My First Post (Letter to the Class)

I’m thinking that writing is like having a sword and a shield and waging a crusade against the world. I’m thinking writing is an “enabler,” that gateway to other forms of expression and creativity—and I think it can be addicting. I’m thinking the only thing that matters here is how seductive I can make my writing—how rapt your attention is in reading this…whether or not you’ll stop and do something else.

I think I rely too heavily on ploys like these (“I’m thinking…” “I think…”) to create the mechanical kind of flow that is holding me back as a writer. And like Barbara said yesterday (like I’ve believed for a long time), I think my vocabulary is too vast or my crutch too worn, and the leaps and bounds I’d like to make are hampered by my want for better words.

I audited a playwriting course last J-Term (not this last one, but the year before), and a lot of the people in it had a tendency to interject “fuck” into their dialogues to…I don’t know—bolster their emotion; make a bigger sound; prove that they could? Most of the dialogues sounded like Quentin Tarantino’s stuff, and I hate his writing—pompous and self-aggrandizing, and aimed at a demographic who likes it because they’ve rarely heard speeches like his before. There’s gritty, and there’s pulp, and then there’s that—something bastardized and lauded for sucking. That bothers me.

I don’t read enough, and I don’t know why I don’t do more. I love television (maybe that’s it?) and I’d love to write for a show in the future. I’m thinking of hanging up my Computer Science boots and trading them in for some English ones. I’d love to write for television, and I’d love to move to California (the weather in Vermont is awful), and this class is the first of a few in which I see if that’s possible, and whether or not I have the chops to maybe make it work. I should read more.

My dad turned 61 last December. You know why else I’m trying to learn to write? So I can record his story someday. I feel shortchanged that my parents had me so late in their lives, and I need to remember every detail of him that I can for when he’s gone…I have to remember.

Right before this school year started, I began to “write.” On the plane ride home, I was seated next to a HUGE fat guy. He crowded my space as I was trying to sleep, and I was consigned to a corner of my seat, plastered to the window and pissed off. I’d bought a magazine and a pen before the flight, because the urge had struck to write something on the way home, and the only reason I hadn’t yet was because I was suddenly tired. I was sitting next to the guy and I was pissed, so I pulled out the pen and magazine (there was no stationery in the shop), and I started to record the details of a dream I’d had the year before. In the dream, I’d died. Armageddon had suddenly struck my street, and a fireball landed on Lincoln Avenue, obliterating everything. I ascended to Heaven in a Cadillac (vintage, 1960-something), and my dad was with me. The Cadillac was supported by fishing wire on each side, and it was as if we were in a play, rising artificially above different sets, in panoramic scenes, everything vivid and theatrical. Then the setting shifted, and I was alone in a marble palace, and it was incredible. Its halls stretched on forever, and its walls were impossibly high. Somehow, I knew it was Heaven, even though I was alone.

I wrote about that, and I’m not sure why. Maybe because I was talking to Sarah again, and I’d told her about that dream so long ago. In any case, the poem began that way: “In his dream, he died / And a Cadillac supported by invisible wires ushered him to the sky / To an eternal Heavenly palace.”

I don’t know why I mention that, except that I think it’s where I seriously started, and everyone must have a beginning—some itch to do better work, and more of it; the kind of itch that makes you crazy until you’ve scratched it, and then gets worse, and continues for forever. I’m romanticizing it—I know that—but I want this to be less “a thing,” and more “a lifestyle.”

I wrote three more poems in the space of two weeks. I bought a moleskin notebook, and wrote whenever I thought of something. One time, I had an idea as I was just getting into the shower. A phrase struck me: “I want to write poetry like translated French.” And so I wrote that down, getting out of the shower before it had started, and walking naked downstairs to the pool table where my moleskin was. I started the shower, thinking I was done, and jumped back in. Then another phrase; so I jumped back out and continued it. And then back in. Etc.

That’s the extent of my exposure to writing. Obviously, I’ve read for years (though not much lately), and read in many genres and mediums; and I’ve not written much “creatively.” But I like it—really, truly like it—and I feel like now is the time to expand upon my skill, to do something with it. Is this the beginning of a great adventure? I don’t know. I hope so. We’ll see.