The way I figure it, I was born 40 years too late.
If I’d come along in, say, 1988 instead of 1948, my
elementary school report card would not have been crammed with a clown car full
of bullet points like “must refrain from distracting others,” “does not use his
available time to the greatest advantage,” and “often acts inappropriately.”
Instead, I would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit
Disorder, forgiven my transgressions, and encouraged to ignore the teacher
instead of being frog-marched to the principal’s office for our regularly
scheduled 10:15 soul-searching encounter session and therapeutic
tongue-lashing.
Of course, this tendency to view life through a flickering
focus has carried over into adulthood. I chose the life of a radio deejay (in
truth it chose me), where there’s something entirely new to do every two and a
half to three minutes when a song ends, and it doesn’t neccesarily matter if
you make any sense when you speak. In all modesty, I have excelled at this,
starting at the rock bottom of my profession, quickly rocketing to a position
firmly in the lower middle, and only occasionally dipping back down to ground
zero. As a grown-up, I’ve pursued a variety of interests and hobbies, each
lasting for a span of between two and three minutes and once for an entire half
an hour. Typical was the time I decided to become a concert oboist. By the time
I found a store that sold those instruments, I’d moved on to foosball.
As a writer, my inquisitive but mercurial imagination is
both a blessing and a curse. While I excel at playing the “what if?” game, I’m profoundly
poor at the sport of “what then?”
Students
in my short-story writing class and the novel-writing boot camp I co-teach with
my wife often ask where ideas for stories come from. Usually, I’ll respond: “Excuse
me, were you talking to me?” Then, after they’ve restated the question, I’ll
tell them the truth. I don’t know. They just seem to be there, all around me,
and all I have to do is stop and pluck one, as if it were an overripe cherry.
But
that’s when my difficulties begin.
Bright shiny object.
I’m easily . . . easily . . . uh . . . er . . . is that a
bunny? Did you see a bunny? Oh, yeh, uh, distracted. My wife, a woman of infinite patience and
pretty darn nice legs is alternately amused and disgusted by my inability to
turn inspiration into perspiration.
She contends that every time I’m distracted it reminds her
of when we’re agate-hunting together on a rocky beach and I spot something
sparkling in the sand. My pupils grow larger, my breathing accelerates, and a
child-like grin spreads across my face. Bright shiny object. Ooh. Pretty.
Carolyn
can take the germ of a plot, a handful of interesting characters, and an idea
of where she wants the story to take place and then immerse herself in the
process of writing a novel. Three pages one day, five pages the next, only two
the third (there was something she wanted to watch on television); before long
there’s a complete book in a three-ring binder beside her desk. A month or so
later it’s been rewritten and she’s querying agents to find someone to rep it.
Meanwhile,
in the same period of time, I’ve started and discarded five novels, written a
rough draft of a short story, generated ten other ideas for novels I’d like to
write, played golf seventeen times, downloaded eighty songs from the internet
and—
Bright
shiny object.
Look at
it sparkle in the sun.
Despite my
stuttering synapses, I’ve managed to co-write five novels with my wife and
several on my own. Guess whose rock-solid resolve and discipline made those
come together? A clue. It was someone who was not, in any way, even by the
wildest stretch of your imagination, remotely resembling me. As we collaborated,
Carolyn, to her credit, never frog-marched me to the principal’s office. She
did use a variety of tactics to keep me on task, including, but not limited to:
threats, intimidation, shame, leg chains, firearms, and yogurt.
Short
stories are a natural for me. I can generate an idea; pressure spray the
contents of my brain onto a page and have a rough draft in the matter of a
couple of hours. Then, between brainstorming, noodling, and discarding four or
five new ideas, I can generally force myself to sit still long enough to steam
clean the original story, peeling away glaring logic dropouts, sappy syntax,
and rogue adverbs. Next comes the self-flagellation portion of the writing
exercise—playing bend-over dodge-ball with several dozen dysfunctional endings.
(Whack. Thank you, sir. May I have another? Whack.)
Endings
are a bitch. My standard M.O. is to spend several hours more on the last two
paragraphs of a short story than I did the ten pages that preceded it. I know
the way the story is brought to a conclusion is of critical importance. It must
satisfy the reader, answering their inner need for a symbolic answer to today’s
most perplexing conundrums. It must wrap up all loose ends and bring the
characters to their inevitable—but not totally predictable—rendezvous with
destiny. And most importantly, it must have some kind of punctuation following
the final word.
I know
that if I’m to succeed as a writer, I must find a way to stay on task. A
friend, creative in his own right, suggested that I have to tell myself it’s
okay to ignore the whack-a-mole idea farm in my brain and plod forward on
whatever project I’ve begun. He claims inspiration isn’t hopping a bus for Pocatello or running an ad
in Craig’s list for a new spawning ground. He assures me that ideas will always
be lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to call out to them.
I’m not
so sure. And that may be the root cause of my problem. Deep down, I’m afraid
that if I ignore the muse, she’ll stop showing up, like a guest who finds her party
invitation sported the wrong address.
But,
I’ll try. Like right now I’m plotting out a novel where the detective is a
professional midwife who . . .
Bright
shiny object.
Or maybe
I should work on the one with the tuna fisherman who hauls up his net to find
Nazi gold in the . . .
