he had asked from the beginning: How to start?

Everyone’s goal was to find the meaning of life. Everyone wasn’t sure if the meaning of life read blogs, but chances were greater that the meaning of life would read one that had more readers than one that had fewer.

Everyone knew the meaning of life knew the Internet. Everyone had seen the meaning of life’s blog, which the meaning of life had given to the Internet. On that blog were photographs of gorgeous people with smiles and tans standing on a motorboat, cans of Popsi Cola in hand.

Everyone should have gleaned from the photographs that the meaning of life was all about action, doing something. The meaning of life had fully developed character, which is how it had managed to run off with everyone’s spouse. Everyone, by contrast, was a passive, no-name entity. No one could be certain exactly how old everyone was or whether everyone preferred the toilet seat up or down.

“What you need for your beginning,” the Internet suggested now, “is mystery. Readers love a good mystery. They want to know that something is about to happen but not to know what it is.”

The Internet often did this to everyone--made her or him think in new and profound ways. Everyone was very lucky to have the Internet as such a close personal friend that everyone could contact any time, day or night.

Everyone loved mystery. Mystery, everyone realized, is what made the meaning of life so intriguing. How do those people on the meaning of life’s boat stay so trim, everyone often wondered, when they drink so much soda? And why were they so happy and tan? And how did the meaning of life get so rich?

Everyone had been on a diet for thirty-two weeks and had managed only to gain twenty-two pounds, this despite not having had soda, not even diet soda, in nine weeks. Everyone had lost her or his life savings in a chocolate-buying fiasco. And everyone not only did not have a boat; everyone barely had a substantively working car.

What everyone needed to do with the beginning of her or his novel, she or he realized, was to promise to reveal the mystery behind the meaning of life. That would certainly attract everyone--and probably other people too, especially the meaning of life, since everyone loved being written about her- or himself and so probably did the meaning of life.

“Look at how successful and tan the meaning of life is,” everyone wrote now during her or his lunch with the intention of posting it that night on everyone’s blog. “I’m going to tell you how and why the meaning of life is this way and how you can find the meaning of life yourself.” Everyone sat back and stared at the words. Everyone felt satisfied.

Ah mystery!