In remembering my elevator experience, I forgot to add one aspect of the story. Perhaps it was too tramatic for my direct recolection or perhaps it was my sub-conscience journalistic objectivity's hidden dicision to leave out irrelevant material. Either way, I forgot, so here it is. During the sixth minute, or so, I encountered a rogue professor on a fifth floor stop. He smiled at me dearly, then in a moment seemingly out of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, his diposition changed and in a near violent outburst, he picked up and threw a cardboard box into the elevator, barely missing my head. He smiled again and I will leave this professor un-named for libel purposes, but I feel it needed to be told.
In this story, I was only allowed thirty minutes and I still feel as though I lost control of some of my material, which transfered to my writing. I have been having trouble with this lately, and cannot seem to link my thoughts with transitions and relevency. What can I do? I guess some more editing is in order and maybe some re-writes. But writing on deadline is tuff and time is not always easy to come by, especially at this point in my life. If anyone has some magic organizational punch, Ill take a few gallons. On second thought, Id take a few gallons of jungle juice as well.
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Well, yes, Jacob ... DUCK! HERE COMES ANOTHER BOX!! Now, back to our conversation. If you are doing an assignment that is impressionistic, the point of which is to absorb mood or ambience through detail, some of which may come at you almost subliminally, a good way to get at the assignment is simply to set your notebook aside and write, just let the stream of consciousness roll. Then, you check your notes. Then, you decide what point, what mood, you want to establish. Then, you edit. But if you are actually producing something for publication and are on deadline, this method can produce an incoherent mess. So Franklin's idea of at least writing the ending first is one way to maintain focus, even in a short piece.
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