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My Profile
She blinded him with whiteness - 2008-07-25
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2:03 p.m. - 2008-02-04
The other day my MIL asked why I don't write fiction. I gave her a smile and threw out something about how a writer has to write what comes and fiction just wasn't there for me. She nodded like she understood, which is what all non-writers do when we wordsmiths talk about our craft. Over the years writers have done a pretty good job of weaving together a handy defense and description of How Writing Works. And rule #1 is always: Writers are always at the mercy of the muse. This, btw, is bullshit. But we get away with it because it sounds good and gives another layer of gilding to the cool arty aura that makes us oh so special, we the 'other directed'. The dream spinners who create something from nothing. Accountants crunch numbers. Bakers make pies. But writers? We fill up blank pages with words. Words which tell stories about people and places that didn't exist until we brought them into being. Even when we write about true things, 'real' things, the magic applies because it is only through our words that particular story exists. It's our mojo that sifts and sorts all the facts and shuffles them into a tidy (and hopefully entertaining) stack for the reader to thumb through at their leisure. Thomas Jefferson was a real guy but it's the biographer who decides whether to paint the man as a mad genius or a statesman or an 18th century horndog. So MIL bought my rap about my muse's blind spot and I was off the hook. Truth is I can write fiction. I choose not to. Why? Because my fiction scares the shit out of me. About six years ago I ran screaming out of the fiction room in my brain. Ran screaming with my hair on end and my heart just about bursting out of my chest. I ran, stopping just long enough to slam the door behind me, lock it and nail some boards over for good measure. And I never went back. See, rule #1 does apply sort of. Any halfway competent writer can churn out something in a variety of styles on any subject real or imagined. Whether it's any good is up for grabs, marketability is a different animal from whether the writing to hand can be done at all, the act of writing is flexible enough for any hack to whomp up stuff from ad copy to a bedtime story. It's just a matter of opening the proper mental mouth and letting the words fall out. Rule #1 applies because I don't know what those words will be ahead of time. I don't know what story they'll tell. And brother, the last time I opened my fiction mouth the words that fell out terrorized me. Prone to melancholy and no little drama, but overall I think I'm a nice person. Nicer these days than in the dark ones, for sure. I can think of a couple people I lacerated when I was hurting so bad. Sorry, if you're still out there reading. Mostly I can talk about the ugly things that happen to me without being ugly, you know? Aside from putting the boots to the ex once in a while I take no joy from inflicting punishment either. The avid lapping at the blood pools surrounding Britney, the caustic cawing of Joan Rivers during her Liz Taylor years, the fricken meanness saturating pop culture these days disgusts me. I can think of a few popular bloggers who seem to delight in making mincemeat of their coworkers and neighbors. For them charity doesn't begin at home, 'charity' is an unknown concept. Anyhow, what I'm getting at here is I don't do mean, violent and ugly. So when that short story about the hitchhiker skewed off into something so sick and nasty as to make Saw seem like a Disney flick I freaked out. I was terrified by what I'd written. Terrified and terrorized. I couldn't deal. That's when I fled the scene. And God help me I haven't had the chops to go back. Forget about finishing that story, I've been unable to face writing fiction of any kind. Afraid I will spew out another round of filth and depravity. Lately though, now that I've gotten my discipline back about a few things, I've been thinking I should stop being such a wuss about fiction. It's time to embrace my Jungian shadow self and at least acknowledge I am fully able to write garbage. Hurtful, cruel, sadistic to write / masochistic to read garbage. I understand it's a baby step. The truly awful part will be acknowledging I can write good garbage. Marketable garbage. My mental upchuck could probably make me a damn fine living, because most horrible of all…there's hordes of folk who love that shit. I honestly don't know if I can be that much of a whore. If I could turn my back on my personal values to actually add to the filth and profit from it. Scary. Scary. Scary. Before I have to worry about prostituting my word pollution I guess I have to pry those boards off, squirt some graphite in the rusted lock and open that damn door.
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