The Tyranny of Choice
—or—
Why I Love Crappy Weather
Anyone who’s known me for even a short amount of time knows that I love the kind of weather other people, bless their misguided little hearts, might call “crappy.” I can’t pinpoint a time when this started; I’ve loved rainy days for as long as I can remember. And until recently, I couldn’t pinpoint why. During the past few months, however, thanks to more down time at work than anyone with a paycheck as respectable as mine has any right to, I’ve been able to devote a healthy amount of time to pondering the answer.
I’ve come up with two reasons why I love dark clouds, thunder and lightning, and that most beautiful of sights, that harbinger of cold fronts, the squall line, where ominous, steel-colored thunderheads contrast so sharply with the innocent-looking sky in front of them. The first reason is simple and, if I do say so myself, almost anti-climactic. Why do I love crappy weather?
I just do.
Were you hoping for something more profound? Sorry. That’s all there is to it: I just do. Why do you like your favorite color? Maybe there’s some long, complicated story behind it, like your first memory as a child is of holding on to your dad’s leg while you tried to stand up and walk. He was wearing blue jeans, and forever after, blue was the only color for you. Maybe you believe in color as therapy, so you wear yellow to cheer yourself up when you’re depressed. Or maybe you just really, really love carrots, and your entire existence would be fundamentally altered without orange.
My guess, though, is that the reason you like your favorite color is, you just do.
I don’t just like stormy weather, though. I love it. I experience it. I invite it into my soul and serve it coffee and biscotti.
By “analyze,” I don’t mean that I see a cloud and then rush inside to consult the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Weather, desperate to identify what I saw. Stratus? Cumulus? Cirrus? Altostratus? (I admit I do, in fact, own this book, but honestly, I bought it because I thought looking at the cool pictures would be a better way to pass my occasional boredom than lying in bed, feeling guilty for how rarely I blog. It was in no way an indication of some strange, deep obsession with weather. Trust me, if I was going to have a fetish, it would not involve cloud formations. Donuts come to mind, though, or possibly brownies. Or peanut butter. Okay, I’d better stop. This could get ugly...)
(But as long as we’re on a tangent anyway, let me say that I learned early on not to ask my father—a retired science teacher whose original goal was to be meteorologist—questions about weather. It’s not that he wouldn’t know the answer; he knows too much. You want the Wikipedia version, quick and easy to skim, and you’re willing to accept the risk that their fact checkers haven’t quite gotten around to every single entry. My father, however, wants to go up to the attic, hunt down the hard-bound Encyclopedia Britannica (yes, not the World Book, which was the “easy” encyclopedia we all used for research projects as kids, until we hit high school and that wouldn’t fly anymore, and we were forced to transition to the scary Britannica), blow the dust off the cover, and sit you down for an hour-long lecture on the subtle differences between altostratus clouds and altostratus undulatus. (My mother learned long ago that every question she asked my father needed to start with the words “In fifteen words or less…”)
Where was I? Oh, right…how I analyze weather.
I’ve never told this to anyone before, so you millions of people out there who are addicted to this blog should feel privileged to be the first to hear it. (But if you are addicted to this blog, first, that’s a shame, and second, considering the rate at which I seem to post new and interesting “essays,” it’s a good thing you don’t need this blog to sustain you, like food and water, because, let’s face it: you’d have shriveled up and died a long time ago.)
And it’s kind of embarrassing, so you should feel even more privileged to be getting the information you are about to receive.
I have a kind of “scale” I measure weather with in my mind. It’s not a 1-to-10 scale, or a 100-point system. To be honest, I don’t know what the criteria is. All I know is, it’s rare that a single element will rate over a three, but occasionally, in the cases of unimaginably cool storms, the clouds alone could go as high as four or five.
Overcast skies are nice, but for me, really hideous skies are where it’s at. In fact, if it’s genuinely “stormy,” that’s usually good for two or three points before I even start counting the individual elements.
What do I “grade” when I decide how high a day scores? I usually start with the sky itself. How does it look? Is it overcast? Is there a general grayness hanging low over everything? Probably good enough for a two, maybe a three, depending on whether it looks like there’s a silver-colored sheet spread out over the whole sky, or whether there are patches here and there that are darker, and whether the clouds are moving so fast I can actually see them changing shape against each other. The bottom line here: the darker, the better. Whitish-gray, good. Silvery-gray, better. Bluish-black, damn near perfect. Grayish-green? JACKPOT, BABY!
Green? A green sky? Yes. I hate to be a fan of such “ugly” skies, because they’re usually associated with tornados, and I am, of course, not a fan of the destruction they can bring. Still, we can’t help what we love, right? These skies are really a sight to behold. I’ve been living in Tornado Alley for about a year and a half, and I’ve had the privilege of seeing these skies in all their glory. To give Nature the reverence and respect she deserves, I do have to say, these skies are as scary as they are beautiful. (Kind of like a dozen donuts. Beautiful, but deadly. Best admired from afar.)
I’m a coastal city girl, so forgive me for offending you if you happen to be partial to the Plains, but the most impressive thing I’ve been able to identify about this part of the country is the sky before a storm. I’ll take an Omaha sky over an Omaha steak every time!
The good news is, you don’t have to live in this part of the country to experience the—forgive the triteness—awesome power of a good storm. A few years ago, I was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I worked on the 47th floor of the tallest building in the city – high up enough to feel the building sway in really strong winds. It was from one of the office windows that I watched one of the most awesome storms I’ve ever have the privilege of seeing. In fact, this is where I came up with the idea of a sky so black it’s green—the standard against which I've come to judge all other skies. These green skies ruined it for the regular ol’ overcast ones. The workhorses. The old faithfuls. The ones who usually bring rain and wind, even if only in amounts that fail to break the threshold of breaking news updates and constant Doppler radar weather maps. You know the ones…the ones where the screen shows only green, the “light” weather, never approaching yellow, pink, or, dare to dream, the red “severe” zone.
Still, there’s something to be said for a simple rainy day, or even an overcast day with no rain at all. You get all the benefits of a more dangerous storm, with few to none of the real threats. You can still drive your car, use your computer, and not worry that the plants you worked so hard to re-pot and make pretty will be destroyed. You don’t have to search your house for a flash light, attempt to turn it on, and then proceed to search your house for some D-batteries. You don’t have to have candles at the ready. You don’t have to pull onto the shoulder of the road because you can’t see a bloomin’ thing and you can’t even follow the taillights of the guy in front of you, because from what you can tell, he just hydroplaned into the oncoming traffic.
So that was the sky. What else do I use to “grade” weather?
Rain.
Rain, rain, rain, and more rain.
Is it raining? Good for at least two points. (A light drizzle might be good for only one.) Is it pouring? Can I hear it coming down on the roof of my house? Good for three.
