My
friend Elizabeth and I met for dinner this evening, and she discussed a certain
poet's work, , saying, " i love it, but I'm not sure i understand it.
"
"Can
we love something we don't understand?" I asked. She and I had a good
discussion on writing. Elizabeth is actively writing, working on her MFA. I am
envious, even though she struggles with literary analysis. Analysis and
creation are in opposition, so it's difficult to go into analysis mode when one
creates writing. Lately I am neither creating or analyzing.
It's
rare when I have writers block, but this week, a harvest moon, a dead mouse and
a steady stream of rejections have all contributed to building a brick wall
between me and words. Blaming the moon for my creative vacuum is a cliché, but
otherwise I'd have to blame political ads, a frantic work pace and bad hair, and
disturbing news about a former student. So why not blame the moon? The moon at least make me sound wistful.
A
dead mouse should lead to a poem, or a story, but I work in a school library
with robust circulation stats, and I teach two college comp classes at the high school. My role as a ‘writing
Nazi’ sometimes backfires because the more writing I assign, the more I have to grade. This week my students write three drafts of
one piece, so maybe i was analyzing a little. Whatever the case, I had nothing
leftover for wordplay.
Okay,
so where does the dead mouse come in?
A
week ago Friday, at the end of a hectic day of checking books in and out to seventh graders, my assistant leaped on top of a wheeled desk chair.
"There's
a mouse in here!" She shrieked
It
ran under a trash can under the front desk, and when I lifted the can, the
critter skittered into my office. I've never been scared of mice. When I was a
kid I was the one who had to to clean the traps when my mother would climb on
chairs and screech.
"He'll
probably move on when he gets hungry." I said.
On
Monday I saw no evidence of the mouse, and forgot about him. Until Thursday
morning. i opened my office door and a stench assaulted me. Like someone farted
on sweaty socks. .
i
sniffed around, looked under my desk and behind the door. What is that smell?
The
door to my office closet doesn't latch and always hangs ajar. When I opened it to set my purse on the shelf
my olfactory went into overdrive.
Brown
streaks dotted the white floor like smudged fingerprints, peppered with what resembled burnt sesame seeds. Mouse
poop. Nestled inside a blanket on the floor of my coat closet was the dead
mouse. The poor creature died alone and starved on the floor of my office
closet. Yes, i know, mice are vermin, and pardon my anthropomorphism, but it
was a baby mouse, no bigger than my thumb.
But
I can't blame deceased rodents for my sloth. Perhaps the two more rejections this week from agents
spawned my inertia.
Rejection
has become a unwelcome habit, like a yo yo diet that never works, tempting me
to ask,why should I bother?
I
sit in the cafe of Barnes and Noble, surrounded by books, many of which are crappy
books. I know MY crappy books are better than many of THESE crappy books. Aren't they? I know, I know, writing is an
art and book selling is a business. We have to write what’s marketable.
But
I refuse to write fifty shades of rip offs.
I
COULD if I wanted to, yet I risk losing credibility with myself. It's more
important to me to write stories that matter than stories that sell. And there
are plenty of great stories that sell. Kite Runner, Fahrenheit
451, The Grapes of Wrath, and anything by YA authors Judy Blume,
Laurie Halse Anderson and John Green.
Stories
matter.
Yet
publishing seems to have taken a page from Hollywood and TV by flooding the
shelves with replicas of the Twilight, Hunger Games, and Wimpy Kid.
Series. The originals sold and continue to sell, and publishers are banking on
marketability of their mutations.
Is there
hope for those of us whose tales are character driven rather than dependant on hackneyed
plots? On my desk is a framed rejection which says, “I wish we had the room to
publish all that we love.” I let those words keep me from giving up.
Here
is a short, eloquent video showing the importance of fiction.
AmI whining too much, or am I justified? Or both?
:Writing
Exercise:
consider the following words:
Spoon
Reckless
Wail
Dazzle
Shortbread
Chair
Gray
Catapult
Somnolent
Tree
You
may change pluralization and part of speech. Use all ten words in a poem,
paragraph or story. You have ten minutes. Go!
