Whether we recognize that our lives are interesting or not, each person is a walking fount of history, humor, grief, and loves. To you, your life and the lives of those you know best may seem wildly fascinating or dull as bricks--no matter. The trick is in the storytelling. I'm a miserable story-teller; I forget bits and pieces (and sometimes the largest, most important bits), I interrupt my plots to apologize for possible fallacy and lies, and I feel my audience slipping away from me, slowly, then quickly, looking over their shoulders to the refreshment table or pinching their children until they cry.
Okay, maybe it's not that bad. But even if, like me, you lack a bit of confidence in your oral skills, you can find a home, a place where you can wander at ease in diverse terrains of memory and imaginings and my favorite things: Words. There's a whole world to each word; they're heavy things, sometimes holy temples, sometimes so hot you can barely hold onto them. And each person is full of words, the stories of their lives and longing, the idiosyncrasies that make each person so perfectly peculiar and fascinating. An editor once said to me that he was unsure that I'd have enough stories or ideas to write a weekly newspaper column. I smiled--as long as I'm living among people, there are more stories than I will ever have time to write down.
Really, this could be a class named: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Journalism. What story doesn’t find its start in the wrists of the writer, in her mind, history, and personality? Whether the setting in your compositions are as familiar as your own shoes or whether there’s only a kernel of familiarity in a character you create (that only you, and maybe one other person, knows), your writing will always flow up and out of you, and parts of you will cling to the words as they travel onto the page.
By this I do not mean that I want you to succumb to that annoying and facile task of navel-gazing. Rather, I’ll always recommend that you take the harder road. If writing is easy, if you think you’ve arrived, then you need to go to the beginning and start again. Bad writing bangs around in the writer, making echoes and embarrassing sounds. Good writing is like a shout: it originates with the writer, of course, but leaves immediately, travels far, and leaves the rest of us scratching our heads as to the source.
As writers have said for ages, you must be a good collector. Happy is the writer who keeps a journal in his pocket. Even scraps of paper, stuffed into an envelope, will do (but not for this class). You must sit quietly, learn to eavesdrop, learn to listen beyond mere words. Collect small things, such as the dip of a head, the crease of a mouth, unsaid things that bubble in silence. Don’t worry about their purpose; just write them down, or they will leave you. Maybe you've heard that we are sponges that absorb everything we need, but I do believe that's wrong--or just lazy. This is what I say to myself when I am desperate and undisciplined. Run, pursue, catch the details, and then take a pin and impale them to your notebook.
Never forget that you are many things beside a writer. Do not aim to be a writer alone, just as you would not plan to be just a parent or just an accountant or just a student. If you want to be terribly unhappy, work to be just a writer. Then, when you fail as a writer, which you will, then your identity will crumble as well. Gird yourself with many identities, interest yourself in diverse and wonderful things; remember to be surprised and let yourself wander into new houses and countries and shake the hands of many people. Drink tea with many people. Then you will be whomever you are first and also a writer.
You are in college. I know the miseries and joys of college, and chief among them was never being able to run away from myself. While this is a common malady, it seemed worse and more painful because I was a writer. I never experienced anything without tucking it away, sanding it down, ironing it into prose. Now, a busy mother of three, a writer but also a gardener, wife, reader, cook, friend, and still a child of my parents—this has not changed. What has changed is my attitude toward it; I relax and do not let this sense of never engaging fully bother me. Perhaps “engaging fully” as an adult is unattainable, unless you are hysterical, on drugs, or struck by pain. The older I grow, the more I forget about myself, but still carry around that writer-tendency to always be drafting experiences in my head even as I am experiencing them. (And I don't mean Face Book stuff, those pithy barks that we send into the darkness. I mean essays, stories, even novels). But I find that while I do not always remember things well naturally, I remember them when I write. Though I do not always perceive correctly, especially about myself, the fog clears when I write. Many writers start their memoirs just this way—searching for answers.
Clarity comes with many drafts and a whole lot of editing. Good memoir, good fiction, good poetry, makes connections. These connections between experiences, thoughts, flashbacks, dialogue, characters, and setting—they hold together a story like the studs of a building. You might purge yourself and even do some really great writing, but if there are no real connections, no structure, your composition will fall apart immediately, lack movement and strength, and you will, as I often have, feel a deep sense of discontentment when you reach the end. And if you know, deep down, that you’re not done writing, you can bet that your readers will know, too.
But that’s what workshop is for. Being a writer all alone with the computer glowing on your midnight face may make you feel powerful and confident (or it may make you feel the opposite), but isolation will rarely produce final drafts. Many is the time I have finished a story or poem and congratulated myself heartily on my talents, to show it to my in-house editor (whom you all probably know) to disastrous results. A few times I have really written something good the first time. Okay, maybe one time. Mostly, I have learned to buckle myself in for a long, long ride, for many drafts, for frustration and also a great deal of laughing when I realize just how bad my wonderful writing is. Many times I have shelved a story, thinking it was done, to realize a year later I must rewrite it again. Just relax. You have lots of time. You have endless energy. Writing is not the best thing that will ever happen in your life; it’s good, maybe you can’t live without it, but it’s not anything that should fill you with the fear of loss or failure. The best advice a writing professor once gave me was this: “You think you can’t write right now? Going through a rough spot? Frustrated? Good! That means you’re growing as a writer.”
To be in a room with people who have come together for a common purpose, to celebrate something they love—this is a good place to be. It’s a safe place, a place to grow without fear, a place to trust one another. I feel this deeply when I eat with others in my home, and a workshop class is just like this. We bring our dishes to the table; we eat slowly, thoughtfully, with appreciation. Of course, unlike the well-mannered people we are who would never complain about Aunt Martha’s bland stew, in workshop we make suggestions or ask sometimes uncomfortable questions. But nobody is afraid that their dish will get thrown in their faces; no one will leave empty.
Did you reach the end? Hurrah for you! Here's your circus, courtesy of my girls and their cousins:
