A weekly column I patter out about whatever is on my mind and vaguely related to writing.
Nov. 7, 2003
A study of the vices of another, my professor wants. As I sit in my office—yes my campus office because I can never work at home anymore—too many diapers and goofy pastel colors everywhere are distracting—I try to think of others’ vices. I come to this conclusion—I don’t really care. I’m so self-absorbed and narrow-sighted, that I just don’t notice other people’s problems unless I am gossiping about them behind their backs, and that I’ve promised myself I’d quit doing. So I’m going to have to dig a little closer to home.
I’ve got a thesis introduction to finalize in the coming months, so I need to start this nauseating journey of introspection—into why I write, and how I write, and for whom I write and so on. Truth be told, I don’t know any of the answers to those questions and I don’t really care. I write when I need to. I write when I think I’ll look cool in the coffee shop. I write when I’m sitting alone and I want people to think that I’m not really a loser sitting by herself, but some philosopher deep in thought.
I’ll be candid. I will always feel like some disjointed, incongruous mess. I like me like that, and because of this, I tend to see my “writing style” or my “voice” as a separate entity from me entirely. Call me schizophrenic (wouldn’t be the first time,) but I feel like the writer I am trying to become is a bit different than the Megan that I am now. So I’ll look at the writer’s vices—she has plenty. Maybe even my writing has it’s own bad habits that it needs shaken out of…I’m sure it does. It wouldn’t be mine if a few bad habits weren’t attached.
From this point on, I will refer to either the writer (me, but not really) or the writing (mine, but sorta not.) Simple enough.
The writer has a bad temper—but the writing’s is worse. Half way through a line, the writer will lose faith and begin to feverishly pound the delete button. Punch Punch Punch. The writing looks at itself, thinks of other writing happening at the exact same moment and gets very, very angry. The writing has an inferiority complex and listens to the other non-fiction pieces in class and asks the writer the question “Hey, stupid, why couldn’t you think of something like that…”
Both writing and writer has anger issues. Maybe their daddies didn’t take them to the park when they were younger (everything these days has “daddy issues”—we wouldn’t be complete as a society without them.) Maybe their kitten ran away when they were four—whatever it was, they both have one hell of a temper and will scrap a project on a whim. Neither pay attention to the credo that in order to be a writer you have to write something—even print it out, put it in a binder and lend it some sort of permanence. This temper of theirs keeps the writer from ever feeling like a writer because the writer never writes anything worth keeping.
It’s a bit overly dramatic—but it’s sometimes true. This foul temper of both creator and word make it very difficult to move forward on projects. It’s a very bad habit. Now words are so trigger-shy from the abuse they receive as soon as they hit the page, they are loath to make an appearance at all. I’ve asked them—some days they threaten to call Amnesty International on the writer for the torture they endure.
Nothing in the writer’s life is interesting until it is distorted and mangled into some sob story a lá Danielle Steele.
This vice makes seeing like an artist very difficult. The saying that all of nature is art (or beauty, or something like that—I rarely pay attention to doofy maxims) annoys the writer because all nature is boring. “Write what you know” is junked as well—all the writer knows is an 8-5 job banging out press releases and 500 word magazine articles about grants and stuffy professors who, underneath it all hate their students and live as cross-dressers. See! That was it right there—it wasn’t good enough to tell you about the writer’s job, the writing had to get in the way and doubt itself—it had to make the truth just a little bit more dramatic than it really was to feel comfortable about itself.
Same with poems, fiction, and non-fiction. A poem isn’t good if it’s about a family. No, the writer needs a family with a dead father, an alcoholic mother, a porn-star brother, and a terminal illness. Blame it on the writer’ s pop culture life. MTV ruined her writing. Quiet nuances, undertones, and subtlety just don’t cut it. We want action, we want drama, we want reality TV in our poems and we want them in fifteen lines or less. Make ‘em count.
How can a writer be a writer without vanity? Some days the writer will write an absolute perfect line and carry that line into a workshop. She’ll sit giddy in her seat until it is her turn to be critiqued—antsy and excited like it’s her fifth birthday party and they’re at Chuck E. Cheese’s waiting for the big puppet show to start. She’ll steal glances at her upcoming work under the pages of the other writers ahead of her. She’ll caress that line with the soft eraser of her pencil—lovingly assuring it that it’s time will come. The writing waits on the page, reclining on some red satin settee like the page is a big stinky, perfume-smelling boudoir that will seduce the critics.
As the time grows closer, the writing will run to the mirror a few more times to primp the side of it’s metaphor, or fluff out it’s perfect line break. Spritz itself one last time with perfectly-timed irony.
And the doorbell rings…the workshop begins. And that perfect metaphor is labeled cliché, and that great line break is called forced, and that slam-dunk point at the end of the second paragraph is not authentic. The writer stares at the work shoppers in disbelief.
Who the hell let these idiots into this program? Weren’t there any sort of requirements to be accepted to an MFA program?
The writer is quick to agree when praised, but surrounded by morons when challenged.
Aug. 14, 2003
Some words about an unimpressive writing process
a piece of wire
the dark
Santa Claus
a busy operating room
aluminum foil
a church service
Is that what I, as a writer, am boiled down to when I hit writer's block? The above list comes from a genius invention found on WriterBuddy.com--a plot generator--that begs the question "What becomes of me when this writing process seems too big?"
I don't know. Book after book and website after website rally round the "write something everyday" flag, and it's great advice, just a bit taxing on the old nerves when the page stares blank. Millions of questions loom on the horizon, mocking me.
"Why bother today? You have no ideas to write about." Enter the prompt. "Why bother today? It's not like those elements could ever turn into a viable story." Close Microsoft Word and log onto your favorite internet site. "Good choice, Megan, now we're talking."
Three hours later my eyes hurt, my mouth is cotton and I just can't wait to see who Erin lets go on "For Love or Money II." (Why the hell do I know all those details about that ridiculous show??)
I should sound so dramatic. There are days when my pen literally flies across the page and I am unstoppable. Two, three poems at a time that seem really good. A short story completed in its first sitting (<----man, THOSE are the days.) But they are just so sporiadic and spacious in between each other. The other 360 days of the year I sit contemplating what Santa Clause is doing in a busy operating room with a piece of wire lodged unexplicably somewhere in the dark.
I ask myself "Did I consciously choose this life? WHY?"
I'm not rich. I work day in and day to pay aggravating bills. Why, when I was the wise age of 17, didn't I choose engineering or biomedical science, to major in? I don't know. But now here I sit. At work. Not working. And pondering my creative processes when I should be writing a magazine article about the new dean of students recently hired on campus. IT pays the bills. Not Santa and his aluminum foil.
--mb