2/26/01
8:06 PM
Long,
difficult sentences requiring concerted and sustained effort.
I’m reading
The Best American Short Stories 2000.
The story I’ve just finished contained long, difficult sentences
requiring concerted and sustained effort.
I got the book from the Public Library earlier today. Now it is 8 pm. I’ve taken a break to let the story sink
in. I decided to skip the usual Monday
night AA meeting. I’ve been to four meetings
in as many days – it just worked out that way.
I think it is important to cultivate reading again. It’s been so long . . .
Reading,
at its best, inspires writing. That’s
what this is all about. Those long,
difficult sentences, they invoked some history in me. Some notions of time and effort. Some idea that I have something to somehow
say.
Of course,
I can’t expect to write as well as the authors in the book. I mean, I haven’t
written as much or as long as they. I
did earn a BA in English nearly thirty years ago. I don’t remember a lot after that. Well, I
remember the main things, some major pieces and places, some of the
people. But I don’t remember too much
about literature. I wrote a couple of
short stories last year for two creative writing classes that I took. They were both rooted in my experience. Some powerful moments. The word I heard most in the critiques was
“bleak.” Most of my classmates liked the
stories, but thought them bleak. Bleak. I think back on what I remember of my life
and I don’t know what adjective I would use . . .
The whole
thing, my life, the whole thing seems kind of flat to me. Maybe that’s the same as bleak. It is pretty twisted and unconventional,
pretty hairy, but flat. Maybe because
I’ve lived it, maybe because it just is what it is to me, it doesn’t strike me
as remarkable. I mean, once you accept
the premises, it just kind of unfolds of its own accord. My professor in class said, “I bet you have
stories to tell.” I was flattered by
that, but a little afraid, too. Like I
should write these great bleak stories about a lot of things I don’t
remember.
Maybe I’m
just too old. Too old to be doing
this.
Or maybe I should be naming my
characters and running them around ragged, lurching from plot twist to plot
twist. Subtly drawing the outlines of
character, infusing them with inference and dusky undertones. Pasting them onto the hot, bloody sidewalks
of large cities. Making them collide,
conjugate, collapse and resurrect. Maybe
I could make them a little less bleak.
Or more.
Those two stories I wrote, one was
very specific, and one was very general.
And now I seem tapped out. As if
those two stories said it all. I’ve been
able to write quick pieces on my current experience (not unlike this one), and
the occasional poem, but I haven’t been able to even start another story. I keep thinking that the inspiration will
strike when the time is right. And then
I think that only a fool thinks like that; if I don’t get going, I will be
gone. So I borrowed some books from the
library today, partially in the hopes of inspiring some writing. But mostly for the sheer joy of reading
again.
No comments:
Post a Comment