Is it foggy? And, by “foggy,” I don’t mean the chintzy-ass fog some places get in the early morning, only to have the sun burn it away half an hour later. I mean a heavy, lingering fog. A San Francisco fog. A Monterey fog. The fog of legend. The kind of fog that’s been immortalized in postcards. (“San Francisco on a Cloudy Day” – the postcard is basically blank. White. As if someone forgot to put the actual picture there. But then again, as long as we’re on the subject, I think in the case of SF, it’s more like smog, which is definitely not as cool as fog. As for Monterey, I’m pretty sure it’s far enough away from the big city pollution that it’s all legitimate fog.)
But I digress. (I know…big surprise.)
Is it foggy? Good for at least two points, although the Monterey fog went as high as four on a fairly regular basis.
How about the wind? Is there a breeze blowing at all? If I go outside, can I feel air circulating around me? Good for one. If I stay inside, can I hear it blowing through the trees? Can I hear the screens rattling against my windows? Good for two. Are car alarms going off? Are small children being swept off their feet and blown down the street? Are shingles ripping off the roof? Not so great. Insane winds scare me. No extra points for making me think my house is going to be torn off its foundation. (Plus, ever since I moved to Nebraska, where there are no tall buildings and no mountains to block the wind, strong winds do nothing but aggravate me, especially when I’m in uniform. You see, despite the fact that the U.S. military has some of the most advanced protective gear for chemical and biological warfare, someone has yet to invent a cap that WILL STAY ON YOUR GODDAMN HEAD WHEN IT’S WINDY.)
And now, at last, the smell. Oh, the smell. Come on, don’t look at me like that. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The air smells different when it’s stormy out. In fact, it smells different before, during and after a storm. My personal preference is the way the world smells before a storm. (After a storm, it sometimes smells like wet dog, which is definitely not worthy of any points.)
With all the writing tools I have at my disposal, all the similes, the metaphors, the alliteration, you would think I could come up with some way to describe the smell. But I can’t. All I can say is, for me, it’s the smell of glory. The smell that all is right with the world. The smell that everything’s going to turn out perfectly. (You’ll understand this much better after I get to the second, more complicated reason why I love stormy weather. Also, as long as we’re here, in case you’ve ever wondered if there was a word for the general category of things like similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, etc., there is. They’re tropes. My favorite, in case anyone cares, is zeugma—a way of connecting two or more things, usually some figurative and some literal. Examples: 1. Take your coat, and your attitude, and get out! 2. After their divorce, all they had between them were twenty years and two children. And, as always, since we’re so deeply entrenched in this tangent anyway, it pleases me to inform you that this train of thought has planted the seed for a future blog post. I’ll talk about tropes, and how they can be both a blessing and a curse for writers. [Or, at least, for “serious” writers, or writers who hope to one day be taken seriously, like me.] I’ll address the famous ones, such as simile and metaphor, but I’ll focus on the fun ones. The ones most people have probably never heard of: synecdoche, synesthesia, metonymy, etc.)
And now, for the second reason I prefer “bad weather.” The more complex reason. (Remember? Way back a few paragraphs ago, I said there were two reasons. The first was that I just do.) The second one goes much deeper than the feeling I get when I see gray clouds, feel the heaviness in the air, the foreboding.
Bad weather makes the world smaller. To understand why I see this is as positive thing, you first have to have understand something about me: I have trouble making choices. (Hence the title of this post.)
I’ve always been a pessimist. A glass-is-half-empty/grass-is-always-greener kind of person. I’m pleased to tell you that I feel I’m making pretty good strides toward changing this about myself, but my natural inclination is still toward the negative. (And maybe the gradual shift in my perspective will turn up sometime as yet another future blog post?)
I’m not sure where this attitude comes from, but it’s mine, and I’ve been living with it for as long as I can remember. I haven’t studied psychology much, but as far as I can tell, the reason I have such a hard time making decisions—even seemingly insignificant ones—is that I’m afraid I’ll make the “wrong” choice. I’m afraid that whichever way I go, the other way would have been better.
This, of course, begs the question, what is “better?” On my rare (but increasingly more common) optimistic days, I take to heart the last few lines of the poem Summer Storm, by Dana Gioa. It appeared in Writer’s Digest, with an exact publication date of…a while back:
There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried.
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.
And memory insists on pining
for places it never went
As if life would be better
just by being different.
Better for whom? And in what circumstances? Little details can change everything. If you were in a survival situation in the desert, which would you rather have: plain water or a margarita? Would your answer be different if you were in a survival situation at a wedding with an open bar? Details, people. Details.
Bottom line: I’m afraid I’ll regret whatever it is I chose, and wish I had tried the other path.
This is pretty understandable when it comes to big decisions. How would my life be different if I hadn’t enlisted in the military? How would my life be different if I had gone to Northwestern University, instead Carnegie Mellon? (Not that I regret these things. I’m just making the point.) How would things have turned out if I had slept with Andy Garcia instead of Jimmy Smits? (Oh, wait…that didn’t happen. [Yet…I’m still holding out hope. See what I mean about trying to be more positive?])
The funny thing is, my debilitating “decision disease” seeps into every aspect of my life. You should see me at the grocery store. Choosing a toothpaste should not become a twenty-minute ordeal, and yet, that’s what happens every time I’m faced with the big questions in life: baking soda or hydrogen peroxide? Whitening or extra whitening? Peppermint or spearmint? (And now, of course, the toothpaste manufacturers have gone and made my decision even more difficult, having added flavors like cinnamon mint, vanilla mint, citrus mint, and extreme herbal mint. *sigh.* A while back, Crest came out with a sampler pack that had baby sizes of all four of these. A dream come true!)
I used to be terrible in restaurants, too. Buffalo chicken sandwich or blackened catfish? What if I get the fettuccine alfredo, but wind up jealous of the delicious looking linguine with clam sauce the guy at the next table ordered? Thankfully, this problem has been greatly reduced, thanks to a mostly low-carb way of eating. I do “cheat” here and there, but in general, I’d say I consider about 85% of a typical restaurant menu off limits for me. Even for the dishes I can order, I still usually have to customize them: no potato, double broccoli; no rice, extra veggies. I’m nowhere near as bad as Meg Ryan’s Sally in When Harry Met Sally, but still. I make a small nuisance of myself. I don’t mind, though, and the wait staff never seems to, either.
So now you’re thinking, what on earth does this weird decision disease have to do with this weird girl’s weird love for crappy weather?
Simple: It makes the world smaller. You knew you were going to work out, but weren’t sure if you were going to jog on the trail near your house, or go to the gym. Good news—it’s raining. You’re not going to jog outside. Decision made.
You got home early from work. Are you going to catch your favorite cooking show on TV, or stay outside and clean out your car, which has somehow managed to accumulate more string cheese wrappers and empty Starbucks cups than you’re willing to admit to having put there? (Maybe that’s just me, though. Then again, if it’s not string cheese and coffee cups, I’m willing to bet all of you have some kind of junk in your car, and no clear idea of how it got there.) Guess what? It’s raining. No car cleaning for you. Cooking show it is.
