The Grand Canyon of Writing

My writing life has felt like the Grand Canyon lately. Vast and empty. Varied and full. A journey I should have started when I was younger. A friend once told me about his hike down the Grand Canyon. It was a spur of the moment thing with a best buddy just after college--or maybe it was high school. A few cans of beans and some beer. They made it, somehow. I think he told me they almost died, and improbably, it was incredibly funny. 

So here I am. Got the beer and the beans, and I'm old enough to know better, but I still want to plum the depths that writing holds for me. I seldom feel like I have the proper preparation, and I often feel that I just might die trying. Why do I do it, I've asked myself this past month. It's just a giant whole in the ground, this writing thing. Is it too late to go back to school and become, let's say, a paralegal or a dental hygienist?

This past week I took 1379 words of out a short story that I wrote first draft of maybe three years ago. If this story were a hike down the Grand Canyon, it would be like I was stuck at the Phantom Ranch, plundering the canteen day after day with only the vaguest plans of ever hiking back out at again. But hey, it might be finished now--and if only finished meant published, that would be swell. I could say, hey everyone, I hiked the Grand Canyon! Instead, it's like I've bought all the maps and the gear, and in every conversation, I tell people about how I'm going to hike down the Grand Canyon, but I never actually lace up my boots and go. So here I am, now peering into the abyss that is called Sending Work Out. 

And meanwhile as I progress through a weird and difficult week of real life, the words of one of my favorite teachers have come back to me. "Take notes," Barbara Abercrombie says. 

And then there's this from another of my favorite teachers and writers, Abigail Thomas, on the subject of writing memoir.

Writing is the way I ground myself, and it's what keeps me sane. Writing is the way I try to make sense of my life, try to find meaning in accident, reasons why what happens happens—even though I know that why is a distraction, and meaning you have to cobble together yourself. Sometimes just holding a pen in my hand and writing milk butter eggs sugar calms me. Truth is what I'm ultimately after, truth or clarity. I think that's what we're all after, truth, although I'd never have said such a thing when I was young. And I write nonfiction because you can't get away with anything when it's just you and the page. No half-truths, no cosmetics. What would be the point?

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/How-to-Write-Your-Memoir-by-Abigail-Thomas/2#ixzz2igGVMrPN

So I'm taking notes on real life while I write fiction. I'm binge watching Breaking Bad, cooking dinner for my mom every night, and afterwards walking off into the quiet suburban dark while I let my mind wander. Mornings, there's yoga and t'ai chi chih, the minute-by-minute life with my mom and everything else. I'm taking notes. Those notes might be a long, long hike toward fiction or memoir, or maybe just calm.

The Truth of Memoir vs.The Truth of Fiction

When I say that my ex-husband told me, all in one conversation, that our marriage was over, that he was getting re-married to another woman, and that he wanted the two of them to live in our house because it was a good place to raise a family, I don’t mean that the emotional punch of that news was such a wallop that it felt like one conversation, and that, in reality, those facts were wrenched from him over a matter of days. I don't mean that in order to convey my “personal emotional truth” I needed to conflate those events to translate the magnitude of my devastation to the reader. No.

NO.

What I mean is that it was one conversation.

Certainly there is truth in fiction. Or why the fuck would we read it. There’s truth in poetry, too, and in music, and visual art.  But when I read a memoir like Alice Sebold’s Lucky or Abigail Thomas’s Three Dog Life, I don’t think Alice means that the guy who attacked her in the tunnel frightened her so badly that it was like rape. I don’t think Abby means that it would be nice to imagine sleeping with her dogs after the death of her husband, but really, she can’t stand the dog hair.

I started a new short story this morning. It’s a story about an ex-wife who breaks into her Mr. Ex’s house and takes 5K in cash that she thinks she has a right to pocket as her own. She drives a mini-van, turns right on red when the sign says, “No right turn on red….” Any of this sound familiar?

This woman in my story, let’s call her Brenda, also has a target in her car from a shooting range and a To Do list that says, among other things, “Kill Michael and The Tart.”

She gets in a whole lot of trouble.

And yes, while some of this story is made up, much of it is true. In bits and pieces. Some of it happened to me. Some of it happened to people I know personally. That doesn’t make it memoir.

As for you, Greg Mortensen, I won’t pronounce you guilty without a trial. But if I see you in the next five minutes, before my hot little head cools off, I’m gonna punch you right in the nose.