The Difference Between Writers and Normal People
So yesterday, I had a moment of sheer terror. Baby Girl's school called me and told me she didn't stay after for her favorite activity in the world. Which would be totally strange. She loves this afterschool club. "So she must have forgotten and gone home on the bus," said the woman. "We're just checking."
Forgotten? My kid? Miss Straight-A Perfectionist Little Writer/Poet/Artist? No. Totally unlike her. I looked at my watch. I had ten long minutes until the bus got to her stop. Ten minutes in which I wondered where she was. Ten minutes of terror. Ten minutes with my mind filled with all sorts of thoughts, none of which were positive. I raced to the door, and one of her busmates walked by--a kid she usually walks from the stop with. So now I'm freaking out . . . and then, she came in sight and relief flooded through me. She forgot. Totally unlike her--but she just forgot. I hugged her, didn't tell her how worried I had been. And thanked God. And then I thought, "I can use that terror someday in a book."
When I went into anaphylactic shock in March and ended up in Bellevue after fracturing my skull? Totally can use the Bellevue scenes. The woman next to me screaming for methadone. Using it.
When I go to a funeral, a wedding, a party . . . I'm using any oddities I see. I even use the mundane stuff. When this certain mother in the neighborhood approaches me, usually to make snide comments . . . does she realize I use it? I totally use it. She may be the b-word. But that makes her USEFUL.
Writers are like scavengers picking through the giant garbage heap of life. Using this. Tossing that. Making piles--useful, not useful . . . BIG pile for the "maybe someday."
I don't write moms-with-children-in-jeopardy books. Not right now. But I can't swear I'll NEVER write one. Or maybe I'll just use that fear response. Either way . . . it's now tucked away.
That's the difference. Even more of a difference? The stuff most people want to FORGET? The grief stuff, the pain stuff, the fear stuff? The acute feelings that most want to bury down inside? THAT'S the most useful to writers.
Yeah. We're different all right.
Thoughts?
35 comments:
My son got his driver's license yesterday. I called him last night, and he was at his girlfriend's house. He'd driven there himself from his mom's.
Now I face an entirely new level of parental anxiety. Can you say imminent Xanax prescription? It's all fodder for fiction, I guess, but sometimes I just wish he was eight again.
Had my 10-year-old and one of his friends get lost in the woods recently. I stayed relatively calm, but underneath... oy.
But don't you find that there are things that SHOULD be used, but you just won't be able to?
About 6 or 7 years ago, my mother, who was starting pretty good on her Alzheimer's, took my Dad, who had cancer, to the emergency room. Then she drove home and forgot where Dad was. Then an hour or so later she forgot everything and went into a panic about where Dad was and eventually they even got the local cops in on it, who brought out the dogs to see if they can could track down my Dad.
Now, obviously, there's a hell of a story there, but I can't actually bring myself to use it. Sort of so funny it's horrifying or vice versa.
Jude:
Oh . . . yes. I've gone through that. Then it's the "they're 18 and off at college and out till all hours doing God-knows-what" phase. Fun times.
:-)
E
P.S. But actually, my oldest is very responsible . . . but then you worry abotu everyone ELSE on the road.
Another couple and I walked with our two daughters as they trick-or-treated Halloween night. I said something about some detail I noticed on a house and the father looked at me and shook his head, "You always notice the strangest things." Without thinking I responded, "Yeah there was this one time I saw this tall thin couple kissing between double glass doors and it made me think of people squished between glass slides for a microscope." I'm lucky, despite my oddities they are still willing to talk to me and let our kids play together. Some people can't handle that.
Mark:
Wow . . . I can't even imagine, Mark. My Significant Other "lost" my dad two years ago. My dad is blind. At the time, he was STILL DRIVING. It's a long story (he now doesn't, for obvious reasons . . . and we have a handicap permit so we can park close when we take him places and have to lead him around a bit). I remember screaming, "There are SOME PHONE CALLS I don't want to get at 9:00 a.m. I've LOST YOUR BLIND FATHER is one of them!!!"
