Outline for this post:
1)ego destruction,
2)a great sense of tiredness,
3) disgust and resignation caused by extreme ineptitude/non zen states of being.
December 1st. I remember a day, one fall ago, when I received a fateful email saying I would have to be in a novel writing workshop. I panicked. I danced around the room, shrieking obscenities and blocking the television, and then I sat down and wrote.
A few months later, I showed (and here, I want you to imagine a project done in haste and with little good will as a conglomerate blob of several types of clay, many instances of dried up play dough, a few bits of metal that were lying around, and those googly eyes used for sock puppets stapled on at irregular intervals), I showed this makeshift sculpture to my fellow work shoppers. It went over better than I thought; they gave the formation a name, spoke of it in coaxing words and with gentle syllables. I went home, cradling my monster. Perhaps it was something new, fresh, alive, and worth writing towards.
Fast forward another month. Not much time has passed, barely enough for me to meet with my professor and discuss the being that I slapped into life. I'm being workshopped again. Nothing big, something small, like a chapter describing the protagonist's relationship to her father. A moment of lucidity, in the madness, like what she eats for dinner. An inkling that, perhaps, out of this mass of clay I will wrest a living being, shivering and alive, drenched in the culpabilities and possibilities of all living things.
Two weeks later, I find myself again on the platform of judgment. The jury is weary: they have seen this all before, and they know now that the googly eyes are googly eyes. Their pens tap, and then jump out of their hands, splattering ink all over the floor. I don't turn away. I know what this all means.
KABLAM! KA-BLOOEY Loss! Pain! Remorse! A sense of complete and utter despair, coming home late at night and talking instead about things like the weather, trying to explain a joke you told in class but instead giving up, hands falling flat, dreaming of sentences that you forget to write down before you woke up, taking long walks where the characters shimmer and emerge in the reflection of the sidewalk, floating towards empty cigarette packs--thinking that maybe, somewhere on the other side of the veil, Miranda, Mike, the Mother and Father exist, that they beckon and wave towards freedom, and that you will make a collage for each of them, yellow and lace for the mother, orange and steel for Mike, red staircases for the father, and purple for Miranda, with kaleidoscope chips...all to hang above your workshop space, to keep inspiring, rejuvenating, and understanding who they are--
But the colors collapse into complete deflation. The sense that the world is a balloon and all the air has been let out, or stepped on by your brother. Words sputter and spin like the last bit of gasoline in a tank. Going nowhere. Getting out to push, wasting your strength. They eye you on the subway, they shouldn't be looking at you that way. Cradling the carcass in your clumsy hands. Alliteration--what folly. Metaphors--for the weak. All forgotten, now. All betrayed. I'll see the pages flying up to me, on the train tracks or in a dream.
The semester is almost over. I've been workshopped three times. I am completely spent. I refuse to show it to anybody else, to waste anybody else's time. A warning: never show people a project before it's ready. Your hoarding instinct, for once, is right. Showing a project to criticism and praise before the time is due--will destroy you.
I don't know how I describe it at this point. and don't think I will. 120 pages? How can I say that's accurate, when I will rewrite all of them? First person narrative? How can that be true, when I don't know if it's the voice of a 12 year old a 24 year old narrating the story?
For the sake of jest, I'll tell you what I have. It's a first person narrative. Miranda, a 12 year old girl. I wanted to name her Vicki, but the name came out differently, for some reason, and someone mentioned an illusion to Shakespeare's the Tempest, with the Miranda who is a dreamer. So be it. My Miranda, too, is insulated in her own world, with a lexicon derived from rock albums and the shadows on the walls. She is an only child, and lives in her own head, idling away the hours by drawing the shapes in her head in the shade of her bedroom.
Her father is a beekeeper. He brings her along from time to time, and she marvels at the order. Nature, with its own algorithms. Her father enters the hives bare, but she wears a mask. Strange, for she understands everything about herself and little of him.
Her mother is pregnant. A 12 year age gap, a woman idle and depressed with the monotony of her life, and she finds she is with child. Rejoicing.The buying of quilts, bottles, and maternity clothes. The opening of windows; dusting of the shelves. A cleaning that becomes compulsive with time. Also, a fixation with her health. She goes to the doctor often, for reasons unexplained. The father is in the beehives, the mother in the house.
Fast forward. Miranda, in the hospital, at the same time as the mother. Like sisters, they share a physical pain. Miranda sees her brother for the first time, and notes that he has the blue eyes she had always wanted. The mother is exhilarated; the father is nowhere to be seen.
That's what I have so far. A sermon, a joint, a few instances of humor and a bunch of unresolved tensions.
I'm glad the semester is over, and sorry to all involved. I'll start posting again regularly, now, but right now I'm spent.
Outline for the next post:
1) Disorganization
2) Elevated heart rate, adrenaline release at the mention of the words "voice"
3) a strong and sudden dislike for anything written in a stranger's pen
PS PS PS PS:
For the record, for anyone (and those numbers are very few) who is familiar with my work this semester and this blog:
1) the matter of voice: people criticized the voice as fluctuating between a 12 year olds and a 30 year olds. True, true. It does fluctuate drastically. It should be more consistent. I am in the process of ironing it out, making it as smooth as a linen setting. But also, on a certain note, this is how my voice sounds. Caught somewhere between an adult and a snot nosed kid! I use big words! I call using big words, using big words! I sound like a 12 year old, in real life, a lot of the time! Am I fundamentally flawed, or what? Doubtful--I doubt that I'm fundamentally flawed. But, by the end of the semester I felt like an old man in a young person's bar, saying why, what? Does age matter?
2) The matter of truthfulness: in truth, I am not an only child. No, I have five brothers! I am almost the opposite of an only child, if such a thing exists. It is true, I grew up without sisters. And, I spent much of my time by myself, in my room, reading and yelling at my brothers to get out. So--I both could and could not understand what it would be like for Miranda to grow up an only child. Why did I make her that way? Beats me. I think I just didn't want to do the work of writing out five people's characters.
3) The matter of character: If only, if only, what everyone told me wasn't true. But it all was. The father--conflicted. The mother--not depicted. Miranda--a mess of thought. Next fall, this will all be fixed. But not a word more till then.
4) The matter of humor, or why its not funny: je suis fatiguee.
More to come, as I try to nap and fail.
No comments:
Post a Comment