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Keep it light.

On a quiet morning last summer, I ran my fingers along the row of books on a shelf in our living room. I stopped at one heavy-weight: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd edition. I scanned the table of contents. James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Flannery O’Connor. Over fourteen hundred pages of classics written by heavily-studied authors. But, it wasn’t the classics that made me walk to the table and sit down with the book. It was the very first story, right there on page one: Woody Allen’s “A Giant Step for Mankind.”

Bound alongside “The Metamorphosis” and “Hills Like White Elephants” is Woody Allen’s story about three scientists who almost discover the secret behind the Heimlich Maneuver. I laughed out loud the first time I read it, with its high register language describing the research behind “dinner-table choking.” But, beyond the humor, Woody Allen’s writing is a great example of how to show, not tell. My favorite introduction to one of the characters presents a picture so clear I can almost see the smudges on his glasses:

His beard is of a medium length but seems to grow with the irrational abandon of crabgrass. Add to this thick, bushy brows and beady eyes the size of microbes, which dart about suspiciously behind spectacles the thickness of bulletproof glass. And then there are the twitches. The man has accumulated a repertoire of facial tics and blinks that demand nothing less than a complete musical score by Stravinsky.

I love this story. If you haven’t read it, you should — even if you can’t stand Woody Allen.

Sometimes classic literature reads heavy and dark to me. I often wonder if, to be a truly successful writer, you have to be a depressive. Reading Woody Allen’s short fiction counteracts that myth. His story not only drew a hearty belly laugh from me today, it reminded me that I don’t have to take my writer self quite so seriously.

What’s hiding on your bookshelf?

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  • The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd edition. Copyright 1981 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. [ISBN 0-393-95178-2]
  • Woody Allen, “A Giant Step for Mankind,” copyright 1980. Originally published in Side Effects by Woody Allen (Random House, Inc.). [ISBN 0-345-34335-2]
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The word escapes me.

This Wednesday’s Word idea is challenging today.

pleiad: noun. a group of (usually seven) brilliant persons or things.
(from wordsmith.org, today’s word)
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I named this blog Writing Under Pressure for a reason. On a daily basis, I steal time away from things I should and could be doing, just so I can write. My writing often happens in short, concentrated stints of time. But, once in a while, I come upon a chunk of unscheduled quiet. In a flurry, I open my laptop, log on and wiggle my fingers. Then, I sit.

And, stare.

Type a sentence. Backspace. Cut and paste. Reformat. Save. Forget it.

In all that time, no real writing gets done. No wonder I struggle against that mean old mantra: I’m wasting my time. What I need is a pleiad of writer-friendly perks:

  1. Coffee. Good and strong. I like Hazelnut, sometimes with a dash of cinnamon.
  2. An antique writing desk.
  3. Unlimited credit at Broadway paper, so I can buy all the pretty little papers I want, a smorgasbord of creativity.
  4. Mail from one of those literary magazines where I’ve submitted stories, with a letter inside that starts out “we’ve been looking for you all of our literary lives” (over the top, I know, but this is my pleiad).
  5. ESP, so I can see into the future and know if that novel is really worth a rewrite.
  6. A writer’s retreat, in a cabin in the woods.
  7. Readers.

What’s your perfect pleiad?

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Writing as Evidence

Every few days, the little voice inside my head confronts me with the same question: why write? What follows is a brief battle between several pros and one very strong con – you’re wasting your time.

Julia Cameron devoted an entire book to debunking that creative crusher. Plenty of well-known writers have published their own essays on “why I write.” Margaret Atwood lays out her reasons in her book, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. * After a page and a half, she refers to monetary reasons only once. And, so much of what she says speaks to my own writer self. She writes:

To set down the past before it is forgotten.
To excavate the past because it has been forgotten.
To produce order out of chaos.
To say a new word.
To justify my own view of myself and my life, because I couldn’t be ‘a writer’ unless I actually did some writing.
Compulsive logorrhea.
To cope with my depression.
To bear witness….

To bear witness.

Sometimes, I write to unravel my past.  I write essays about experiences that hold me hostage, still. Words fall onto paper, and I see the event with more clarity. Even when I write fiction, I scatter pieces of me throughout. The characters differ, the details vary, but the rise and fall of emotion mirrors my own. I revisit the pain, dissect the details, and find resolution. Once in a while, I even let go.

I may never get paid for one story. That novel might never make it to the galleys. But, I still have to write. If I succumb to my critic who says I’m wasting my time, I will forget the experiences I want to remember. Or, I will fester in the haunts I wish to forget.

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* Margaret Atwood. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Copyright 2003 by Anchor Books (isbn 1-4000-3260-1)