This is only a small part of the deeper meaning crappy weather has for me. The larger part is that the world is so big. It’s so overwhelmingly enormous, and there are so many things I’d like to do. Never does the world seem so expansive as on a clear day. One of those days with no clouds, when the bright blue looks like it goes on forever. (The kind of sky pilots call “severe clear.”) As my perspective shifts toward more positive thinking, I have to admit, I enjoy sunny days much more than I used to. Nevertheless, I feel intimidated by the endlessness, by the infinite possibilities.
On the other hand, when the sky is overcast, visibility is reduced. You can’t see as far, so the world literally appears smaller. More manageable. This makes me feel like maybe I can do everything I need or want to do. Maybe the things I’m working toward will happen. Maybe I will be a famous novelist someday. Maybe I will have a flower garden someday. Maybe I will feel like I’m “earning my keep” in the universe. Maybe I will feel at home in my own skin someday. And if I don’t get started on those things right away, if I’m not plugging away at them constantly, every second of every day, maybe that’s all right, because maybe it’s raining, and it’s okay for me to make some hot chocolate and curl up on the couch with a good book.
November 15, 2007
March 01, 2007
No, Really ... I'm Okay!
For any of you who might have read my previous post, and are concerned that I'm:
A) Depressed
B) Crazy
C) Suicidal ...
Please don't worry. I'm fine. I was having a terrible day, and I let it get the best of me. The truth is, I don't even know why I was having such a bad day. I can't identify any reasons to justify the way I felt. For now, I'm chalking it up to hormones. (Those blasted two X-chromosomes!! There must be something in the Y-chromosome that prevents men from flipping out the way women do, regardless of what "time of the month" it is.)
Anyway, rest assured, I'm currently working on a list of "Things that Make Me Happy." (And, believe you me, it will be much longer than the list of "Things I'm Sick Of.") :D
Until then, my friends, I'll catch you on the flipside.
A) Depressed
B) Crazy
C) Suicidal ...
Please don't worry. I'm fine. I was having a terrible day, and I let it get the best of me. The truth is, I don't even know why I was having such a bad day. I can't identify any reasons to justify the way I felt. For now, I'm chalking it up to hormones. (Those blasted two X-chromosomes!! There must be something in the Y-chromosome that prevents men from flipping out the way women do, regardless of what "time of the month" it is.)
Anyway, rest assured, I'm currently working on a list of "Things that Make Me Happy." (And, believe you me, it will be much longer than the list of "Things I'm Sick Of.") :D
Until then, my friends, I'll catch you on the flipside.
February 27, 2007
Things I'm Sick Of
1. Listening to my inner monologue.
2. Skinny women who wear spandex at the gym.
3. Skinny guys who eat horrendous crap and stay skinny.
4. Being lonely.
5. Being lonely in a roomful of people.
6. Living in my own skin.
7. People who can't hold clicky pens without clicking them all the time.
8. Making excuses for myself, instead of actually having the courage and energy to change things inside me and around me.
9. Being useless to the outside world; having no real “skills.”
10. Being so far away from my friends.
11. "Analysts" on news shows. I wish they would get real jobs, and stop criticizing other people for the way they do theirs.
12. Stretch marks – old ones and new ones, which seem to popping up every day, despite the fact that I’m trying to lose weight, and therefore, have my skin not be pulled so tight over my insides that it actually stretches.
13. Doing homework (I’ve been doing it since I was six years old. I’m 28.)
14. Processed "food" (and I use the term loosely). Do yourself a favor and read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.
15. Overmedicated children and adults. If your kid can’t sit still, he might not have ADD/ADHD. Maybe you should get him/her off sugar, for crissake.
16. A society that wants quick fixes from the medical establishment. "I don’t want to change my diet, so give me some pills." "I don’t want to start exercising, so give me medication instead." "I’m sad, so instead of me making changes in my life to have a happier, more fulfilling existence and get rid of the things that are causing me to be sad, just give me some “uppers” that will make me happy in the short term, but in the long run, do nothing to actually solve the problem." (Caveat…I know clinical depression is a real thing, and that in some cases, medication is a true godsend.)
17. Suffocating under the unbearably heavy burden of the same fears and insecurities that have been crushing me since I was twelve years old.
18. Feeling like a fatass, even while I’m running at the gym to remedy this exact problem.
19. Feeling the saddlebags on my hips jiggle while I run.
20. Old men lapping me on the track, especially on days when I feel like I’m doing really well, and running at a good pace.
21. Days when I have no choice but to get out of bed, get dressed, go to work, and be part of the world, when I want nothing more than to stay in bed all day, with the covers over my head, pretending like this isn’t actually my life. After all, if I don't see anybody, they don't see me.
22. Crying at the same damn things that made me cry when I was a teenager.
23. Sitting down, and noticing how my hips and thighs span the entire width of the chair.
24. Feeling trapped in my own body.
25. Being unable to escape from myself. Life is rough when the person you hate most in the world is yourself. Where can you go to get away from her?
26. Looking at myself and hating every single thing I see.
27. People who are naturally thin.
28. Being scared that it’s always going to be like this.
(Sorry...I'm having a bad day. [Can you tell? ;-)] Nothing a cigarette and a large glass of wine won't fix. Well, that, and a generous serving of ipecac syrup. [Just kidding. I wish I wasn't, but I am, so don't freak out. I'm just too level=headed for my own good when it comes to things like that.])
2. Skinny women who wear spandex at the gym.
3. Skinny guys who eat horrendous crap and stay skinny.
4. Being lonely.
5. Being lonely in a roomful of people.
6. Living in my own skin.
7. People who can't hold clicky pens without clicking them all the time.
8. Making excuses for myself, instead of actually having the courage and energy to change things inside me and around me.
9. Being useless to the outside world; having no real “skills.”
10. Being so far away from my friends.
11. "Analysts" on news shows. I wish they would get real jobs, and stop criticizing other people for the way they do theirs.
12. Stretch marks – old ones and new ones, which seem to popping up every day, despite the fact that I’m trying to lose weight, and therefore, have my skin not be pulled so tight over my insides that it actually stretches.
13. Doing homework (I’ve been doing it since I was six years old. I’m 28.)
14. Processed "food" (and I use the term loosely). Do yourself a favor and read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.
15. Overmedicated children and adults. If your kid can’t sit still, he might not have ADD/ADHD. Maybe you should get him/her off sugar, for crissake.
16. A society that wants quick fixes from the medical establishment. "I don’t want to change my diet, so give me some pills." "I don’t want to start exercising, so give me medication instead." "I’m sad, so instead of me making changes in my life to have a happier, more fulfilling existence and get rid of the things that are causing me to be sad, just give me some “uppers” that will make me happy in the short term, but in the long run, do nothing to actually solve the problem." (Caveat…I know clinical depression is a real thing, and that in some cases, medication is a true godsend.)
