My friend Reggie, for example, who is also a writer, says the telephone he sees, when he pictures it, is dark green. I know this because I asked him to read the sentence just now, and tell me what color that object is, as it appears in his imagination.    

And every reader will likewise see, in their mind’s eye, something slightly different, though perhaps not radically different, from that which every other reader will see, when reading the words that the writer has chosen, to compose and evoke a scene.

Everything a writer sees, in his fiction, is going to be slightly different than what his readers see, of course, even though they, his readers, are reading the same words that the writer is writing when he evokes whatever scene he is evoking.

There is much that is implicit in a work of fiction, and the writer depends on it, for the work’s actualization, as much as he depends on that which is explicit.

His phone is black, when I see it in my imagination, though I haven’t yet included that detail in the story, and may or may not state it outright ever, I don’t know.

The detective in my novel, I should say, has one of those old rotary telephones, in keeping with the era in which the novel is set.

Similarly with the first sentence of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, which goes simply, “Call me Ishmael.” That sentence would have been unremarkable without everything that follows it.

The last sentence of Denis Johnson’s short story Out on Bail, for example, is simply, “I am still alive.” Which looks ordinary when written out like that, on its own, deprived of its environs, but which is astonishing when you arrive at it the way you are meant to, in the actual story, at the end of all the sentences that have preceded it.

Meaning, it’s difficult sometimes to judge the artistry of a sentence when it is removed or detached from the context to which it belongs.

I suppose the answer to that question might depend on what will proceed from it, on how it will appear in relation to that to which it gives rise.

Is that a poorly written first sentence? I’m not certain I even know.

I changed a word or two in the describing of it for some reason.

Well, not literally that sentence, but one very much like it. “The detective is in his office, waiting for his phone to ring.” Is how the sentence actually goes.

I literally have only that one sentence.

Beyond that I can’t say much though, because, as I mentioned, there isn’t a whole lot of story yet to remark on. The detective is in his office, waiting for a telephone call, and that’s about as far as I have gotten.

I did that just now, in fact, after typing the previous entry. And I can say that it is still there.

On the laptop where I am writing these entries I also have been writing the novel. I can look at the novel right now, merely by closing my browser and opening the document tab.

Meaning, the novel has the vibe of those films, or aims to have that vibe; I can’t say for certain it ‘has’ anything yet, as it’s in such a state of incompletion.

The novel, I should say, is about a private investigator, and is inspired by the black and white films of early Hollywood.

Because even though I said that the novel wasn’t going well, and that I would keep this journal “instead” of working on the novel, I guess I will continue to work on the novel after all, and will use this journal for the purpose of talking about the novel sometimes, in order to get some perspective on it, though most likely I will talk about other things more often, things unrelated to the novel, or related to it only indirectly.