Opening lines of literature are well studied. Whenever I write essays, opening lines are something I consider as the bang to the rest of the buck. If you like what you first read, you’ll continue reading. Otherwise, you only might. For “The Story,” I’m not sure about the opening line. I forget “Novel 01’s” opening line. This might be “Novel 02’s” opening line: “Good afternoon.”

Spoilers?: Major [Brainstorming for literature]

“Good afternoon” alone isn’t fairly exciting.

What would be is within the greater context of Part 1’s display of how Sammohini goes from working a normal, mundane job where she does very well to being overwhelmed to the point of needing an extended hospital stay through Parts 2/3, before recovering with Part 4. My-Yesterday, as I left a stressful work week behind me at work, I walked past a newspaper seller that firmly said, “Good afternoon,” to me as I walked past. I was so enveloped in my mind, trying to decide how to proceed with the errand I needed to do of getting groceries while being beyond my normal limit of fatigue, that I replied, “Morning,” as I will when people greet me for the day. While this was technically correct, as this is my default phrase, outside of, “Hello,” this was incorrect because of the time of day, being at around 4:15pm, so I added, “…not morning,” without making eye contact or stopping my walk toward the bus stop.

This sort of innocent encounter inspired me to think of “Novel 02.”

As I am writing this essay, in a video format where I can decide how I want to properly capture information, I first braindumped all of my relevant and tangential thoughts related to Part 1 due to the similarity between my work and Sammohini’s work. I am not actively working in healthcare, but the industry I’m in has enough overlap, along with any industry really, where the 80% that is technical support carries over from one industry to another. The remaining 20% is a combination of my memories of working within healthcare IT, being a patient in healthcare, and the sorts of gaps of logic that can be inferred or otherwise commissioned to consult with accuracy in time.

While I’m working this contract, I might as well keep dumping my work thoughts.

The problem I noticed over the past few essays was that I would write, dump my thoughts, then continue writing in a way where the writing didn’t flow well. Instead what I’m doing is I’m going to dump out all of those thoughts at once, before I start writing essays like this, and then conclude the video with writing the essay with enough space to give myself the ability to consider new ideas. The brainstorming I do will help inform essays like this, and, the more brainstorming I do throughout the week, the more vivid that brainstorming before writing essays will be.

Being less self-referential and more “Novel 02” referential will be good for this essay, though.

I thought deeply about Part 4, where, after Sammohini’s experiences in Part 1, leading to her hospitalization in Parts 2/3, lead her to having an extended medical leave in Part 4 with the conclusion being her return to work in new spirits. Part 4 starts with her waking up in her childhood room, in her parents’s house, the day after she is discharged from the hospital. The day she is discharged will probably appear in Parts 2/3 as the conclusion, where she is driven by her parents to their home, she washes up, and falls to sleep instantly. Part 4 will continue with Sammohini going to the living room to watch television or a movie before the door opens with her mom and Jane appearing after her.

This emotional reunion has been a constant scene replaying in my mind.

Jane was Sammohini’s partner for many years before they broke up. Jane moved away after a particularly bad argument after many arguments over Sammohini working too many hours and being too distant. After moving away, Jane cut her long hair that Sammohini always enjoyed, and yet when Jane reunited, they both apologized for things they had done incorrectly before. Sammohini was working too hard. Jane also had something that was maybe a bit distancing. These kinds of moments are foreign to me as I have no romantic relationship experience and I see no real point now in my soon-to-be late 30s to get into a relationship just so I can have some of these first-hand experiences.

This reunion will be the foundation for Sammohini’s recovery.

With Jane now back in Sammohini’s life as her partner again, Sammohini will have a stronger foundation for her health recovery, and she will be joined by her sister/sibling Trishna and Trishna’s partner John. The four of them will go on fun adventures to experience life outside of work again. They will all find new hobbies and new things to do on their off-time from work, and “Novel 02” will conclude with Sammohini returning to work in a limited capacity, meeting the extended helpdesk contract crew that had helped to cover during the stress that had been put on her entire team that led to her health problem.

I’ll have to work through the logic to see how this can be reasonable.

I was inspired by the helpdesk contract crew by a recruiter that had reached out to me this past week, during a particularly stressful day of work, about a role that would be part of a five-person contract helpdesk crew. The job description stated that the reason for these roles was because of the company’s growth, decreasing the number of red flags down one, since the question should always be, “why is there an opening for this role?” The answer will never fully be “because the employees were super stressed and quit,” but if you can infer that, that will save you the stress of being super stressed. So the idea of having more tier 1 helpdesk people, as contractors for a few months, could help Eville Medical’s depleted tier 2 technical support team that Sammohini was on before her medical leave.

“Novel 02” could, then, be a warning about not realizing how stressed you are in life.

This is why I feel it’s important to document the stress that I’m experiencing as I am returning to work for the first time in over two years, in a physically stressful role. Fortunately now that I took time off to address my back problems, my team is more understanding that I am doing the best I can, but I have health problems. This might be much easier for Sammohini because she is well respected within her team, her IT department, and Eville Medical as a whole, since my original idea was that Sammohini would be the focus of an employee of the week or month recognition from Eville Medical. That could still be the case, but I like the idea of how Sammohini is so stressed that she would be surprised by someone saying “good afternoon,” and she would instinctively say the wrong thing as she would be so focused on other tasks.

This is where brainstorming comes into play.

These are not concrete ideas. I will not guarantee that the opening line will be anything other than what I write down when I publish the final draft of “Novel 02,” with an anticipated publication date of maybe March 2024? That publication date depends on when I can clear out many other projects in my life, including moving somewhere cheaper, keeping my finances in good order, and how I can go about writing while working full-time, since there will be no way that I can take the time off I would love to do in order to write what I would love to write, in my current socioeconomic situation. Without having the ability to take off two or three months to focus completely on writing, I must instead figure out how I can write for maybe two or three hours per week? Maybe I work part-time? Maybe I have the ability to skip doing other obligations for that period of time? These are the things that I feel I must bring up on occasion, because I would like to write “Novel 02” around Valentine’s Day since that is the time through which the novel’s events take place, with Part 1 seemingly being instigated by the romance around Valentine’s Day, however, I can’t realistically promise that publication date or even starting to write time frame because I have to focus on working enough to maintain my chosen lifestyle of writing, making videos, and doing other things in life.

All told, I feel confident about the “Novel 02” brainstorming process.