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The War at Home
Mar. 19th, 2003 06:28 amMini-meltdown yesterday, goose-stepping perilously close to the edge where you get in your car and drive. At that point, it gets random. You either dowse for a new home, bobbling a blind finger over a map, or you drive to a vista point, take out the hose and say good-by trouble, hello carbon monoxide poisoning.
It felt odd to be so out-of-control and yet at the same time, I wasn't questioning the truth of the feeling. The pressure is intense. I think it's that way for everyone right now – Code Orange, after all, is the new spring color, and very few people have the right skin tones for orange. But also, my own personalized angst-meter is flickering well into the DANGER zone. I have this Last Chance mythology thing going on with the Dalai Lama novel: if I can't churn it out, then I'm doomed to spend eternity on a naugahyde couch watching American Idol reruns. I can't really tell whether the bookstore business plan is my way of avoiding writing, or whether writing is my way of avoiding the bookstore business plan. In either case, I'm petrified about money – none coming in, lots going out. Why didn't I buy real estate when I had the chance?
So yesterday I churned out a thousand word opening – and it was pretty good, taut, visual, the Graham Greene tricks with irony. Not quite ready for the Nobels but hey! First draft.
Then I made the mistake of showing it to Ben.
"So, is it good?" I ask anxiously, fluttering like a little girl showing off her new party dress for Daddy.
"It's good," he allows. Clearly, he's hanging back.
"But…" I say.
"No 'buts.'"
"I can see the thought balloon hanging over your head."
"Okay. Well. It doesn't really have a hook, and Iris Fitter is really the wrong name for a character – she sounds like a dotty English gardener. You need a stronger name."
"Oh, you mean something like Clarice Starling?" I suggest.
"I guess I don't like it that you're so obviously basing this character on yr friend Erica."
Funny. None of the men I've ever hooked up with on a long-term basis have ever liked Erica. That ought to tell me something right there.
"Lucius has a better concept of the character," he says stiffly. And I think: Lucius has no concept of the character, they both freaked when the outline I circulated described Iris as sexually aggressive. This made her unsympathetic, they said. Robbed her of the redemptive present after numerous backstory fuck-ups.
Writing by committee. I should have my head examined.
My mistake, of course. My insecurity. Most writers do not circulate their work until it's ready to stand on its own feet. A thousand word fragment can't even crawl. I shouldn't have shown it to him. I'm a pathetic loser for wanting pats on my head this early in the process.
Write what you want. Write what feels true to you. Law of the foot. Don't put quarters in the editing meter before you have something to park.
But somehow Ben's mild approbation escalated into a big deal. I felt horribly oppressed by it. I couldn't shake it off. I felt like I should crawl under a table and sit there and howl. Even while the deeper part of me was wondering at the psychological dynamics – okay, this relationship feels terribly wrong to me and the longer I'm in it, the harder it will be to leave. Jeana on the phone with me last week, reading me something from one of her Hindi-flavored self-help books: "A prostitute is anyone who stays in a relationship for reasons other than love. Perhaps they are using the rationalization, 'It's for the good of the child – '" Poor Robin! We have this strange, sick symbiosis going. Maybe he thinks I'm sapping something from him, maybe his critical mien is his unconscious way of controlling me, of pissing a circle in the snow around me from which I can't escape. Don't know. But it all got too much for me yesterday.
It felt odd to be so out-of-control and yet at the same time, I wasn't questioning the truth of the feeling. The pressure is intense. I think it's that way for everyone right now – Code Orange, after all, is the new spring color, and very few people have the right skin tones for orange. But also, my own personalized angst-meter is flickering well into the DANGER zone. I have this Last Chance mythology thing going on with the Dalai Lama novel: if I can't churn it out, then I'm doomed to spend eternity on a naugahyde couch watching American Idol reruns. I can't really tell whether the bookstore business plan is my way of avoiding writing, or whether writing is my way of avoiding the bookstore business plan. In either case, I'm petrified about money – none coming in, lots going out. Why didn't I buy real estate when I had the chance?
So yesterday I churned out a thousand word opening – and it was pretty good, taut, visual, the Graham Greene tricks with irony. Not quite ready for the Nobels but hey! First draft.
Then I made the mistake of showing it to Ben.
"So, is it good?" I ask anxiously, fluttering like a little girl showing off her new party dress for Daddy.
"It's good," he allows. Clearly, he's hanging back.
"But…" I say.
"No 'buts.'"
"I can see the thought balloon hanging over your head."
"Okay. Well. It doesn't really have a hook, and Iris Fitter is really the wrong name for a character – she sounds like a dotty English gardener. You need a stronger name."
"Oh, you mean something like Clarice Starling?" I suggest.
"I guess I don't like it that you're so obviously basing this character on yr friend Erica."
Funny. None of the men I've ever hooked up with on a long-term basis have ever liked Erica. That ought to tell me something right there.
"Lucius has a better concept of the character," he says stiffly. And I think: Lucius has no concept of the character, they both freaked when the outline I circulated described Iris as sexually aggressive. This made her unsympathetic, they said. Robbed her of the redemptive present after numerous backstory fuck-ups.
Writing by committee. I should have my head examined.
My mistake, of course. My insecurity. Most writers do not circulate their work until it's ready to stand on its own feet. A thousand word fragment can't even crawl. I shouldn't have shown it to him. I'm a pathetic loser for wanting pats on my head this early in the process.
Write what you want. Write what feels true to you. Law of the foot. Don't put quarters in the editing meter before you have something to park.
But somehow Ben's mild approbation escalated into a big deal. I felt horribly oppressed by it. I couldn't shake it off. I felt like I should crawl under a table and sit there and howl. Even while the deeper part of me was wondering at the psychological dynamics – okay, this relationship feels terribly wrong to me and the longer I'm in it, the harder it will be to leave. Jeana on the phone with me last week, reading me something from one of her Hindi-flavored self-help books: "A prostitute is anyone who stays in a relationship for reasons other than love. Perhaps they are using the rationalization, 'It's for the good of the child – '" Poor Robin! We have this strange, sick symbiosis going. Maybe he thinks I'm sapping something from him, maybe his critical mien is his unconscious way of controlling me, of pissing a circle in the snow around me from which I can't escape. Don't know. But it all got too much for me yesterday.
