The Death of Reiner Fitzdale

When my house was broken into and my laptop was stolen, I lost the novel that I have been working on for the last year or so.

I am not saying that it is a tragic loss to the literary community, nor did I assume that it would ever see the light of day, but I did hope to hit that period for the final time and know that I just finished a piece of fiction completely on my own. This novel was my second attempt at writing something concrete. The first was a piece of shit novel that I envisioned as a coming-of-age story that would touch the hearts of my generation; publishing companies around the world would drop their jaws and battle over who would release the next Catcher in the Rye.

This one was different. I decided to create this novel just for the pleasure of creation. The same way I can sit myself on the couch with my guitar and just play for the sake of playing, I did the same with my laptop. I crafted the main character, Reiner Fitzdale, as I typed. He was never in my head, rather he appeared one day during a stream of flailing keystrokes and echoing keypad clicks.

I would write forty pages - the first chapter - over and over again. Rarely would I save it. I would always start from the beginning - the first word. Sometimes I following Washington Irving and unfolded the scene through vivid imagery. Other times I would start with direct characterization ala Herman Melville - but always it was never kept. The last first chapter was the best one yet. This one started with the parallelism of winter to Vermonters and the coming of old age - the breakers on the shoreline of Lake Champlain and the front locks on our doors, and it devolved into a case study of Reiner Fitzdale, the protagonist.

In each version, it was Reiner Fitzdale. The character that now plagues my mind. He begs for me to create him. Define him and to mold him.

With the laptop gone and that first chapter gone with it, I have the opportunity to start again. I can craft the words the way you restart Super Mario when you accidentally fall into a pit in World 1-1: not deep enough into the game to sacrifice the loss and early enough to not feel sorry for yourself about it.