17. Suffocating under the unbearably heavy burden of the same fears and insecurities that have been crushing me since I was twelve years old.
18. Feeling like a fatass, even while I’m running at the gym to remedy this exact problem.
19. Feeling the saddlebags on my hips jiggle while I run.
20. Old men lapping me on the track, especially on days when I feel like I’m doing really well, and running at a good pace.
21. Days when I have no choice but to get out of bed, get dressed, go to work, and be part of the world, when I want nothing more than to stay in bed all day, with the covers over my head, pretending like this isn’t actually my life. After all, if I don't see anybody, they don't see me.
22. Crying at the same damn things that made me cry when I was a teenager.
23. Sitting down, and noticing how my hips and thighs span the entire width of the chair.
24. Feeling trapped in my own body.
25. Being unable to escape from myself. Life is rough when the person you hate most in the world is yourself. Where can you go to get away from her?
26. Looking at myself and hating every single thing I see.
27. People who are naturally thin.
28. Being scared that it’s always going to be like this.
(Sorry...I'm having a bad day. [Can you tell? ;-)] Nothing a cigarette and a large glass of wine won't fix. Well, that, and a generous serving of ipecac syrup. [Just kidding. I wish I wasn't, but I am, so don't freak out. I'm just too level=headed for my own good when it comes to things like that.])
January 07, 2007
The Prison of Imagination
***This post is dedicated to M., who said, and I quote, "Blog more." :-)
“All my life I’ve been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.”
So said Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, whose fear of writing did not stop him from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, for One Hundred Years of Solitude, a masterpiece of fiction and magical-realism known the world over.
It is nice to know that in my fear of the blank page, in the gripping terror that engulfs me when I sit down to write, I am in good company.
In the two months since I posted “The Tyranny of the Blank Page,” in which I wrote about the mental and emotional obstacles to writing fiction, I am ashamed to admit I have not written much of anything. A few more blog posts, yes. (Few being the operative word.) But nothing that will start me along my slow, long struggle to reach the bestseller lists.
Like I said in that first post, I’ve had nothing but gobs and gobs of free time to write. And yet, I’ve done gobs and gobs of just about everything but write. (Well, no, that’s not really true. All I've really done is watched gobs and gobs of The X-Files, and Quantum Leap, thanks to a week and a half of leave time, and a subscription to Netflix, which, I hereby declare, is the greatest thing since Nutella. (Why Nutella? Well, let’s face it folks, “sliced bread” isn’t really all that great, is it? You could easily buy a whole loaf of bread and slice it yourself. But how would you possibly get all that chocolately and hazelnutty goodness whipped up so smoothly on your own? … I rest my case.)
In my defense, during all this time in which I haven’t been writing, I’ve at least been thinking about writing. In fact, I’ve done so much thinking, and so much introspection, that I may have finally discovered exactly what it is that has kept me from putting pen to paper (or hands to keyboard, as it were), more often.
It’s my imagination. I’m a prisoner of my own imagination.
(This, of course, is a natural sequel for “The Tyranny of the Blank Page,” but I have to admit, I’m beginning to wonder what it says about me, when I resort to using such violent words in association with something I claim to love so much…)
If you’ve ever seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption, you might remember a character named Brooks Hatlen. Brooks was a white-haired, older gentleman, who had spent his entire adult life inside the Shawshank facility. At one point in the movie, he gets released. (I don’t remember if he was paroled, or if his sentence was up. It’s not important. The point is, he got out of prison.) Brooks got a job bagging groceries at a supermarket, and found himself a small apartment. The thing is, he had spent so much of his life at Shawshank, that he didn’t know how to function anywhere else. Inside the prison walls, he was safe. The minute he stepped outside, however, everything fell apart. Nothing was what he expected it to be, and he simply couldn’t adjust. He was so frustrated and so scared by his failure to adapt to the outside world, that he wound up hanging himself.
You must be thinking, how could this possibly be related to writing? Well, let me see if I can explain what I mean when I say my imagination is a prison.
When I get an idea for something, whether it’s a poem, a short story, or a novel, it’s always perfect. At the moment of conception, when my mind gets the very first inkling of something that would be worth writing, the entity is complete, whole, and pristine. It’s almost as though the start, the middle, and the end, are all wrapped up in a little ball, or better yet, a single point.
The Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote a story called “All At One Point.” It was set during the time just before the Big Bang, when everything, and I mean everything, was converged in a central, infinitesimal point. People were always fighting, because there was no room to move around. Everyone, by definition of the point they were trapped in, was invading everyone else’s personal space. There were plants, and animals, and houses, and everything else we think of when we think of the world, even though it was before most of those things had evolved, or were invented. The story required a great degree of suspension of disbelief, but if you could manage to put aside your questions and doubts, and your junior high school physics, it made for really entertaining reading.
I mention Calvino’s story to try and explain what an idea looks like in my mind. It’s all converged in a point. A tiny speck. And yet, it’s all there: characters, a plot, lines of dialogue, a great opening sentence, and an even better closing. All the symbols, all the wonderful descriptions, all the joy, all the heartbreak, is wrapped up inside itself, around itself, in this beautiful, pristine form.
The difficulty starts when I try to take the ideas out of my head, and put them on paper. To take something that exists in a perfect, untouched, abstract state, and give it a physical shape. To take these incredible visions, this amazing potential, and transform it into letters and words, and hope that none of the greatness gets lost in translation.
My imagination is a prison because, just like old Brooks inside Shawshank, my ideas are safe inside my imagination. As long as they stay there, they remain perfect. They have the best possible opening line, the best possible final sentence, and, most important of all, everything in between conveys exactly what I wanted to express, in exactly the right way, so that the reader takes away every single nuance, and every single feeling I wanted them to have.
The minute I start to actually write, however, things can only go downhill. If an idea is perfect inside my mind, then when it leaves, and starts to take shape as not a notion, but a novel, it can only get worse. Maybe I won’t find just the right word. Maybe I won’t be subtle enough. Maybe I’ll be too subtle. Maybe the way the character looks to me in dim light, or moonlight, or broad daylight, won’t be the way he looks to my readers, because I’ve failed to describe him the right way. Maybe they won’t laugh when I want them to. Or maybe they’ll laugh when I don’t want them to. Maybe they won’t cry, because my writing doesn’t convey the torturous, soul-sucking emotional agony my character is in.
And now, for a fun break, here are two quotes that summarize this feeling, and also show me I am not alone in this neurosis:
The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it. – Jules Renard
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
I know that this fear is a big part of why I don’t write as much as I should. What I don’t know is where it came from, or how to make it go away. Making it go away is probably very simple. I would think that writing more is the only way to make it go away. The more often I overcome this fear, the less I’ll have to fear, right? Once you’ve slain six dragons, slaying the seventh is a piece of cake.
