Undefined parameters

The question of newness is always one with which my students (and even I) struggle. How to we bring something new into the world when everything has already been said? I watch them resort to complicated plot lines and pseudo-exotic settings and characters. They have to fumble through these attempts to see how they fail. Experience is the best teacher, and, being young, they haven’t yet received much of an education on that front.

So how to reach something genuine, true, exquisite in the mundane? I wish I could tell them, offer advice, but I think a writer must be true to herself before she can be true on the page, and this is where it gets difficult. How can we be true to ourselves if we haven’t yet learned who we are? Maybe it’s better to say we must be true to the struggle to be ourselves.

Who can Pull the Sword from the Stone?

I had thought for a number of years that one of my sons would be a writer when he grew up; it was simply something I took for granted from his earliest years. This is a boy who, at 2, said of our snow-covered house, “The house looks like a snow muffin” and who any number of people said had “the eyes of a poet” (whatever that means, even though I had to agree with them—he had the eyes of an old soul). Though he took an interest through elementary and middle school and wrote short stories and poems, he is headed to different artistic endeavors, which is fine by me.

The idea that one might be a born writer is a tempting thought. Certainly, some people are gifted in one area or another and have less distance to cover, perhaps, to achieve greatness (or, at least, competence). The temptation (for me, anyway) is not so much to feel one is born a writer than to feel that one wasn’t, thereby having an easy excuse to fail to exercise whatever talent has been bestowed.

Even if I was born to write, so much debris stands between me and whatever I was born to, that I think I should just start from scratch every day, without expectation of anything but effort.

The Joys of Escapism

As a young person, all I considered worthy of reading was “serious literature.” I figured that one only has so many hours of reading in a lifetime, and the world is filled with so much great literature, that I’d better be choosy about what I read. As I grew older, I still had time for serious literature, but I didn’t think of it as that, simply as what suited my taste. It didn’t occur to me to read for fun, to read something light, frivolous, escapist.

Then I began working at a hellish job, one with terrible hours, a long commute, and a spiteful coworker. It seemed as if I would never get to leave that job (and I had to be grateful for it since it was better than being unemployed). I picked up Terry Pratchett’s Bromiliad trilogy, much loved by both my sons, one they’d read and re-read, to connect with them by reading something they loved. The bonus for my exhausted mind was that it would be easy to read (something that had never before been a category of qualification for a reading selection).

I loved it so much, and more than the books themselves, I loved the escape; I’d forgotten the intense, absorbing pleasure of being carried away from my troubles, and, for a few hours, being really happy. After that, I delved into everything Pratchett had written, escaping.

As a writer, especially when I was a young writer, I wanted to write brilliant literature, something Pulitzer-worthy. After my foray into escapist reading, I know the value of entertainment and know that simply entertaining a reader is enough; I don’t need to be the Great American Novelist. If I am able to temporarily transport people elsewhere and give them respite, I’ll be satisfied with my work.

Charlie Kaufman and J. Alfred Prufrock

One of my favorite scenes in any movie is in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation in which the character, Charlie Kaufman, attends Robert McKee’s how-to screenwriting lecture and asks about writing a movie more like real life, where nothing happens, nothing is resolved. I assume everyone can relate to poor Charlie’s question (and, if it’s just me and others like me, at least we’re in great company).

It’s not as if nothing happens in my life; it’s more Prufrockian than that: if I commit it to paper, if I say “I am Lazarus come from the dead, come back to tell you all,” and my readers turn away, “That is not what I meant at all.” then how should I presume to spit out the butt-ends of my days and ways?

Sheer force is the only answer I know. Use ridiculous prompts, sit on the train and write x-number of profiles before I can go home—one I haven’t actually tried, but it’s out there, waiting for me. Charlie and Prufrock sit on either shoulder, no angels and devils here, just the warmth of companions united in fear, self-boredom, and doubt.