Writing About Writing

I loved being a writing major.

I also hated being a writing major.

I loved being a creative environment, spending hours pouring over great modern literature, rediscovering the classics, and of course getting to read and critique my peers' excellent drafts. I loved being allowed and encouraged (and required) to write for hours--both critically and creatively. I loved having deadlines to push me, and ideas that moved me. I loved being surrounded by people who were as passionate about words and language as I am.

I hated handing over a draft to my peers, or the critical eyes of my professor, just to have them vandalize my brand new baby with their red ink. I hated letting go of a piece that I wasn't totally satisfied with, knowing that their remarks would be brutal. Even more than that, I hated submitting a draft that I was content with...even more afraid of what their judging eyes would do to a piece I really loved.

Critique is necessary. It's good. It improved my work exponentially. It also hurt. It made me sad. It made me question my talent and my choice of major. And the fate of any future career prospects. My classmates were all so talented. Everything they wrote oozed brilliance. I couldn't string a proper poem together to save my life...or my grade in Christianity and Writing.

I kept writing. I kept passing my classes. I learned to be strong through a session of slamming. I sat in Bruegger's Bagels on Friday afternoons during our weekly Capstone class. Nodding with every comment, pretending to agree with my peers. Accepting whatever they said about my work, and trying not to take it personally. I would zone out. Looking directly into my classmate's eyes, but not really listening, I would let their face fade into a fuzzy state. I'd hear myself saying, "Mmhm. Yeah. You're so right. Thanks. Yes. That's a good idea. I didn't think about that." But I had no idea what they were talking about. I'd read it later, because I knew they had written it in red pen (in much more cruel terms) somewhere on my precious draft.

Writing is easy--the actual act of putting pen to paper; even the creativity, the idea generation, comes naturally. But giving that writing to someone else, letting someone else have an opinion about it, that's hard.

All of this to say, I haven't had anything published since I quit working for a newspaper. No one has read anything I've written outside of this blog and outside of press releases and marketing stories for SMIF.

That's about to change.

I'm writing a play.

I've been struggling to find a script I like for the play I'm directing this spring. Of course, there are thousands of fabulous plays already written--I'm not trying to suggest I could out-write a classic. However, my guidelines are strict. It's a very conservative school. Anything written in the last 100 years has to be seriously edited for adult content/themes and profanity.

I also have a very strict cast. I have a certain number of actors that need roles--good roles. They have earned the right to have a great part, and I haven't been able to find that perfect number of characters with great roles that I really want. I also have a few actors who want small roles. They want to be involved, but I need to be able to control which roles have fewer lines, so I can cast accordingly.

Thus the idea to write my own play.

The writing has been fairly easy. I've already drafted about 15 pages in a day. Yes, I still have a long way to go, but the characters are taking over and writing the story by themselves. I know the kinds of things I want to have in my plays (excessive physical comedy, strong/funny lines for women, etc.), and I'm writing these in as I go. I can literally visualize my actors performing this play even as I write. It's tailored to my stage, my audience, and my crew. It's perfect.

What's hard, even in this beginning stage, is knowing that at some point, other people are going to read this. They might not think everything is funny. They might not get it. They might even hate it. I'm going to need editors. Their critique is going to be harsh. My actors might not love it as much as I do. They are going to complain.

I'm going to get my feelings hurt. Anything critical said about this play is on me. No more passing it off as bad writing out of my control. I'm both writer and director now. Everything is my fault.

And that's both awesome and terrifying.

I Really Meant To Love You

A few weeks ago, Brett and I saw Two Guns. Yep, this movie:

There is a moment I haven't been able to get out of my head. Obviously, this movie isn't going to be winning any writing awards, but there was so much power in these few lines, I've been pondering them deeply ever since. It takes place between Denzel and his way-too-young girl of choice. He's undercover, she's his handler--a forbidden romance, ongoing for who knows how long. It means something to both of them, but not enough to either one.

The girl finally has to ask: Did you ever really love me?

And Denzel, in his sweet, raspy voice, finally answers: I really meant to love you.

Good stuff. There's a full blog post coming about these very same thoughts...somehow connected to this Slate article on arranged marriage.

Cliffhanger.

‘In the wave-strike over unquiet stones’

Sometimes, when I’m processing emotions, life events, deep thoughts I write all the time. It helps me see the words in black and white and categorize my feelings into files, organized into neat little boxes with labels. And stacked and arranged alphabetically into filing cabinets in a storage unit. Writing often makes me feel like an organized type-A crazy person (there is one of those living in my house. And it’s probably not me). 

But other times when my life feels messy and out of control, I avoid writing. Seeing real words detailing emotions to life’s events that I haven’t quite processed in my mind only makes it worse.

A few people told me they were waiting for a blog post about my grandmother who recently passed away. I still haven’t written anything, and being totally truthful, I probably never will. I haven’t dealt with her death yet in a way that would allow me to write about it. In many ways, I’m avoiding dealing with it. I haven’t talked about it thoroughly with anyone. I kept telling myself I had to process it, and then write about it—before I could talk through it with anyone. But I don’t know how to process it. Nor do I really want to. And so it sits.

Nonfiction

Fiction. From the Latin, fictium. Meaning created. From fingere--to shape or fashion. Therefore nonfiction means not created, unshaped, unfashioned?

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?

I often tell those who ask that my favorite kind of writing is nonfiction prose. Personal Essay. Memoir. Reflection. Diary. But even as I reflect on the numerous nonfiction peices I wrote in college as a writing major, were those essays completely unshaped?

Nonfiction is such a difficult genre; though shouldn't it be the easiest? How hard is it to recount a story exactly the way it happened? We do it hundreds of times a day--I tell my husband about the fiasco I experienced at the grocery store, he tells me about an awkward elevator ride at work, my best friend tells me about something the kids in her elementary school class said, my former roommate calls with more nightmare stalking from her exboyfriend--and the stories go on. Nonfiction doesn't have the challenges of fiction. There is no conflict about where the plot should go, how to make the story move forward, which character is the murderer (it's always the butler anyway). With nonfiction, you already know the ending. You lived it; there's nothing to decide.

Right?

Nonfiction is unshaped--pure. Only it isn't. I took Autobiographical Writing my senior year of college, and a friend and fellow writer in the class posted on her Facebook status the night before a major peice was due: Writing a memoir feels a lot like making up things that didn't really happen in my life (Lacy Barker). I can only add that I felt the exact same way. Even if I wasn't making up things exactly, I was certainly attempting to attribute meaning and emotions that I didn't feel at the time of the events. Isn't that shaping?

I know that creative nonfiction has a long history and has certain rules of its own. And I'm not trying to make a moral judgement--whether creating emotions or shaping facts is right or wrong--I'm just a writer. And as such, we often consider ourselves to be shapers or creators as artists. The very words that are synonomous with fiction. 

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?