Like Patti years ago, I walked out of that dark silent room
and squinted.
I could breathe. My head was no longer swirling. My mouth
felt like smiling, the first time in days. I did. And my husband sighed with
relief. I was back, no longer captive of the obsession I named my Stockholm
Syndrome, and which drove us both a little nuts, for different reasons. Me, because
I could never do enough no matter how long I sat and poked at the computer; him,
because he wondered if we’d ever have another conversation that didn’t begin
with almost-tears, “I hate this!” and a blank, faraway stare when he attempted
to talk to me.
I walked out of that room with two friends whom I met this
Monday, a morning I woke up unable to even glance at the lists on my desk
without nausea. Even my knees were
nauseous, threatening collapse as I made my way to the kitchen for my coffee,
definitely seriously wobbling as I made it to my maroon mohair chair next to my
bed. My reading chair. Has been for many
years, in my life way before my worried spouse. A tulip chair, not meant for a
man. At that time, I thought I wasn’t meant for a man also, so it seemed just
right.
I keep magazines next to the chair, and one of them is The New Yorker, March 25th edition. I’d already
looked at the jokes. Maybe an article before I treated myself to the fiction? That’s
when Benjamin Anastis takes my arm, leads me away from the room that has been
sucking the life out of me. The review of his book, Too Good to Be True, by Giles Harvey, told of a first-time-successful
author for whom the rejection of his latest book ends up with him cheating on his fiancée-about-to be wife
followed by a baby, a divorce. And, incidentally, a nicely NYT reviewed memoir.
He’s not alone in the
failure memoir, Giles writes. F. Scott Fitzgerald comes to mind (The Crackup), and
Norman Mailer’s broadside details his nervous breakdown after rejection of The Deer Park. Jonathon Franzen describes
“the deafening silence of irrelevance” that followed the publication of his
second novel. The point of Giles’ review, I think,is that young writers writing
about their failures may become a new route to success.
I am old, so this is not entirely on point. Failure, the
feeling of it, is, however. I read the article and tell myself that I have very
good company–a number of good-looking young men. How much does it matter that Graffiti Grandma, guy-wise, sells three copies?
Then, a note, scribbled on a sticky during my frenzied
period, leads me to a book which a blogger says is the best, and only, book on
writing a writer needed. I look on the
shelves above my computer and there it is, unread, like a number of the books
I’ve bought and hoped to absorb by osmosis. If
You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland.
I open to the author page. Two pictures, one of a wild-haired young
woman in l938 and the second of an old crone in a striped jacket, l983. I love the old lady. She was 91 when the book
I am about to read was published. I have
a few years to go.
I read it in one sitting, my “yesses” hissing through the
late hour air in the maroon chair. She
frees me up to be truthful, to not depend on the opinions of others, to write
just to write, to not write to the current trends (dystopia comes to mind, and
vampires and ghouls) but from the scrapings of my life, the feelings, insights,
angst and love I know as truth. And not to think about publishing and success. I
begin to believe I can be such a writer. Maybe even am. Maybe.
A quote, difficult to choose among the many that has led me
out of the door and into the sunlight: “
. . .you must write freely and recklessly make new mistakes–in writing or in
life–and do not fret about them but pass on and write more. Active evil is so
much better than passive good, which is just docility, feebleness, timidity.”
So, forget you, reviewers and other folks trying to control
me. I’ve got yet another story to tell.
Wonderful! Remember the words of John Ruskin: When God made artists he created critics from the scrap that was left over.
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ReplyDeletedamn, Stephen, how do you remember all that stuff! Thank you!