Just Write

One of the things I love about teaching a writing class is the energy that is created when people talk about writing. You can feel it in the air, and, for me personally, I become energized by the experience. This has been the case this week, as I have been running the Cole Summer Writers Institute, and have had the opportunity to work with some very creative young people. And the one thing I've noticed is that these kids, despite having to deal with the typical adolescent type traumas, just like to write! They come in on time, some even early, and start writing. During break time they grab ass a bit, but are soon back at the writing. No egos in the way, no posturing, just writing (and some doodling, too, but who doesn't?).

Which is a lot different from the experiences I have had with adult writing groups. Whether it was in a living room or college classroom, it always seemed that the room was too small to accommodate both the writers and their egos. Now I was one of them, too, so this little riff is a bit of self-inflicted criticism. It just always seemed that someone was trying to one-up someone else, or that the well intentioned bit of criticism had a sort of acidic barb on it- you know, too sharp, too poisonous to be misconstrued as simply innocent or well meaning. In fact, I recall one graduate fiction class that remains to his date a defining moment in my development as a writer.

In that class, oh, some fifteen men and women earning graduate credit for this seminar in fiction writing in the early 1990's, we had to produce and share a written draft. In short, we had to workshop it for the group. As the writer, you could not speak for the first bit of time (maybe fifteen minutes, I honestly can't remember) as the rest of class constructively ripped your story to shreds. My story, about a young woman who must decide between leaving her childhood home, mother, and grandmother for life with her fiance, had an opening scene in which the protagonist is putting on mascara. Now, in my early days, I had about as much experience with mascara as I do now. I was observant, so I drew on my experience of watching my wife put on her mascara in front of the mirror, and translated it to the story. But I got into trouble when I thought that a really cool visual metaphor would be to have the mascara form into little clumped balls and to have it fall on the vanity top below. Of course, I now know that mascara doesn't behave this way, but then I didn't have a clue.

There happened to be a woman in the class who either had it out for me or considered herself an expert on mascara. She lit into me like I had never been lit into before, essentially excoriating me for my lack of cosmetics knowledge, and concluding that my story lacked any real substance because of my tiny error on page one. I don't know why she slammed me the way she did- excessively- but she did, and it taught me a lesson. I learned quickly that I had to be able to weather the assaults of other, in essence to develop the proverbial thick skin that writers often talk about. Something like this never happens with students, at least not at the middle school level. I think they're so self-conscious that they may be afraid to lash out at others, but, then again, I've seen some pretty vicious middle schoolers, too, and they're really nasty when they do lash out.

The moral of the story is this: just write. Forget the critics, both inside and out, and just let it flow. In the end, the writing is what matters, not the responses. Tune them out and the world opens for you. Let them bug you and it becomes a closed, scary place.

Boredom

Funny. I find myself boring at this point, locked into my own personal tailspin.

Anyone else want a piece?

I did get a lead on a new story, but couldn't start writing it tonight. Instead, I get to listen to my foolish neighbor's son play his trumpet really loud at 10:00 pm in my quiet, cookie cutter suburban neighborhood. He must be trying to piss people off, like any good teenager will. He isn't too bad, which is a blessing, but it's still kind of late for an impromptu jazz concert (it really isn't jazz, either, but that's the closest I can get.)

Maybe my old story won't go away, and the new one isn't strong enough yet.

I tried putting all of my stories together in book format, but didn't have it in me, and abandoned it with only a few ideas found. It's like it's all some kind of illusion, and I'm not buying it anymore, but a huge part of me wants to (it would be easier).

Tomorrow's another day. I'm still bored...

See the cat? See the cradle?

I just finished Cat's Cradle, my third Vonnegut this summer and a close favorite just ahead of Slaughterhouse-5. The images in Cat's Cradle are just so preposterous and funny, but so unerringly true. The San Lorenzan puppet monarchy, the whole ice-nine apocalypse, and the dead on takes on sex and relationships all are true and revealing. In fact, it is Vonnegut's ease with symbols, the eponymous child's game of the title, in particular, that really give this book its thematic punch. He uses it a bunch of ways, but in all cases, they really hit the mark in terms of summing up the human experience as we know it. But these are just generalities, let's look at a solid cases. Take, for example, the image of little Newt Hoenikker riffing on the Bokononist religion at the end of chapter eight-one.

Little Newt snorted. "Religion!"
"Beg your pardon?" Castle said.
"See the cat?" asked Newt. " See the cradle?"

You can see him holding each hand up parallel to the other and grinning. The image of the cat's cradle, the structure composed of interlocking strings between your fingers, is pretty relevant, and testament to the genius of Vonnegut. All constructs- here he picks on religion, but love and marriage and work and organized sports, for that matter, all could fall under the symbolic auspices of it, too- are composed of these metaphysical strings and fingers. In most cases, the things we hold most dear can be melted down to this metaphysical shell game. Without faith, baby, there ain't no religion. No cat in there. No cradle. Just strings. We hold it together.

A friend told me about a woman who makes her own reality, her own happiness, out of the rather meager crumbs she has to work with. I thought of this while reading the book, because I think in some ways we all do this. It only really starts to crumble when we begin to question the reality we construct. If we let our rational sides take over, all hell breaks loose, and the cradle falls apart. I suppose the happier people are the ones who cherish the cat's cradle of their own making. I've done it. We've all done it. The question of the hour is: How long can it be kept up?

Of course that doesn't help me much now. I'm trying to work through some things, and the idea of it all being smoke and mirrors, strings and fingers, is thoroughly depressing. I guess you have to work on Vonnegut in the right frame of mind. He is very funny, but the humor cuts close to the bone, so when you laugh you kind of wince, too. At least I did- whatever that means.

Maybe I am in the right frame of mind, after all.