As for where it came from, well, I’m not really sure how to answer that. I suspect it has a lot to do with what I talked about in “The Tyranny of the Blank Page.” The rest of it, though, has to do with my own expectations.
In all the time I’ve spent thinking (and not writing) in the past few weeks, I realized there’s more to it than what I said about living up to the standards of other writers. The fear of falling so far short of my personal literary idols is very real, so I don’t want to dismiss it. However, I have come to realize that what has stopped me from writing is actually the fear of living up to my own standards. The ideas in my head are so beautiful in their undisturbed state, and the heart of the issue is that I doubt my ability to make them as good when I put them on paper.
The thing is, I don’t know why I question my talent. I’ve proven to myself over and over again that I can do it. During the past four years (and I can NOT believe it’s been that long), I’ve written an impressive collection of JAG fan fiction stories. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of fan fiction, in a nutshell, you take the characters from a TV show (or movie), and write your own stories with them in it. Some people try to make their stories just like regular episodes. Others, like me, take a more literary approach. We use the characters, stay true to their backstories, and stick to show canon, but we write as if it’s a “normal” short story or novella. (Go ahead and laugh … how do you think those old Star Trek novels got started? And I bet some of those people have made plenty of money over the years!)
I used to be embarrassed about my obsession with JAG. It was all I talked about, all I thought about, and all I wanted to think about. I got hooked on it in early 2002, and wrote my first “fic” in October of that year. I watched it as often as I could, which, courtesy of syndication on the USA Network, was about three times a day. JAG had been on the air since 1995. Thanks to those reruns, and also to being unemployed, I caught up on six seasons in about six months. Through not having a job at all, to having a job I hated, to being in graduate school, to hating graduate school, and through joining the military, JAG was the one thing I could always count on to cheer me up. I scoured the Internet for JAG-related websites, and was certainly not disappointed. I came across a few fan fiction sites, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I used the phrase “used to be embarrassed” about my fan fiction hobby, because enough time has passed, and I’ve written enough stories, that I’m actually very proud of what I’ve accomplished. Since I do not own the copyright for JAG or any of the associated characters, I can’t have my stories published in “the real world.” I do, however, have a relatively large following on the Internet. (I post my stories to several websites, each time making sure that it is clearly stated that I do not own the copyrights, that no infringement is intended, and that no money is being made from my work. And, as I constantly had to tell myself during those years of writing nothing but JAG fanfics, it was better than writing nothing! … Kind of like when I write in this blog!)
I’m very proud of the JAG writing I’ve done. And, even though I can’t make a name for myself in the literary world by using characters someone else invented, the effort I’ve put into those stories has without question made me a better writer. I loved working on those stories, since they allowed me to be immersed so deeply in the JAG world. And now, when I look back on the pieces I produced, my heart gets warmer not only because I remember how there were days when JAG (and the online community it introduced me to) seemed like the only good thing in my life, but more so now because I see how much my writing has improved. My first stories were good. The ones in the middle were better. The latest ones are excellent. So, even though I won’t be able to buy a yacht off the royalties from them, the true payoff is the improvement in my craft. Writing so many of those stories helped me to fit the pieces of the puzzle together better. How did all the individual scenes fit into the bigger picture? Was one particular line of dialogue so essential, that I needed to build an entire scene around it? Or, my most hated, was a certain scene so good, and so well written, but just didn’t jell with the rest of it? Would I have to let it fall on the cutting room floor, and accept that just because it sounded good, didn’t mean it worked in that particular story?
Anyway, I mentioned my catalogue of JAG stories because they are proof not only that I can overcome my fear, but that the fear is unfounded in the first place. I wasn’t so afraid at the beginning, when I first started writing fan fiction. But maybe that’s because my stories were simple, and relatively short. But later on, during the last two years, as my writing itself got better, the stories I wanted to tell become more complex.
I’ve never been very good at coming up with plots. I’ve always relied on the notion that my writing was strong enough, and the JAG characters so well formed, that readers would hardly notice they were reading thirty pages of description, dialogue, and exposition, with nothing actually “happening.”
And it worked, too! Readers loved it! I had them fooled, bless their giant, JAG-loving hearts! The thing was, I wasn’t fooled. I knew I was going to have to learn how to write a decent plot, if I ever wanted to be a “real” writer.
I have since written two JAG stories with (if I do say so myself) very kick-ass plots. Both stories were extremely well-received. Readers liked them, and they told me so. And, more important, I liked them. I was quite satisfied, and not a little impressed, with how they both turned out.
The funny thing is, I remember how terrified I was while I was writing them. I had a very clear picture of certain scenes in my mind, and I was convinced I’d never be able to do them justice on paper. The pivotal moments wouldn’t be as dramatic as I wanted them to be. As I had imagined they would be. I wouldn’t do a good enough job of leading up to them. Or they were so complex I couldn’t get a handle on them. I was like an interior decorator, working with a completely empty room. I knew I had a living room, but depending on what color I chose for the walls, and for the carpet, the room would have an entirely different feel. Putting a sofa on the left side could create a whole different look from putting it on the right. With these two stories, everything wound up in the right place, but it took a long time to move the pieces around. It took a lot of arranging and rearranging, before it sounded just right.
The great thing was, I did it by myself. I asked other writers, whose work I admired, for advice. I even went so far as to ask one of them if she would co-write one of the stories with me, since I doubted, even from the very first moment, that I could “pull it off.” She was too busy working on something else at the time, so I wound up writing it on my own. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. All the good ideas on those pages, all the drama, the suspense, the joy, and the sadness, came from me. There are a few specific scenes that come to mind when I think of these two stories. A few scenes, around which everything else was hinged. They were pivotal moments, and I didn’t want them to fall flat. The good news is, general consensus by my “fans” said they didn’t. And, even better, I say they didn’t. Even now, months and years later, when I reread them, I don’t think I could have done a better job.
When I go back and read some of those old stories, I’m often surprised at how good they are. (When I go back too far, though, like to junior high school, or even elementary school, I’m embarrassed by most of what I wrote, and if bits and pieces of book reports or very early attempts at short stories ever turn up in the Enquirer, or on the E! network, when I’m famous, I’ll deny everything.) But seriously, at the risk of singing my own praises, I’m usually pretty impressed when I read my work. I sometimes even say to myself, “Damn, this is good! I can’t believe I wrote this!”
Like Garcia Marquez, I am always afraid when I sit down to write. Even if I know what I want to say; even if I already know the ending. Even if I know everything that has to happen, I doubt my ability to string it all together in a way that anyone in their right mind would want to read.
My friend S’s favorite author, John Irving, said it best: “I don’t know how far away the end is – only what it is. I know the last sentence, but I am very much in the dark concerning how to get to it.”
