One Month

Posted on April 16, 2004 in Writing

Good reading slows me down. Three novels and Harper’s Magazine filled the spaces between the volumes of poetry and other books that I read. All full of fine words and bright images. One day after my monthly deadline to fill a notebook, I have twenty pages to go.

Nonfiction doesn’t slow me like this. It often causes me to drop the reading in mid-paragraph to jot down an argument or a thought. I make up for the loss of fiction by creating my own. When Barbara Kingsolver becomes my cellulose lover, however, I allow her to take me by the hand and lead me into Appalachia or the Arizona Desert. I stay indoors, flipping pages, ignoring the pens and the notebooks that I bought to advance my skills as a writer.

The brown notebook is covered by pages and pages of unpublishable poetry. I look at the pages and wonder what is to blame? Is it the yokels who lifted some of my stuff from this page a few weeks ago? When I asked one of them to seek my permission next time, he blasted me as rude on his pages. Do I want to write for people like this, who want my stuff and don’t care about my person?

You’re supposed to write for yourself, but what I have been doing for myself is reading good stuff. And as I said, when you read good stuff, you tend not to create good stuff. I am a bit harsh on the material I’ve created, I’ll admit. Every first draft looks like shit, as Anne Lamott tells us. The trouble must be that what I get from Kingsolver is the wine, not the freshly crushed grapes. My quality thirsty mind seeks the latter, guzzles it up, and lets my own crop go to waste.