Switch Hitting
So I’ve been writing a lot the last few weeks, dodging the portentous summer slump of which the recent EWU graduates warned me. I’ve velcroed waterproof cleats to my feet, tied a lifejacket around my waist, and spent a beautiful afternoon in Lake Wawasee, kicking through the bellies of bulbous sturgeons, steeping the water red with their stupid entrails; I’ve accidentally shown my friends a gay porn, after pulling down my sweatpants to show them how many pubes I’ve sprouted; I’ve forced my younger sister to chew stick after stick of blue wintergreen gum and stick the wads to a color-by-numbers American flag thumbtacked to my bedroom door for an art project of which my dad, Warren, disapproves. The only problem is, none of it’s real – it’s fiction.
I’m totally cheating on nonfiction, slipping my finger beneath her best friend’s panties and dreaming of the worlds we can Big Bang together, the babies we will bear. Just when I think, “I can’t write that – memory lapse has compromised my authority,” I remember that I can: I can smoke that extra cigarette because I’ve relapsed; I can have another scoop of unicorn pâté because someone’s in the kitchen, forever plopping more into a technicolor cauldron and stirring it with a glittery horn; I can diagnose my dear friends with fatal diseases that will create the propulsive drama needed to bust through my narrative brick walls like Kool-Aid Man. I fucking love writing fiction. I feel like my thesis advisor is my mom and I’m jerking off to a Penthouse in the closet while she folds clothes in the other room, none the wiser; like I’m happily listening to the Gin Blossoms on my headphones in a record store, while the hipster clerks fog their horn-rims over the validity of Galaxie 500′s cover of Joy Division’s “Ceremony.” (Galaxie’s cover is so much better, by the way. I know. Life’s never fair, is it?) I’ve always gotten this sick pleasure from not doing what I’m supposed to – playing Final Fantasy III in middle school when I’m supposed to be picking two x’s and solving for each corresponding y, if, say, x = 3, then y = ( 2/3 )(3) – 4 = 2 – 4 = –2; slugging down the dregs of Dry Fly gin in the morning, when I’m supposed to be brewing a pot of Earl Grey and filing my income taxes; writing self-indulgent blog posts, when I should be splashing though the Willow Springs slush pile, discovering hot new literary voices to publish and celebrate. Natalie Kusz told us a few quarters ago that the easiest thing for a writer to do is not write. So at least I’m writing. But I have no fucking essay ideas. I’m turning into a fiction writer, a cat who hides in the box of the post he’s supposed to be scratching, an Elizabethan boy, who flees Constantinople, flashes his feminine ankle to a sailor and declares, “Praise God I’m a woman!” I may be creating more work for myself next year by ignoring my duties as an essayist, but damn, does it feel good to not do what I’m supposed to.
It sounds like the summer rebellions is affecting you positively. This is one rich, vivid, fresh blog post. I got my MFA in poetry only to discover I really want to write fiction. Why didn’t I do it before? I wasn’t ready. I still wanted to figure out some important things through poetry.
Maybe after a summer of writing fiction, the truth will be welcome. If not, you can write non-fiction essays about the fictions of your mind.
*blushes*
I took an unbelievably awesome experimental fiction class, team taught by Greg and Sam during the last few weeks, and it definitely swayed me toward the wonderful world of making stuff up. Hell, I have half my thesis already written, anyway, so I feel justified.
I like your idea of an essay about how awesome fiction is. It may run the risk of sounding meta-, if I’m not careful, but I won’t let that happen.
And to answer your question below, yes, that is the lovely Tilda Swinton from the film adaptation. (I so Googled ‘Orlando (film)’ just now to find the actress’s name, by the way. In today’s world of collective, outsourced cyber knowledge, I feel as though I have a duty to point out when I’ve “cheated.”)
Tilda Swinton? I guess I get her mixed up with the one who played Bob Dylan.
Get your ass back over here, Sam. We need you over here in NF. :) I know what you mean, though. I hadn’t written poetry since early college (which for me was over a decade ago). So when I took some poetry classes, it totally fired me up on poetry. It’s so freeing to write outside your genre. When I discovered a poem could do things an essay often can’t get away with, like memory sequences, I knew I couldn’t swing all the way back to just writing NF.
Poetry workshop actually got me more excited to read poetry, than to write it. Not that it took away my enjoyment of writing it, of course, but I’m finding that reading a few poems before a writing session pumps me up to write fiction! And nonfiction, of course ;) Worry not, Tanya – fiction is but a mistress, or a backstreet girl, or one of those young Japanese boys that schlob Samurais’ knobs in order to keep them from compromising their discipline and going apeshit and beheading everyone. Nonfiction and I will have much to discuss as the summer unfurls!
Oh, that photo is from Orlando, isn’t it. Love that book. I even love the movie.
Great post. Makes me want to write.
It feels so nice to enjoy writing again. Not to be ingratiating, but Greg’s and your summer class was among the best I’ve ever taken; I’m excited to watch it flourish.
Sam, I so relate to this post. After finishing the big nonfiction thesis, I didn’t write anything but these blogs for a while and now when I sit down to write it’s all fiction baby! I refuse to feel bad about it. Most professional writers I know don’t limit themselves to one genre or define themselves by what genre they write in. They are just “writers.” I think we can do the same.
Ps. Your mom always knew what you were doing while she folded laundry. Moms know everything.
[...] summer, Sam barked about this same problem. And he hypothesized that it is this very feeling of doing something scandalous that makes [...]