My strategy used to be the same. I would come up with a fabulous ending, and then, all I needed to do was figure out how to reach it. This is still my favorite way to write, but my last few JAG stories were written very much out of order. I wrote scenes as they developed in my head, and then, when I had enough of the major scenes done, I wrote the little things necessary to connect them all.
I’ve realized I can write from start to finish, or finish to start, or completely jumbled up, and it’ll always turn out fine. The trick is keeping sight of the big picture. Where do each of those scenes fit in? What needs to happen before I can put a scene in its proper place? What needs to happen afterward? Is the plot strong enough to stand on its own, without a lot of character insight? Or, on the other side, are the characters, and their interactions with each other, so powerful that I don’t need an amazing plot?
I go through what I call a “simmering” stage, when I write. I get an idea, and it has to simmer in my mind for a while. I have to think about it before I can write about it. I have to have enough of it planned out in my head before I’ll be ready to start writing. I can come up with details anywhere: daydreaming at work (my favorite); laying in bed; reading someone else’s work. I’ve started carrying around a mini notebook, so I can jot things down before I forget them. At one point, while I was working on my longest JAG story (which weighed in at a whopping 224 pages—in a 9-pt font!!), my desk was covered in fluorescent-colored Post-it-Notes, each one with a few lines of dialogue, or the gist of a scene I had yet to write.
Sometimes ideas simmer for days, sometimes months, and in one rare case, it took two years. (I got a great idea for a story in August 2004, and even wrote a bare-bones outline. I got sidetracked by various things, including another story that I chose to write first (and which ended up at a not-too-shabby 176 pages, in 10-pt font). But, I never gave up on it. It was always in the back of my mind, doing what my ideas do best: simmering. I kept my notes in a safe place. I remembered the central theme I wanted to present, and I stayed true to it. I am pleased to report that the pot finally boiled over this summer. I started writing it in July, and finished in September. (Not bad, for 92 pages! It still tickles me to know I incorporated lines of dialogue I had written two years earlier! It just goes to show, you never know when you’ll use something. If not now, then maybe in something you write a few years down the road. If it’s genuinely good, it’ll be just as good later. And if it’s not, then you know it wasn’t that good to begin with…)
Besides the fear of living up to my own expectations, there’s one other thing that makes me question myself every time I sit down to write. It’s the little voice that tells me no one would ever want to read about _________. I don’t know if this is something all authors have to overcome, the “Who Cares Syndrome.”
I wonder if Betty Smith ever asked herself why anyone would want to read about a poor girl growing up Brooklyn in the 1920s. (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Or if John Jakes ever told himself that no one would read a saga about families torn apart by the Civil War. (North and South). Or if Terry Goodkind ever asked himself why anyone would give a damn about love, war, and one man’s journey to fulfill his destiny in a faraway, imaginary land? (Wizard’s First Rule).
I can only rely on the truth I find in my absolute favorite quote about writing:
“When I want to read a good book, I write one.” -- Benjamin Disraeli
Every JAG story I’ve written was a story I wanted to read. But, since no one had written it yet, it was up to me. If I wanted to read about __________, I was going to have to write it, myself. And, I must say, four years, and I-don’t-know-how-many-stories later, I’ve done a pretty good job. I haven’t done much writing, but I’ve done enough to know that I don’t trust anyone else to write the way I do. If I had given one of my ideas to someone else, they would have written the story in an entirely different way. Not necessarily worse, but definitely different. And it’s just like the quote says: if I want to read a certain kind of story, hear specific kinds of language, and form specific kinds of images in my mind, I’m going to have to write the story myself.
After all, I’m the only one who can read my mind. I’m the only one who can take those abstract images and transform them into the exact words I want, the exact pace, the exact tone. So, no matter how afraid I am to do it, I have no choice. I’m the only one who can.
And now, I’ll leave you with a selection of my favorite quotes about writing, taken from http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
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Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~~Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~~Mark Twain
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Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~~Gene Fowler
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Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ~~Flannery O'Connor
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The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys. ~~C. Astrid Weber
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An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~~Gustave Flaubert
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A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~~Thomas Mann
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Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all. ~Franklin P. Adams
**Also, if you're interested in the JAG stories, you can find them at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StarTrailsJAGfic (There's a link in the list to the right on this page.) But, I have to warn you, some of the stories there are of an "adult" nature. If you're under 18, you might go blind if you try to read them!
“All my life I’ve been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.”
So said Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, whose fear of writing did not stop him from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, for One Hundred Years of Solitude, a masterpiece of fiction and magical-realism known the world over.
It is nice to know that in my fear of the blank page, in the gripping terror that engulfs me when I sit down to write, I am in good company.
In the two months since I posted “The Tyranny of the Blank Page,” in which I wrote about the mental and emotional obstacles to writing fiction, I am ashamed to admit I have not written much of anything. A few more blog posts, yes. (Few being the operative word.) But nothing that will start me along my slow, long struggle to reach the bestseller lists.
Like I said in that first post, I’ve had nothing but gobs and gobs of free time to write. And yet, I’ve done gobs and gobs of just about everything but write. (Well, no, that’s not really true. All I've really done is watched gobs and gobs of The X-Files, and Quantum Leap, thanks to a week and a half of leave time, and a subscription to Netflix, which, I hereby declare, is the greatest thing since Nutella. (Why Nutella? Well, let’s face it folks, “sliced bread” isn’t really all that great, is it? You could easily buy a whole loaf of bread and slice it yourself. But how would you possibly get all that chocolately and hazelnutty goodness whipped up so smoothly on your own? … I rest my case.)
In my defense, during all this time in which I haven’t been writing, I’ve at least been thinking about writing. In fact, I’ve done so much thinking, and so much introspection, that I may have finally discovered exactly what it is that has kept me from putting pen to paper (or hands to keyboard, as it were), more often.
It’s my imagination. I’m a prisoner of my own imagination.
(This, of course, is a natural sequel for “The Tyranny of the Blank Page,” but I have to admit, I’m beginning to wonder what it says about me, when I resort to using such violent words in association with something I claim to love so much…)
If you’ve ever seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption, you might remember a character named Brooks Hatlen. Brooks was a white-haired, older gentleman, who had spent his entire adult life inside the Shawshank facility. At one point in the movie, he gets released. (I don’t remember if he was paroled, or if his sentence was up. It’s not important. The point is, he got out of prison.) Brooks got a job bagging groceries at a supermarket, and found himself a small apartment. The thing is, he had spent so much of his life at Shawshank, that he didn’t know how to function anywhere else. Inside the prison walls, he was safe. The minute he stepped outside, however, everything fell apart. Nothing was what he expected it to be, and he simply couldn’t adjust. He was so frustrated and so scared by his failure to adapt to the outside world, that he wound up hanging himself.
You must be thinking, how could this possibly be related to writing? Well, let me see if I can explain what I mean when I say my imagination is a prison.
