Micro Fiction Monday: Weakness

“Need any help?”

I closed the book as I looked up, careful to keep my finger between the pages. “No, thanks, I’m good!”

The employee looked at me warily. “Okay. Let me know if you do.”

I nodded and smiled, turning back to the shelf as though I was still contemplating my purchase. “Absolutely!”

He stuck around a little longer this time. I ran my fingers across the spines, even pulled out another book and compared it to the one I had. As soon as he was out of sight, I shoved it back into place and opened the one I had spent the last hour and a half reading.

I don’t normally do this, I swear. But the library waiting list was like a mile long, and payday wasn’t for another week...I had every intention to buy the book. Just, y’know. After I had spent numerous hours reading it in the store.

Pretending not to read, though, is really, really hard when it’s a very, very good book. I tried to move around inconspicuously, but it was never long before an employee turned up, eager to make a sale. The last one—a boy with shaggy hair and a silver earring his left ear—had already approached me three times. 

“Hey.”

Make that four. I flushed and slammed the book shut again. “Sorry, I was just—“

The employee shook his head and thrust a slip of paper at me. I blinked. It was a receipt.

“Take this with the book into the coffee shop,” he said. “Quick. Before my manager sees.”

I took it slowly. “Wow. Um. Thanks.”

He smiled. “Just let me know what you think when you’re done. I’ve been wanting to read that all week.”

He walked away, leaving me stunned in the mystery section.

Visualization

When I find myself in a bookstore--which, let's be honest, I often do--I like to mentally shelve my books. I find the E authors--there are never very many of them--and run my hands down the spines until I find where my name fits.

There. Somewhere between Emond and Everett; that's where my book would go--where it will go, someday.

It's weird, I know. But as dorky as it is, I still do it.

You know what else I do? I constantly pin pictures of home offices on Pinterest. I torture myself for days and days on end with this images of beautiful writing spaces, that I would love to incorporate into my own home but can't because I'm poor. (And also because I don't have that much space to decorate to begin with.)

I do these things frequently, for the same reasons that people make vision boards--I like to see my goals in a way that can often be difficult, because I'm not psychic, and can in no way see the future. I like to picture the way that my writing space would look like, if I had the space, time, and money decorate it as I see fit. I like to find where my name fits, because it somehow makes it more likely that it will fit. Like somehow, the spot is waiting for me, waiting for my future debut novel to slide on into the place it was always meant to be.

It works that way in reverse, too. I have hard copies of just about everything I wrote in high school--every short story, every poem, every brief excerpt of every vague novel premise I had. I keep every journal, every notebook, every scrap piece of paper I scribble on. It gets crammed into a drawer, and even though I never look at it much, it helps to have it around. For whatever reason, having this physical representation of everything I've worked towards makes it more valid. Like I've actually accomplished something, instead of screaming into the void of my own mind.

I always mean to make a vision board, I do. But it never works out--I keep putting it off, because it's too much work and I'm too lazy to set aside the time to do it. I almost don't think I will, because my goals and ambitions change so frequently that it'd be impossible to document everything accurately. I'd rather spend that extra time working towards it, and save the daydreaming for my commute. (And, okay, maybe my shift, too.)

I daydream a lot. But sometimes, it's nice to have something more concrete to look at.

Until later,

- Justyne