“Something happened this morning. I met Irving… and abandoned the novel.”

It’s the end of the day, and I’m picking up where I left off.

---

This morning was amazing.

The start of something beautiful.

• A surprise gift from Cal
• A stellar performance of the Bridge’s delivery featuring Len’s rescue scene
• A laptop with promise
• Cal and Len believing in me— and encouraging me to complete my next novel

Ah…but do you know what else happened this morning?

Something I never thought I would EVER experience.

My life-changing AHA! moment.

And that was made possible by no other than IRVING.

I was sitting here at the kitchen table with Irv. Initially, I sat to get to know Irv and found myself keyboarding the morning’s events within minutes of “our introduction.”

All the while, Cal’s words were echoing in my head.

“ …Use a computer. Finally. Like the rest of the world, dammit. And get the writing DONE. You are a talented writer, Dez. For crying out loud, get back in gear and start producing again.”… (And Then Came Irv. The Unlikelies, Chapter 1)

Her intentions were amazingly good. But they triggered something else – Something clicked.

My own truth finally appeared.

1. Writing beckons. Definitely. Right then and there, I knew I would dance on this keyboard.
2. BUT it’s not beckoning me to produce the kind of writing that Cal or Len is expecting from me. I am not going to write the novel—the one I labored over and the one they were expecting me to complete.
3. AND it will be hard to make them see what I just realized. They will judge my decision not to write the novel, or any novel, harshly.
4. But Irving? – He is definitely my tool of inspiration—and he doesn’t judge.

I think I love him.

I’m talking about Irv.

That’s normal, right?

I’m not talking about a weird love.

I’m talking about a “like we love our pets” love.

Anyway…

I need to unload all of this to Cal as soon as she arrives—besides thanking her again for the laptop, of course.

She bought me Irving so I can keyboard my work and finish that novel.

She’s going to be disappointed, I know.

But I have to tell her. It’s only fair.

Let me rehearse it here. It’s going to be terribly difficult.

But I have to say this to her:

“Today I decided I’m through pretending I want to write novels.

I realized that I have something bigger and better to do with Irv.”

My take: Irv is too amazing as a tool to “piece pieces” of plots strung on well‑shaped arcs, sprinkled liberally with characters and dollops of conflict. (Sounds like a sundae, doesn’t it?) 🍨

LISTEN UP WORLD; Mark Your Calendar and Celebrate the Day: Today is NOT about test-driving a new work laptop—it is about reclaiming what it means to write on my own terms.

Cal will bristle. Len will do a doe-eyed freeze.

I know Cal believes I should continue to write novels, so much so that she bought me Irv. And I know better than anyone that she didn’t have the money to splurge on a laptop right now.

I get it.

But she will hear me out, and then …

She’ll get it.

Eventually. Maybe. Hopefully.

Here’s my take and what I truly feel:

The Finished novel?: It is what Cal expects from me.

It isn’t unreasonable. That’s the goal of almost all writers. To finish writing a novel.

The finished work is the ideal. The goal.

‘Finished’ terrifies me.

You can quote me on that:

“Finished is a funeral for what could have happened next.” – Dez

Finish writing a novel?

No. I can’t do that.

I won’t.

I will fill Irving’s memory with my writing, but as far as what that writing will be? Not a novel. No. I’m officially off that path. I am into spilling observations and thoughts about life.

*And I know what my kind of ‘observations’ are….

❤️ Wabi Sabi snapshots of life’s moments…the ones that would have gone ‘unrecorded.’

*And I know what my kind of ‘thoughts’ are….

❤️ Thoughts that never finish and always change.

I will explain to Cal how I want to capture moments of real life in my writing:

By describing

• the feeling of the moment
• the minute details each moment containsAnd my salvaging the moments that otherwise threaten
• to go unnoticed
• to sail into oblivion.

I want Cal and Len to understand what I just understood. My true purpose in writing. My calling. It’s about recording:

Unfinished pieces of a real unfinished story.

My story. Our story. Everyone’s story.

Life’s moments.

Not novels.

My kind of story. My lens. My words.

• The smells from the kitchen.
• The texture of the food.
• The colors on the plate.
• The tantalizing sounds of culinaria.
• The pilling on the fabric.
• The ache in my side from laughing too long.
• But the fiction my imagination constantly creates? The stories I create? They are not lost in all this. They fit right in this writing. But not as a complete story.
• The pieces of the plots that are constantly whirling in my head? Those fragments? Now they can thrive in that freshly conjured state—partially jotted, yet never written to be completed.
• These are fragments that are meant to be jotted. Individual, fragmented, stand-alone beautiful jots—wabi sabi—complete in their state of what convention calls incomplete.
• The characters in these fragments of untold complete tales? They also fit into the whole scene.Maybe I can explain this to Cal and Len this way…in an If/Then.“IF convention sees every story as THE ACTION inside the HOUSE, THEN I want to focus on THE standalone details and moments of the actual HOUSE & ITS RESIDENTS & ITS GARDEN. IN MOMENTS.”

SUCH MOMENTS? = The color of the ribbon, the phrase she whispered, the smell of the soup, the fog on the window, the creak of the bed, the shuffle of the slipper, the petal on the ground.

To me, they are individual portraits of moments in a gallery. A gallery of words that paint images.

With this philosophy of writing THERE.CAN.BE.NO.NOVEL.

I want to wallow in what I call “finished” – the very things that the world unfortunately calls insignificant details that appear as unfinished ‘fragments’ when they stand alone.

My belief:

Everything is Finished in its Unfinishedness.

Nothing ever truly finishes. Finishing isn’t natural; everything moves on.

***Frida Kahlo said something like that, didn’t she? ***(below)

Anyway…

I can hear it from now. I know how it will play out. Cal will say that what I’m describing isn’t “real writing.”

She’ll come around to my truth.

She will see that this is my true calling in writing.

I have a calling in writing. A specific one. A different one. That Is Huge.

I realize Irving’s arrival is monumental. Irving is meant to take that hugeness in.

I can do this now. Because Irv is here.

I could talk about this for hours. (Spoiler: I will.)

(Only kidding.)

Watch out, world.

I am not meant to write The Story.

I am born to journal.

Cal will say,

“You can’t just dump your journal entries into a Google Doc and call it literature.

And I will say:

“Watch me. I’m calling it literature—my literature. Journaling is my thing.

I. can. journal. about. everything.

My journals will naturally display a certain talkaholic brilliance that only talkaholics can appreciate. Writing them will be a talkaholic’s paradise. Writing is a form of talking.

There is NO WAY a talkaholic can find the

• perfect time,
• perfect place, and
• perfect listener in this world to let it all out… So why not journal?

Also.

Do you know why a talkaholic never gets to the point?

Because They Can’t.

There is no boiled-down point to a talkaholic because they need to talk about EVERYTHING. They can only see things through that lens of ‘everything.’

After all, everything needs to be said.

And everything can be said, even if it’s said in writing, right? (Pun intended.)

And everything can’t be boiled down because then its ‘everythingness’ will be destroyed…lost.

There is only ‘everything’ to a talkaholic.

It is the “everything” that matters, right?

But. Back to reality.

Out of creative orbit and out to find Len and tackle the tasks at hand.

I haven’t cleansed Irv yet.

Can you believe that?

The Unlikelies. A Diary Novel. By Sosanni Valtsioti. All Rights Reserved. © 2025