Where Some Things Go.

I think you might just be with me to gather experiences to write about later.  I bet you have a notebook stashed in a secret place where you jot down pieces of our conversations to use in the book you’ll write someday.

My cousin is a singer/songwriter and I went to see her play a show for her CD release a few weeks ago.  My aunt said that she was nervous about performing a few songs, because the subjects of them were in the audience.  They didn’t know the songs were about them, of course, but she did.  I just shrugged and said that was the liability which comes with knowing writers personally.

They joke, but I think becoming immortalized in fiction – or what is probably much more frightening, nonfiction – is a legitimate secret fear that friends and relatives of writers harbor.  That italicized passage is a paraphrase of someone’s actual statement to me about that exact concern.  He was joking (I think?) but here it is, immortalized on the Internet.  He’s just lucky I haven’t used his name…yet. 

Non-writers and friends and relatives of those who are writers might argue that it isn’t fair to be forced to accept such a liability just to be acquainted with a writer.  I suppose that’s a valid point.  But from where does writing of any kind come if not from life?  I think it is inevitable that the people we meet or know more intimately than strangers on the street might find their way into a character we otherwise imagine.  In fiction at least, it’s rare that the entire personality of an individual should make up a character we write.  In fact, I’d say that’s a crutch – a kind of plagiarism of life. 

But to take something small from someone you love – or hate – is, as I said, somewhat unavoidable.  The shape of your grandmother’s hands.  The musicality of your sister’s laugh.  The way your father walks.  The feather-light touch of your husband’s fingers in your hair.  These are things that make fiction personal and relatable, and drawing from real life only makes it that much more personal and relatable.  Of course, if your style of writing is to make things foreign and unfamiliar, then go the other way.  This post probably isn’t for you anyway.

There’s this quote I love, something Anne Lamott said:

You own everything that happened to you.  Tell your stories.  If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.

There it is.  The simple truth.  The people most concerned with being written about are the ones whose behavior has not been above board.  And it is usually those people who make it into one’s writing somehow – because, hey, killing people off in real life is murder.

I’ll eventually write about my loved ones, friends and family, if I haven’t already.  I write from life, and they are, each of them, a very important part of my life.  But my loved ones, friends and family, needn’t worry.  I love them, and that will bleed into my words. 

It’s everyone else that I give leave to worry.  Because their concern is no longer any concern of mine (and isn’t that the moment they make it into one’s writing?).  Conflict makes for the best stories, and these people have provided plenty of conflict.  They know who they are, and they should not, for one peaceful moment, think that I have forgotten them.  Like Anne says, they should’ve behaved better.

Is it just me or does it feel like this year hasn’t really started yet?

I don’t know what it is I’m waiting for, or what I think would really signify the start of a new year (any better than a big sparkly sphere sliding down to meet a big sparkly 2013 in Times Square).  All I can be sure of is I’ll know it when I see it…or feel it…or hear it….

“Hope can be so excruciating,” Rivka Galchen said in a recent interview with The New Yorker.  She was talking about why she finds writing about miscommunications between characters so interesting, but that one blanket statement says it all.  Doesn’t it?  Hope is excruciating.  As much as wanting.  I think it stems from those states of being having an element of powerlessness or inaction.  Or both.  You hope for something, you want something, before or in lieu of doing anything about it.  It’s all some kind of waiting, and nobody has the patience for waiting.

I’ve long been a cynical individual.  I find it’s easier, much less taxing, to just shrug your shoulders at a thing in life and say, “I didn’t think you’d work out anyway.”  But the truth is, cynicism is no more than a hard candy shell protecting the good stuff below the surface.  I’ve not found this out more clearly than in the last few months, in which I’ve given optimism and that dirty four-letter word hope a real chance.  This is what I’ve learned: optimism is exhausting.

I don’t know how people do it: wake up every morning, look out the window and vow that it’ll be a good day full of good things.  Even when all signs point to no, there are actually people out there who say, “Hmm, that’s what you say, but we’ll see.”  I find that commendable, but it could also be said that it’s naïve or foolish (this would, of course, be said by pessimists).  It’s a hard thing to hold on to, hope.  But I’m trying, man.  I’m far too stubborn to give in just yet.  But come on, Universe, fuckin’ meet me halfway.

In a list of writing rules for The Guardian, British author Zadie Smith wrote, “Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”  I’m impressed with how clearly that seems to sum up life as a writer.  When I think of myself as a writer, I don’t think of it as my job or hobby or something I do.  It’s a character trait, a state of identity, as much as being left-handed or brunette or funny.  I write, but more importantly, I am a writer.  So it stands to reason that what Smith says up there about never being satisfied is true not only for my work, but for my life outside of writing (if there is such a thing — my writing bleeds into everything I do, I’m always writing, if only in my head).  As much as I’ve chosen this path in life — to write, that is — it chose me, probably because I am never satisfied.  And on top of that, I’m okay with never being satisfied — I think it’s a positive trait.

Never being satisfied means I’m always looking for more, striving for better, setting new goals.  It requires always trying: trying new experiences, meeting new people, making new friends, seeing new things.  Okay, so it requires new and fresh and something else but ordinary.  I suppose I could settle down, sit still, and write about the same things over and over, but no one would want to read that, myself included.

And here’s where I tie it all together —

I think of myself as cynical, and maybe I am in some ways, about some things.  But the big things, the important stuff?  About those things, I hope.  You have to be optimistic, I think, if you want to set your life on a course inevitably filled with failures; that is to say, to be a writer.  What else does never being satisfied mean if not constantly wanting?  I stand by what I said about hope, and constantly moving, searching for more than ordinary, being exhausting (because it really, really is), but it’s your life, man, what other choice to do you have?  What were you doing instead that’s so important, anyway?