The Stories that I Want to Tell

Posted on March 30, 2003 in Writing

For the last five weeks, I’ve been promising my small circle of fiction previewers that the story I am working on will be done “next Friday or, if not that, the Friday after”. It’s passed that deadline at least three times already and I’ve still not finished the story.

Here’s what happened: I wrote the story to page ten, then found myself decidedly angry at it. The anger came too long after the vicodin, so I know it wasn’t a delayed narcotic reaction. Couldn’t blame it on the war either: that hadn’t begun.

Deep down, I knew it wasn’t a good story as I had written it. I tried to figure out why it wasn’t working out — contemplated leaving the writers group because of a couple of insane critiques — and then sat down with a friend who helped me release some tensions by talking to me about them.

By the end of the conversation, I figured out what was wrong with the story. Half of it went into a bin for rework as another story. The other half I kept and reworked. One system crash and a restore later, I still haven’t completed the new work, but it alive, gestating well.

The most enjoyable writing hours of the last few days are those that I have spent telling stories and tracing through my memory to understand why I became what I am. Investigating this myth of me renews me and restores the energy I lose in the quarrels that some bring to my life through this blog. Right now, there’s a lot of pressure to let other people tell the stories that they think we should feel are important. Plenty of fiction has passed across the pages of web pages that I read (on both the pro-peace and pro-war sides), snatched off the news without a check for its veracity. Many people suffer mightily because they listen to the incessant shriek of the pundits and the reporters as they relay to us officially sanctioned versions of the war. Few wait for the truth to slip past the need of journalists to thrill, of the media to attract readers and viewers.

I turned off the television, myself. Did that twelve years ago, in fact. Stopped reading the papers and visiting news web sites regularly for the duration. The news of the war will get to me through the blogs that I read and the conversations I have with my wife. Perhaps I will write a story about this time when things cool down, something that speaks to the ambivalence that I feel: loving people and hating, utterly hating the actions they support, propose, and do.

I’m looking for myths — the stories of how to live life — that make sense in this time.