When I get an idea for something, whether it’s a poem, a short story, or a novel, it’s always perfect. At the moment of conception, when my mind gets the very first inkling of something that would be worth writing, the entity is complete, whole, and pristine. It’s almost as though the start, the middle, and the end, are all wrapped up in a little ball, or better yet, a single point.
The Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote a story called “All At One Point.” It was set during the time just before the Big Bang, when everything, and I mean everything, was converged in a central, infinitesimal point. People were always fighting, because there was no room to move around. Everyone, by definition of the point they were trapped in, was invading everyone else’s personal space. There were plants, and animals, and houses, and everything else we think of when we think of the world, even though it was before most of those things had evolved, or were invented. The story required a great degree of suspension of disbelief, but if you could manage to put aside your questions and doubts, and your junior high school physics, it made for really entertaining reading.
I mention Calvino’s story to try and explain what an idea looks like in my mind. It’s all converged in a point. A tiny speck. And yet, it’s all there: characters, a plot, lines of dialogue, a great opening sentence, and an even better closing. All the symbols, all the wonderful descriptions, all the joy, all the heartbreak, is wrapped up inside itself, around itself, in this beautiful, pristine form.
The difficulty starts when I try to take the ideas out of my head, and put them on paper. To take something that exists in a perfect, untouched, abstract state, and give it a physical shape. To take these incredible visions, this amazing potential, and transform it into letters and words, and hope that none of the greatness gets lost in translation.
My imagination is a prison because, just like old Brooks inside Shawshank, my ideas are safe inside my imagination. As long as they stay there, they remain perfect. They have the best possible opening line, the best possible final sentence, and, most important of all, everything in between conveys exactly what I wanted to express, in exactly the right way, so that the reader takes away every single nuance, and every single feeling I wanted them to have.
The minute I start to actually write, however, things can only go downhill. If an idea is perfect inside my mind, then when it leaves, and starts to take shape as not a notion, but a novel, it can only get worse. Maybe I won’t find just the right word. Maybe I won’t be subtle enough. Maybe I’ll be too subtle. Maybe the way the character looks to me in dim light, or moonlight, or broad daylight, won’t be the way he looks to my readers, because I’ve failed to describe him the right way. Maybe they won’t laugh when I want them to. Or maybe they’ll laugh when I don’t want them to. Maybe they won’t cry, because my writing doesn’t convey the torturous, soul-sucking emotional agony my character is in.
And now, for a fun break, here are two quotes that summarize this feeling, and also show me I am not alone in this neurosis:
The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it. – Jules Renard
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
I know that this fear is a big part of why I don’t write as much as I should. What I don’t know is where it came from, or how to make it go away. Making it go away is probably very simple. I would think that writing more is the only way to make it go away. The more often I overcome this fear, the less I’ll have to fear, right? Once you’ve slain six dragons, slaying the seventh is a piece of cake.
As for where it came from, well, I’m not really sure how to answer that. I suspect it has a lot to do with what I talked about in “The Tyranny of the Blank Page.” The rest of it, though, has to do with my own expectations.
In all the time I’ve spent thinking (and not writing) in the past few weeks, I realized there’s more to it than what I said about living up to the standards of other writers. The fear of falling so far short of my personal literary idols is very real, so I don’t want to dismiss it. However, I have come to realize that what has stopped me from writing is actually the fear of living up to my own standards. The ideas in my head are so beautiful in their undisturbed state, and the heart of the issue is that I doubt my ability to make them as good when I put them on paper.
The thing is, I don’t know why I question my talent. I’ve proven to myself over and over again that I can do it. During the past four years (and I can NOT believe it’s been that long), I’ve written an impressive collection of JAG fan fiction stories. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of fan fiction, in a nutshell, you take the characters from a TV show (or movie), and write your own stories with them in it. Some people try to make their stories just like regular episodes. Others, like me, take a more literary approach. We use the characters, stay true to their backstories, and stick to show canon, but we write as if it’s a “normal” short story or novella. (Go ahead and laugh … how do you think those old Star Trek novels got started? And I bet some of those people have made plenty of money over the years!)
I used to be embarrassed about my obsession with JAG. It was all I talked about, all I thought about, and all I wanted to think about. I got hooked on it in early 2002, and wrote my first “fic” in October of that year. I watched it as often as I could, which, courtesy of syndication on the USA Network, was about three times a day. JAG had been on the air since 1995. Thanks to those reruns, and also to being unemployed, I caught up on six seasons in about six months. Through not having a job at all, to having a job I hated, to being in graduate school, to hating graduate school, and through joining the military, JAG was the one thing I could always count on to cheer me up. I scoured the Internet for JAG-related websites, and was certainly not disappointed. I came across a few fan fiction sites, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I used the phrase “used to be embarrassed” about my fan fiction hobby, because enough time has passed, and I’ve written enough stories, that I’m actually very proud of what I’ve accomplished. Since I do not own the copyright for JAG or any of the associated characters, I can’t have my stories published in “the real world.” I do, however, have a relatively large following on the Internet. (I post my stories to several websites, each time making sure that it is clearly stated that I do not own the copyrights, that no infringement is intended, and that no money is being made from my work. And, as I constantly had to tell myself during those years of writing nothing but JAG fanfics, it was better than writing nothing! … Kind of like when I write in this blog!)
I’m very proud of the JAG writing I’ve done. And, even though I can’t make a name for myself in the literary world by using characters someone else invented, the effort I’ve put into those stories has without question made me a better writer. I loved working on those stories, since they allowed me to be immersed so deeply in the JAG world. And now, when I look back on the pieces I produced, my heart gets warmer not only because I remember how there were days when JAG (and the online community it introduced me to) seemed like the only good thing in my life, but more so now because I see how much my writing has improved. My first stories were good. The ones in the middle were better. The latest ones are excellent. So, even though I won’t be able to buy a yacht off the royalties from them, the true payoff is the improvement in my craft. Writing so many of those stories helped me to fit the pieces of the puzzle together better. How did all the individual scenes fit into the bigger picture? Was one particular line of dialogue so essential, that I needed to build an entire scene around it? Or, my most hated, was a certain scene so good, and so well written, but just didn’t jell with the rest of it? Would I have to let it fall on the cutting room floor, and accept that just because it sounded good, didn’t mean it worked in that particular story?
Anyway, I mentioned my catalogue of JAG stories because they are proof not only that I can overcome my fear, but that the fear is unfounded in the first place. I wasn’t so afraid at the beginning, when I first started writing fan fiction. But maybe that’s because my stories were simple, and relatively short. But later on, during the last two years, as my writing itself got better, the stories I wanted to tell become more complex.
I’ve never been very good at coming up with plots. I’ve always relied on the notion that my writing was strong enough, and the JAG characters so well formed, that readers would hardly notice they were reading thirty pages of description, dialogue, and exposition, with nothing actually “happening.”
And it worked, too! Readers loved it! I had them fooled, bless their giant, JAG-loving hearts! The thing was, I wasn’t fooled. I knew I was going to have to learn how to write a decent plot, if I ever wanted to be a “real” writer.
