Here I am again, in a familiar state. I’ve written this non-fiction piece already. Finished it. Four pages long, actually. I haven’t revised it though. I can’t even look at it. This is what always happens.
This is the assignment I’ve been waiting for. The last two short stories I wrote were really just about me. The first of those two even featured a character secretly based on me writing a short story about getting into a fight with his parents about being an English Major 1.
Yeah, let me clarify that for you. There was a scene which allowed me to perform the feat of writing about myself writing about how I wanted to write2 (just like this piece! Except now I’m writing about writing about that!)3.
So why do I have such a problem writing? Why do my first drafts always end up in the trash, with me having to start the whole thing over again 4 ? And always the night before the due date5 ? Do I really need the pressure that much? Is my writing worthless
Obviously I do have problem writing. Look at all those question marks. And look at me going on and on about nothing so far6 .
The first paper, referred to henceforth as V1 (version one), was a quick survey of creativity and writing throughout my life. Gems include: Playing with G.I. Joe action figures and relating them to gender issues, fondly recalling a comic series I wrote about a superhero that was a Frisbee (creatively named Frisbee Man. Get it? Frisbees fly and superman, prototype superhero, flies, so it was an obvious combination. One of the supervillians was a lawnmower to give you an idea of this whole project.)7 , and attempting to impress a girl in my intro to creative writing class by reading a poem I spent hours the previous night working on (long story [it took up one and a half pages in V1] short it went really badly)8 .
I guess I’ll tell a story now. It’s about my last experience writing a short story:
I 9looked at the yellow paper outlining courses offered by my dormitory. Residents had to take one in order to live there. I was enjoying my intro to creative writing class, and they offered a course called “Fiction’s Outer Edge”, which was to be focused on post-modern writing. Cool.
It also explained, in the brief summary, that you didn’t have to have any writing experience. Even better. My confidence was being slowly whittled down in each of my then current workshops, so pretending to be new at writing would be a good way to impress them when my story turned out to be awesome (I explained my delusions of writing grandeur in V1. However the yang to that yin, fear of criticism, lead to the abandonment of V1. The circle of [my writing] life.).
Fast forward past short story #1 being written (the meta-writing about myself story), and then completely rewritten, being workshopped, and my subsequent hatred of it and refusal to ever look at it again (a common theme). And then spring.
Springtime:
Ah, springtime. I enter my first class full of excitement and optimism. We go around the table doing introductions. Part of our introduction includes telling the class our biggest problem when it comes to writing. Instead of saying: OH BOY WHERE TO START. Well, I am too scared I am terrible to start writing without having a strong urge to drink to kill the fear of clouding up the page with worthless and clichéd prose etc. Instead I say, in my nervousness: well, I have a hard time, you know, getting all my ideas down on paper, and um… middles, yeah, the middle of a story, those are tough.
The middle of a story? That’s where I am now too, ‘The middle’.
Enough self pity10 . Our first reading assignment for the class was Breakfast of Champions. My favorite book. Boy oh boy was this class going to be amazing. Then came our first in-class writing exercise. I can’t remember the topic, but I remember this: After the five minutes we were given to write, he asked for volunteers to read what they had written. I thought mine was pretty good, but I wanted to see how awful the others were before I even thought about breaking through my social anxiety—then a kid with thick framed glass raised his hand and was chosen. His story was about a civil war solider from the south that had a love affair with a solider from the north. He even did accents. I was blown away.
But how, my mind sputtered, how, in five minutes, did he… And then the next person started reading. Person after person read things I wish I could aspire to write. Shit.
Enter: Dread.
The people in my intro class weren’t better than me, but somehow I found myself in this ridiculous collection of talented writers. And it wasn’t even an English department class! It was a class hosted by my dorm. It was as if the writing gods conspired to destroy any remnant of my writing ego left after the slight disaster of short story #111 .
Short story #2 was conceived and written in, let’s just say, a less than stable state of mind. Premise: Protagonist has an unrequited love (also a theme in short story #1. There was even a section in V1 called “The Unrequited Love Phase”). He admits feelings for said unrequited love. She kindly rejects him. He is sad. His car breaks down right next to this church-like building. Thankfully a light is on! He will call for help (his cell phone conveniently died) inside! Oh did I mention it’s storming really badly? Well it is. He runs out towards the church. He sees a figure watching him from inside. He then trips and falls, and as he gets up he looks into the sky only to see light. I actually phrased it “He looked up and saw the sky split in two”. No one in the class understood he was struck by lightning.
What followed was the ‘post-modern’ portion of him living in a blank world. He uses his imagination to unimaginatively recreate the world he lost in his accident. He revisits crucial moments in his life (these crucial moments were actually fictional, not based on real events). And then he dies. It’s actually a happy ending (Oh, and the figure inside the church was, um, him, the protagonist, watching himself get struck by lightning. Evidently I thought post-modern actually meant: make as little sense as possible).
They hated it. I didn’t realize just how much they hated it until after class someone approached me and said: “Wow, that was harsh. I don’t know man, I mean, I liked your story.” This caused a flash back like moment to all meaning behind the words that came out of mouths during that class. Oh. It was harsh. How did I miss that? The professor even offered the advice to stick to realism. A post-modernist professor telling me to stick to realism. Couldn’t get worse than that. And then I read the comments. The best of the bunch: “I wouldn’t have read past page 7 if I didn’t have to for class”. That’s when I decided to give up writing.
And then I threw that idea in the trash and opened a new blank white page. And I stared at it, almost seeing my reflection. My hands waited for my mind to send instructions. And then the first keystroke: M
1 This argument never happened, but I felt like it should have in order to justify my anger towards their nonexistent disapproval
2 Metametawriting
3 Metametametawriting
4 Because I'm terrible?
5 Because I'm lazy?
6 Quote from Creative Writing Workshop: "You make boredom really interesting!"
7 Sadly these comics have been lost, and so too have the memories of specifics, and the ability to play psychologist with my earliest works of fiction.
8 Best line: the words seemed to just fall dead onto the floor unheard as soon as they left my mouth. Best part about this line: I included this event in the short story I wrote for the very class it happened in.
9 footnote deleted for formatting purposes, but kept in for laziness purposes
10 Just kidding, plenty more to come.
11 Ok, let me be honest. It was actually the second short story I’ve written, but I’m ignoring the short story I wrote about a peasant tree farmer who meets God and has to deliver a message to the world that he doesn’t really want to be God anymore and would much rather go do something else. In short, no one believes him and he discovers that he should try to enjoy his life instead of sitting in his cabin eating bark and waiting for trees to grow.
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