So I've spent my short life, thinking that when I grow up, I'll be a writer. I've always been a story teller. As a child, I wrote because I liked to make up stories, and draw my own *master* illustrations (that I imagined were as talented as my artist father's paintings).
Punishment for me growing up, was always an essay assignment from my mom. Pending how bad I'd been, the word limit would adjust from 500 to 5000, and when I was really bad, there would be innumerable re-writes. Those of you who are writers now have NEVER experienced an editor as ruthless as my mother. Not for those of thin-skin. And if you argued your stance, she painstakingly diagrammed your sentences to show you exactly why you couldn't split that infinitive, or make your direct object your noun. Do kids today even learn how to diagram sentences????
I guess all of this writing, made me a writer. Or so THEY thought.
When I became an editor of my high school newspaper, the heat turned up. Striving for perfection on my behalf, my mother would call up my uncle, a newspaper editor (now the editor-in-chief of a trade magazine) and hand me the phone. And I would have to sit there, and read my stories aloud for him, line-by-line. And this was AFTER she had edited the work. And he would go through, WORD BY WORD, and critique my work.
In college, I wrote for the university paper when I felt like it. Mostly just complained about stuff or people or activist groups that bugged me. I preferred the "popularity" activities, like parties and student government and drugs. And I studied literature. But I rarely wrote it. However, I didn't get off the hook that easily - they offered me a spot as a writing tutor, and I took it because what college kid can't use the extra cash?
Perhaps it will be no surprise to you that when I graduated college with my English Writing degree, I sure as hell didn't want to be a writer. I went through the motions of interviewing at one of the BIG publishing houses in NYC, and they offered me a job as an editor. So I decided to temp.
During my 5 years in NYC, I've experienced things that would blind my ancestors and are unimaginable to my parents. But I've hardly written about them.
I've reread many of the American classics, and felt my way blindly through the biographies and compilations of several of the 20th century poets, yet I can't recall have recorded an original ode worth keeping during that period.
Halloween, a couple of years ago. I go to a party in the East Village. I'm dressed as Medusa. I meet a guy, a friend of a friend, dressed as a Hari Krisha - shaved his head except for the ear curls and everything. We talk. He's "a writer," he tells me. I am fascinated.
"A writer?," I ask, "A REAL writer?"
He says "yes."
"You mean you don't have a real job?" (Brow furrows under plastic snake)
"Yes, my job is: I get up everyday and I write."
"Wow."
"Do you get paid for that? I mean, make enough money to live?"
"Yup."
"I used to write."
"Why don't you write anymore?"
"Uhhhh, I just..just, ahhh, lost interest...I, ahhhh, don't have anything to write about..my, ummmm, laptop doesn't have a word processor..." (voice fades as weak excuse, follows weak excuse)
"I write in long hand, for two hours, immediately when I get up in the morning."
"ooooooooh."
And the next thing I know the Hari Krishna turned to me and determinedly looked me right in the eye. Or both eyes.
He said, "If you weren't a writer, you wouldn't be speaking to me right now. If you weren't a writer, we never would have met."
Medusa, for once, had nothing to say.
And then he looked around at this wild party that we had kind out inched out of, toward the outer perimeter, and said, "Look at all these people here. And we are the only ones having a conversation."
Medusa, still speechless.
He tops it with, "I'm glad I met you."
I think the plastic snakes are constricting my tongue. It's Medusa gone wrong! I've turned myself into STONE! I can't breathe. I can't speak. So I don't.
And, digging deep in the recesses of my polluted mind, I willed the billions of molecules in my body to unite and without so much as smiling at the Hari Krishna, I walk away. I felt lightheaded. I need to get out, get some air. I think on my way, I whispered to a roommate or two that I was leaving. Maybe. Maybe not. I can't even remember going home.
I never saw the Hari Krishna again, although I had our mutual friend invite him to numerous parties. Leave it to me to freak out the guy dressed as a Hari Krishna.
Fast Forward to today. Four book concepts half-started-but- laying-still-by-the-wayside-in-the-cesspool-called-my-bedroom-later, I keep this journal. And it's not even a good one. It's like the poor man's journal. Not titillating. No witty observations. Afraid to really write what I'm doing or thinking because it would probably scar my readers.
And after this desperate run away from the world of writing, I find myself still wanting to get in. Get into the elite group of NYC writers. Spend my summer at Yaddo. Spend debaucherous nights at Elaine's and Upstate NY. Have a deviant fictious character in the next Bret Easton Ellis based on my bad behavior. Share "growing up" stories with David Sedaris.
And my plan to make this happen? Write a novel, you think? Submit short stories to local journals? Take a stab at script writing? Ha! Too logical. All week, all I am thinking is that I will submit my diaryland, primitive scrawl to the board at Yaddo. Yeah! That's a GREAT idea!!!!
Am I insane? And if so, will that be enough to get me in to Yaddo??? Because if I could just GET IN, I could produce something worth the paper it's printed on! Yes! I COULD be the next Anne Sexton! I am tormented...I CAN drink a stiff cocktail! I tell good stories! I COULD sleep around! I'm SUICIDAL - take me! I am troubled! I have a Checkered past! I am a great Conversationalist! I am witty - pls. accept me - I will happy stay in one of the smaller rooms! I will not complain! I will pick up my assigned lunch box every day - ON TIME - and I will return it on time as well!
Good thing I have this journal to back up my "talent." *SNORT*
These are the things I think about.
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