238 Pages

The first and last words have always been the hardest to write. There is something in the beginning of an idea that instills a sort of uncertainty which soon becomes a sort of paralysis which soon becomes yet another unfinished story at risk of never being told. I want to tell my stories. They want to be told. They deserve to be told.

All I can do is stare at the shelf of unfinished notebooks half filled with vague concepts penned in scrawling letters overlooking the little black book resting on the desk. Years of bewildering thoughts and minor epiphanies hiding just behind rough leather covers, all of them waiting to be given more form than the sporadic strings of consciousness they exist as now. All of them waiting to be the little black book. The little black book of two hundred and forty pages. The little black book full of words that were written and continued that way until only two pages remained untouched. The first that I finished. The first that I sold.

I keep thinking about the first and last words. The ones that have always been so daunting. The ones that the woman from New York said she found so endearing. She told me that those first and last words were the ones she kept coming back to, the ones which kept repeating themselves in her mind. We spoke about them almost every time she called me. We spoke about them when they changed my life.

The little black book hasn't been touched in hours. I keep looking at the shelf, wondering where it will stand among the others, wondering which among them should be revisited first. No longer are they monuments to the imposter syndrome that comes and goes as anxiety too ebbs and flows. So many doubts undone in a day, so much weight lifted, leaving every book on the self shining in a new light.

The woman from New York made it clear from the start that she didn't just want the little black book. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money for so few words, but they were to be just the first of many. It didn't feel real when she said it then. It still doesn't feel real when I look at the little black book, somehow written to the end, giving birth to the chance to be told beyond the two hundred and thirty-eight pages of blue and black ink. Giving all of my stories the chance to be told at all.

Taking the little black book in my hand, I realize how worn it has become. How long did I work on these pages? How many months did I spend agonizing over those first and last words? The scratches that adorn the once smooth, pristine surface of it now seem so much larger. Each of them tells a story about stories. The crooked corners of formerly crisp pages, each a reminder of every time they were turned. The little black book is beautiful.

Gently I pass my hand over the books on the shelf before it comes to stop on a deep blue spine. I remember the idea from its face, the details rushing back as I thumb through the opening pages. The cover is barely marred from its time off the shelf, the corners of the pages still sharp. This little blue book will be next to be finished, and at the front of the shelf the little black book will find rest. The woman from New York should be calling again soon to discuss the next first and last words. The first and last words have always been the hardest to write.