December 10, 1993

«Pam Newsletter disclaimer: there are those who may find some parts of this newsletter vulgar or inappropriate for the Yuletide Season. I apologize for any dismay this might cause, however as a great woman once said, "I can't compromise my art."*»

Dear Everybody:

Happy holidays and welcome to another exciting end 'o the year update from Pam. The keywords of 1993 are: stability, routine . . . inertia. Not that I'm complaining. I am rather fond of my saturnine existence. Same job: no worries about coming up with the rent and especially no hassling with resumes and interviews. Same apartment: accumulating junk. Same Social Life: slow, but improving. See below.

This year I don't have much of a list of events or accomplishments to reel off but never fear, I could create a novel out of a DMV Change of Address Form.

Speaking of Creating A Novel

This remains the motivating force in my life, although truthfully I've slacked off during the second half of the year. At this point I've finished two complete drafts and I'm about 5 chapters into a "final" draft -- final in this case meaning something that I wouldn't be too embarrassed to show to another person.

In last year's letter, I professed to reveal the plot line which involved a squeaky refrigerator and a wacky gender bender twist. I guess it wasn't as obvious as I imagined that this revelation was a hoax. My real life refrigerator is squeaky and it drives me insane, but I know what's wrong with it and unfortunately I'd have to knock out a wall in order to fix it - so I've learned to just deal with it. In terms of my novel, I don't really want to reveal the plot except to say that it's contemporary Americana and intended to be hilarious.

I have no idea when it will be done. It takes a long time to write a novel. I read that it took Donna Tartt something like 8 or 9 years to write The Secret History [worth checking out if you go for that quasi-gothic, vaguely esoteric stuff]. Presently, I'm only halfway into year 2 and I'm concerned about getting it right. Let's just say I expected it to be tough to write a book and it's a million times harder than I expected.

The Dating Game
"you can't win if you don't play"

As part of my novel writing program, I went into self-imposed exile seeing as how one can hardly be a gadabout while simultaneous producing pages of scintillating prose and expect to sleep and hold down a full time job all at the same time. So, come the latter part of the year I had a minor epiphany and stuff went on -- there's a minor sideplot that need not be examined here -- but to get to the point I decided that the year of the hermit was over and I needed to get out there and, like my Mother always tells me, start kissing the frogs.

This next part makes sense only in the realm of Rentzian logic but I replay it here anyway: I got myself all worked up into a frothy mouthed fervor over this minor altercation with property management at my apartment complex and in my fury, picked up the phone and answered a personal ad. This is a true story.

* Madonna in Truth or Dare, Miramax Films 1991.

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PHOTOGRAPH:Me and Cousin Kathy at Halloween. Photographer: Auntie Aileen

This page was made on December 3, 2000. Featured artist: Paul Westerberg. Featured beverage: water. My computer is a much loved lime iMac named Yoda. My software is BBEdit 5.0 which I am barely competent at using and Dreamweaver at which I am even worse.

http://www.pamrentz.com/pampage/xmas/v3/p1.html