I have since written two JAG stories with (if I do say so myself) very kick-ass plots. Both stories were extremely well-received. Readers liked them, and they told me so. And, more important, I liked them. I was quite satisfied, and not a little impressed, with how they both turned out.
The funny thing is, I remember how terrified I was while I was writing them. I had a very clear picture of certain scenes in my mind, and I was convinced I’d never be able to do them justice on paper. The pivotal moments wouldn’t be as dramatic as I wanted them to be. As I had imagined they would be. I wouldn’t do a good enough job of leading up to them. Or they were so complex I couldn’t get a handle on them. I was like an interior decorator, working with a completely empty room. I knew I had a living room, but depending on what color I chose for the walls, and for the carpet, the room would have an entirely different feel. Putting a sofa on the left side could create a whole different look from putting it on the right. With these two stories, everything wound up in the right place, but it took a long time to move the pieces around. It took a lot of arranging and rearranging, before it sounded just right.
The great thing was, I did it by myself. I asked other writers, whose work I admired, for advice. I even went so far as to ask one of them if she would co-write one of the stories with me, since I doubted, even from the very first moment, that I could “pull it off.” She was too busy working on something else at the time, so I wound up writing it on my own. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. All the good ideas on those pages, all the drama, the suspense, the joy, and the sadness, came from me. There are a few specific scenes that come to mind when I think of these two stories. A few scenes, around which everything else was hinged. They were pivotal moments, and I didn’t want them to fall flat. The good news is, general consensus by my “fans” said they didn’t. And, even better, I say they didn’t. Even now, months and years later, when I reread them, I don’t think I could have done a better job.
When I go back and read some of those old stories, I’m often surprised at how good they are. (When I go back too far, though, like to junior high school, or even elementary school, I’m embarrassed by most of what I wrote, and if bits and pieces of book reports or very early attempts at short stories ever turn up in the Enquirer, or on the E! network, when I’m famous, I’ll deny everything.) But seriously, at the risk of singing my own praises, I’m usually pretty impressed when I read my work. I sometimes even say to myself, “Damn, this is good! I can’t believe I wrote this!”
Like Garcia Marquez, I am always afraid when I sit down to write. Even if I know what I want to say; even if I already know the ending. Even if I know everything that has to happen, I doubt my ability to string it all together in a way that anyone in their right mind would want to read.
My friend S’s favorite author, John Irving, said it best: “I don’t know how far away the end is – only what it is. I know the last sentence, but I am very much in the dark concerning how to get to it.”
My strategy used to be the same. I would come up with a fabulous ending, and then, all I needed to do was figure out how to reach it. This is still my favorite way to write, but my last few JAG stories were written very much out of order. I wrote scenes as they developed in my head, and then, when I had enough of the major scenes done, I wrote the little things necessary to connect them all.
I’ve realized I can write from start to finish, or finish to start, or completely jumbled up, and it’ll always turn out fine. The trick is keeping sight of the big picture. Where do each of those scenes fit in? What needs to happen before I can put a scene in its proper place? What needs to happen afterward? Is the plot strong enough to stand on its own, without a lot of character insight? Or, on the other side, are the characters, and their interactions with each other, so powerful that I don’t need an amazing plot?
I go through what I call a “simmering” stage, when I write. I get an idea, and it has to simmer in my mind for a while. I have to think about it before I can write about it. I have to have enough of it planned out in my head before I’ll be ready to start writing. I can come up with details anywhere: daydreaming at work (my favorite); laying in bed; reading someone else’s work. I’ve started carrying around a mini notebook, so I can jot things down before I forget them. At one point, while I was working on my longest JAG story (which weighed in at a whopping 224 pages—in a 9-pt font!!), my desk was covered in fluorescent-colored Post-it-Notes, each one with a few lines of dialogue, or the gist of a scene I had yet to write.
Sometimes ideas simmer for days, sometimes months, and in one rare case, it took two years. (I got a great idea for a story in August 2004, and even wrote a bare-bones outline. I got sidetracked by various things, including another story that I chose to write first (and which ended up at a not-too-shabby 176 pages, in 10-pt font). But, I never gave up on it. It was always in the back of my mind, doing what my ideas do best: simmering. I kept my notes in a safe place. I remembered the central theme I wanted to present, and I stayed true to it. I am pleased to report that the pot finally boiled over this summer. I started writing it in July, and finished in September. (Not bad, for 92 pages! It still tickles me to know I incorporated lines of dialogue I had written two years earlier! It just goes to show, you never know when you’ll use something. If not now, then maybe in something you write a few years down the road. If it’s genuinely good, it’ll be just as good later. And if it’s not, then you know it wasn’t that good to begin with…)
Besides the fear of living up to my own expectations, there’s one other thing that makes me question myself every time I sit down to write. It’s the little voice that tells me no one would ever want to read about _________. I don’t know if this is something all authors have to overcome, the “Who Cares Syndrome.”
I wonder if Betty Smith ever asked herself why anyone would want to read about a poor girl growing up Brooklyn in the 1920s. (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Or if John Jakes ever told himself that no one would read a saga about families torn apart by the Civil War. (North and South). Or if Terry Goodkind ever asked himself why anyone would give a damn about love, war, and one man’s journey to fulfill his destiny in a faraway, imaginary land? (Wizard’s First Rule).
I can only rely on the truth I find in my absolute favorite quote about writing:
“When I want to read a good book, I write one.” -- Benjamin Disraeli
Every JAG story I’ve written was a story I wanted to read. But, since no one had written it yet, it was up to me. If I wanted to read about __________, I was going to have to write it, myself. And, I must say, four years, and I-don’t-know-how-many-stories later, I’ve done a pretty good job. I haven’t done much writing, but I’ve done enough to know that I don’t trust anyone else to write the way I do. If I had given one of my ideas to someone else, they would have written the story in an entirely different way. Not necessarily worse, but definitely different. And it’s just like the quote says: if I want to read a certain kind of story, hear specific kinds of language, and form specific kinds of images in my mind, I’m going to have to write the story myself.
After all, I’m the only one who can read my mind. I’m the only one who can take those abstract images and transform them into the exact words I want, the exact pace, the exact tone. So, no matter how afraid I am to do it, I have no choice. I’m the only one who can.
And now, I’ll leave you with a selection of my favorite quotes about writing, taken from http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
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Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~~Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~~Mark Twain
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Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~~Gene Fowler
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Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ~~Flannery O'Connor
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The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys. ~~C. Astrid Weber
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An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~~Gustave Flaubert
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A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~~Thomas Mann
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Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all. ~Franklin P. Adams
**Also, if you're interested in the JAG stories, you can find them at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StarTrailsJAGfic (There's a link in the list to the right on this page.) But, I have to warn you, some of the stories there are of an "adult" nature. If you're under 18, you might go blind if you try to read them!
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