Try It On
Posted: November 6, 2011 Filed under: Writers Write | Tags: creativity, fashion choices, perception, teachers, Trusting Your Instincts, writers, writing Leave a comment »When I disavowed the material world of steady paychecks to become an unpublished novelist, I threw away my teacher clothes. Well, not exactly. I donated a minivan of dress casual suits and two-inch pumps. Today, I work in my pajamas. I wear yoga pants to the grocery store, and if I have to go to my kids’ schools, I dress as the anti-teacher, cowboy boots with a gypsy skirt or Levi’s and a t-shirt with Chuck Taylors.
Now that I don’t care what a fifteen-year-old might say, I toss the predictable. I quit coloring my hair and grow it witchy long. I wear turquoise nail polish, and mix colors that clash. I avoid brown. A pair of taupe pumps is a safe choice. You can dress in the dark. But, pink lamé high tops are more interesting.
I like writing because I get to try things on. I wrote the scene where the school teacher taxied a 747 into handicapped parking. Even though the sequence died in early edits, it had merit. It showed me that I needed something big, something to punch the story into a different realm. My time wasn’t wasted, and best of all, it didn’t cost a thing to go for a test drive.
I wish I could say the same for all those boring clothes I dumped in the Goodwill box.
Like this:
Flipped Switch
Posted: June 17, 2011 Filed under: Joined at the Heart, Mouths of Babes, Writers Write | Tags: family, perception, Trusting Your Instincts, writers, writing Leave a comment »“Mom, I have butterflies.”
“You’ll do fine. Just do what you practiced.”
Coco was the youngest musician in the warm up room. She watched a teenager in a tulle dress play Bach. The girl sat her viola on a chair and knocked out Ode to Joy on the grand piano. Returning to the strings, she twitched. The instrument hovered and crashed to the floor. The bridge splintered.
Coco lifted her bow and played A Simple Gift. The butterflies melted. Seconds earlier, I wondered, would she balk? Run away? Freeze? Now, she understood, nerves are universal.
When Coco’s name was called, she marched out of the room like she was twenty instead of nine. Later she said, “This was the best day of my life.” She won a position in the orchestra.
Grief
Posted: June 5, 2011 Filed under: Joined at the Heart, Writers Write | Tags: Donald Maass Workshop, perception, Trusting Your Instincts, writers, writing 1 Comment »The dog died. I didn’t write. She was a dog. Who cares? Right? I couldn’t justify my heartache. So, I cried. We buried her in the backyard. I held my family and wiped way little girl tears. Theirs and mine. We planted lilies, but I didn’t write.
Donald Maass answered the question in his seminar. “Is there any topic that’s off-limits in contemporary fiction?” He leveled his gaze at the class and lowered his pitch. “Don’t kill a dog.” The smirk and head shaking undermined the gravity of his answer. “Mutilation of any other life form is acceptable. Just don’t let the dog die.” I couldn’t write, and when I don’t write, bad things happen.
I got sick. At first with a rash that felt like leprosy. The doctor called it pityriasis rosea. She prescribed a blister pack of oral steroids. Three days later, no more leprosy, but the poison pills weakened my immune system. I caught the flu.
Back in her office, the quick test was negative. “I’m giving you antivirals anyway. Here swallow this. Your temp is 103.” I swallowed a horse pill of Tylenol. She sent me home with Tamiflu and called me on Memorial Day. “I’ve been worried about you.” What doctor calls you at home on Memorial Day? I still didn’t write.
The rash came back. Not as virulent, but just as ugly. School let out for summer. The girls had a swim meet. I missed it with dysentery. We got a puppy. She chewed her way into my heart. I didn’t write.
Bacon said it first, “You need to work.”
“I can’t.”
“You didn’t write. It made you sick.”
“No one wants to read about a dead dog. No one cares that I washed my cellphone with the laundry on the day she died, or that every time I reach into the freezer to fill a glass with ice, I expect her to beg for a cube, or that I found her, under Coco’s violin chair, as if she were waiting for her girl to play a lullaby. It’s a non-topic.”
“You aren’t going to get better until you work on the book.”
I have to start somewhere. If it bothers you that I grieve over a dog, fuck you. It’s the only way to soothe the itch.
