Now What?

Now that I am writing again I am starting to think about my goals and my motivations.

I’ve been writing since I could spell, really, before I could spell. So maybe it doesn’t make sense to ask why I write. Mammals breathe. Writers write. 

Why, then, have I had to put so much effort into returning to the practice of writing?

It turns out that no matter how many times I use the metaphor, writing isn’t quite like breathing.

In January I set myself some goals for the year. In the category of writing those included writing:

• 10 poems

• 6 blog entries

• 2 short stories

Those seemed reasonably modest, obtainable, goals in January. Then as fall rolled around and I had still only written 2 blog entries, finishing the whole list seemed impossible. My recent spate of writing here brought achievement back into the realm of the enticingly possible. I had managed to check off the ten poems early in the year. So posting my six posts here for the year meant that all I needed to do was write two short stories. Really, I only needed to write one and finish the one I’d started earlier in the year. 

I’m not sure if when I made the goal I had forgotten that I don’t write fiction anymore–haven’t really since I was a teenager–or if I just didn’t care. I had a couple of story ideas tumbling around in my head and I guess I figured I’d be able to pull them out onto paper easily enough if I just sat down and put the effort in.

So my goal now is fiction, specifically short stories. I have written two things in the past couple of weeks that have characters. One of them has a setting. Neither has what could properly be called a plot, though one of them at least has an end instead of just trailing off. The piece I started last winter has the beginnings of a plot, but it doesn’t have a conclusion and I have since forgotten where I intended for it to head next. There may be notes in my journal that answer that question so all hope is not completely lost. I will probably take a stab at finishing that and count my efforts as achieving my goal.

It’s clear, though, that I don’t have the slightest clue how to write short stories. This shouldn’t surprise me. When I was younger I aspired to novels. I didn’t even read much short fiction because I didn’t enjoy it as much as novels.  I’ve never written more than a few chapters and a vague outline of a novel. Eventually even the most atmospheric character-driven novel still needs a plot. If I want to write fiction I’m going to need to work on developing the skills I lack.

I’m thinking about how to do that. Step one is to write and then write some more and, when I’m finished with that, keep writing. I just have to do it and suck at it. I hate the sucking at it part, though, and would like to efficiently move through that stage. That probably means that at some point I need to let people read things and face some critique. 

I miss the creative writing classes of my college days. At least I think I do. I don’t really remember much about them, aside from the jawline of one of the guys I had a crush on. (I couldn’t tell you anything else about him. His name and what kinds of poems he wrote are all lost to time). I do think I came out of them a better poet.

So finding a class or a writing group or at least a corner of the internet to interact with other writers would probably be a good idea. In the meantime I’m collecting books on writing because that’s always my first instinct in the face of any problem.

Learning to write stories is going to be hard and there’s a little voice in the back of my head that asks “why bother? You could just be a poet, you know. Not everyone has to write fiction.” Fair enough, little voice.

So why not just write poems?

The problem is that I write poems in loops and I’m stuck and can’t unstick myself. My poetry and my inexorable string of crushes are bound together. Not everything I write is about desire, but it’s enough of a dominant theme that a crush that has lasted too long is a problem. A crush that has lasted too long and wasn’t appropriate in the first place is a bigger one.  

Writing the same poem over and over is par for the course. My frustration is that it has devolved into a consistently terrible poem because I am unwilling to truly engage with the subject. Increasingly, I am choking off my own words because I am afraid of what they might open me to. I am restless and my brain itches. It’s a dangerous kind of restlessness, the kind that leaves me wanting to push at boundaries and flirt with disaster.

The problem is that when you push boundaries sometimes they shift and you find yourself tumbling head over heels down a steep slope, landing bloody and bruised. 

That metaphor doesn’t quite work. It implies a physical violence at odds with how tender it all was. Any violence was emotional, and subtle enough that I didn’t recognize it as such until years later. Subtle enough I still hesitate to claim it. For all the bullets I dodged, though, I am still sorting through the wreckage twenty years later. 

So, yes, I know better than to ask disaster to dance. 

It is perhaps no wonder that I am desperate to write about pretty much anything else.

Fiction gives me space to write something new in form, if not theme. Maybe I can forgive a fully formed character their inappropriate desires more easily than I can separate myself from my poems’ narrators.

I’ve also considered just cutting to the chase and writing erotica for awhile. I’ve never tried, which I guess is surprising given that I read a fair amount of it. The problem is that I would still need a plot and if it turns out I can’t muster even enough plot to write erotica I might simply die of shame.

This past year the alternative to fiction has been either terrible poems laced with self-loathing or no writing at all and neither is a viable way for a writer to live. So I suppose my goals for next year will be to learn to make things happen, on the page. Maybe eventually I’ll even write something I’d want someone else to read.