On Reading and Writing
This article was written in response to the following prompt: “Write about your experiences reading and writing.”
Here’s the thing: I’m suffering from writer’s block. But, see, it’s not the small-scale, can’t-type-a-few-words kind of block. It’s like that chick from The Exorcist, projectile-vomiting everywhere. Only, in my case, the vomit is horrible prose, the kind of prose that makes a reader want to revert to the days of Frog and Toad, where life was simple and no one tried to use the word “ethereal” effectively in an essay.
I’m just sayin’.
So, see, here’s my dilemma: I’m supposed to be writing a paper on my love of writing. And, really, at the moment, all that I want to do is chuck my laptop out the window, because everything I write sounds silly and trite, and not befitting of a budding writer at all.
I guess the ironic value of it all is to be appreciated, though really, it just serves to feed my neurosis. It’s not a big deal; I guess you have to be slightly neurotic to want to write, to want to arrange those tiny, black characters into a pattern that makes a sentence, into a pattern that makes any sense at all. All that you do is torture yourself with the effortless beauty of other people’s patterns, wishing and hoping that someday, yours may follow suit.
So why is it that I love writing? When I have days (months, really) like today, where nothing seems to go my way, and I keep accidentally typing the lyrics to Sweet Child O’Mine instead of responding to a prompt, sometimes it seems futile. Sometimes, on days like today, it seems like my love is entirely unrequited, abusive, bordering on the side of masochistic. But then there are those days when, finally, I get a sentence right, and everything just stops. And suddenly, as trite as it sounds, everything’s clear, and I’m in a house of glass, and I can see all of my characters and subjects, and they’re all there for my entertainment. They rely on me to exist.
And so I make them be.
As my brother would say, “God complex much?”
But it’s worth it all. It’s worth it all for that one line that works. Last year, I had my first real experience with personal writing. I was working on a piece to enter into the NCTE Achievement in Writing contest, but I had no idea where to start. I wrote crap draft after crap draft, waiting for something that would stick, for a line that would come into focus, one that would guide me and validate my work. In the midst of a whining, angst-filled meditation on the state of modern private education, it happened.
“We were by the elevator and I was giggling and he was giggling and he was wearing the top hat that he thought was edgy, but because he was still a child it only made him look sad, and made his eyes look bigger and more hopeful and made his face look younger.”
Out of context, it makes no sense. Now, even, upon re-reading it, it doesn’t seem nearly as miraculous as it was when I wrote it. But that’s part of the beauty, I guess. When I read that line, I can picture exactly where I was when I wrote it, can picture the scene exactly that I was writing about. It’s a type of transportation, of transfiguration, even. And the recreation of that sensation, of that rush of heat into my cheeks and the shaking of my fingers and the feeling that I’d written something worthy, that alone is worth the horrible prose that plagues my Microsoft Word documents.
I ended up winning the contest. I didn’t use that line, though. In the end, it didn’t make the cut.
But my journey as a writer, as a budding writer in great need of guidance (hint, hint), would be completely hopeless if not for my undiluted love of literature. Since the days of Mercer Meyer’s Critter books, I’ve been hooked, reading everything that I can get my hands on, reading everything that people give me.
My eyes don’t tear upon recalling the bittersweet memories of early adolescence, or upon waking up from a dream where everything seemed so perfect and real. All it takes is Seymour Glass’s wall, though, and I’m gone.
“Oh snail
Climb Mt. Fuji
But slowly, slowly.”
It’s Issa, the poem. It’s written on Seymour’s wall. It’s written on my wall now, too, but I can’t think of it without crying.
I’m sitting here now, in the Starbucks on El Camino, and people are looking at me funny because my eyes are tearing up as I’m writing, only my lips are curled into a half smile, teeth not showing, and the tears are turning my eyes “sad cow brown.” They might think I’m crazy; maybe I am. Surely I am. My eyes are tearing and I’m regretting having put mascara on my lower lashes, all because I’m thinking of a novel.
This is what literature does to me.
The music here in Starbucks is playing, and the lyrics keep crooning, “cry me a river.” I think they’re speaking to me, and it’s scaring me slightly.
Franny and Zooey has been my favorite book since sixth grade. It’s my own version of Bessie’s consecrated chicken soup; it’s my literary comfort. My mother gave it to me then, gave me her old copy. I fell in love. I can picture where I sat when I first read it; my room was still blue then, and I was under the toile comforter on my bed, my teddy bear Jabba curled up against my side. I couldn’t fully understand it, then; some of the religious symbolism went over my head. But, in my own way, I identified entirely with Franny, felt that she would understand me more than any other literary character. I felt that she could understand me more, really, than anyone.
Franny forged the connection, but it was Seymour that made me fall in love. The idea of him, the idea of his presence, was so mystical, so ethereal, that the book seemed almost transcendent. Since that first reading in sixth grade, I’ve read Franny and Zooey at least once a year. When I’m sad, when I’m lonely, when I feel inundated with Professor Tupper-types, I crawl under my own afghan, and picture Zooey sitting next to me, lecturing me on St. Francis of Assisi, pretending to be Buddy, and somehow, I’m okay.
In school, reading and writing have always come somewhat easily to me. I’ve been lucky; the analysis of atheism in Shelley’s Mont Blanc, or the dissection of Dickensian diction, are like games to me, filled with hints and traps that I’m meant to discover. But, at times, the game gets to be too much, and I find myself spiraling, the neurosis taking over, and I find myself entirely paralyzed, unable to write or read.
Kind of like what’s happening today.
And so, I’m sitting here in Starbucks, on my third cup of coffee (black, one packet of sweet ‘n low), and I’m trying to find inspiration. There are people sitting around me; I need to see them as characters. There’s an older man, hunched over, and I can smell the mothballs on his brown, argyle sweater. I close my eyes and try to imagine the tag, try to imagine a note written on it in permanent marker. Maybe the sweater was a gift. Maybe it belonged to a friend, or a loved one (it fits him somewhat snugly). He’s a character, I try thinking. I wonder how I’d write him.
My friend is on her way to meet me here; I study better when I’m not at home. Maybe I should stop trying to write something decent; maybe it’s just not meant to be. You wanted to know about my experiences in reading and writing, so here you go. A narration of my neurosis. A view into my mind.
At least the projectile-vomit wasn’t real.
- Photo Used with Permission
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