There are also some things I would never tap into because of privacy. I would never tap into my daughter's teen years, for example. She had a rought year or two and I just don't think I could write fiction about it because they were HER years. So I hear you. And there are some things I grieve . . . some relationship pain so intense . . . that I just find myself thinking, "I can't go there again."
E
Alzheimer's...oh that sets in early in all the females in my family going back 4 generations. My Grandmother produced some stories worth retelling but like you said you have to be careful who you tell them to. Folks sometimes look at me like I'm horribly cruel, others who have lived through it laugh.
I did get my Dad to write his stories down.
Richmond Writer:
I often don't tell people what I do for precisely that reason. :-)
E
That is exactly what makes being a writer both so cumbersome and so joyful. We are on sensory overload from every experience, the ones people miss, the ones they take for granted, even the ones they relish, we process deeper and stronger - with elements of obsession even, as we analyze everything. I wonder sometimes how "the others" go through their days unaware of it all, unappreciative of the cadence of dialog, the way clothing sometimes matches a personality, the food choices people make and the way people look when they lie and when they love.
I think people miss out -- and I often miss the ability to point these things out or mention them because I have no IRL writer friends.
So, here I sit!
amy:
Exactly. It really is a different way to go through life . . . and there's certainly a sense of "only other writers would really GET why I find the b-word mom so amusing--because I can immortalize her in print." :-)
E
Erica, I'll remember that the next time I meet someone nasty. A friend put her wicked stepmother in a book -- as a murder viction. LOL
Mark and Richmond Writer, my mother had Alzheimer's too. I remember how awful I felt when we put her in a nursing home. One particular scene is making me cry as I type.
And if you get scared every time you forget something (like me!), check out turmeric. I was using it in the spice form, but I read the pill form is better. Now I do both.
Hi Edie:
I do crosswords all the time--hoping to stay mentally sharp. I think so many of us fear Alzheimer's.
E
Hate to give you the bad news, folks, but you still worry about your kids when they are 28 years old, married, and have a PhD. Maybe I can use that in writing somehow? Huh?
My grandfather and his mother both had Alzheimer's but I don't know many funny stories about them. I always thought it was neat that I could tell my grampa the same stories over and over and he never got bored. :)
I'm only just now realizing that the rest of the world doesn't view things the way I do. I just assumed everyone analyzes everything (as Amy said) to the point of obsession. Maybe it IS just me.
Amen sista.
Them is my THOUGHTS.
Every blog you post I always wanna comment, but you make me want to slice myself wide open all over your beautiful blog, so I just decide to leave my psyche intact for yet another day.
But yes, everyday is an experience that I bookmark into the frazzled filing cabinet that is my mind, waiting for that moment that my fingers just can't take anymore of the holdback and I just type the night away, annoying husband and child alike with the incessant tap of my awkward space bar.
Everyone and everything around me is a realm of words I can share with the world one day....
Yer awesome.
Writers are like scavengers picking through the giant garbage heap of life.
That's a keeper.
It's hard for me to hang onto deep emotion - each time I reflect on one of those "harrowing times" it doesn't seem as bad as it had been when it actually happened. I guess that's why many writers keep journals. I do, except they are very haphazard and tucked here and there.
Joe:
LOL! I have four kids and one of them is in college--and my mom still worries about ME. :-) Of course, now I worry about my mom and dad too. Lots of worry to go around!
E
LOL... I find that no matter what I tell people I do, they seem to just let their guard down around me. I never take what they are going through/have gone through and put it straight into something I am writing... I always twist it so it isn't going to really reflect them... but then, none of my friends (the non-writers) are interested in reading anything I write so I am still pretty safe there.
Actually, at the moment, no one is reading anything I write so I really can't say if anything I write would be offensive or bother someone I know.
Melanie:
Not just you. All writers. :-)
E
Hey Realm:
Thanks! I love when you visit. :-)
E
stephen:
Glad I gave you a keeper today.
:-)
E
kath:
I always feel like my recall is pretty intense. And when I started writing fiction in earnest, I stopped journaling. I think it was because I didn't need the journal in order to process my world.
E
Hi Ewoh:
Actually, for some weird reason a lot of people tell me their whole life story . . . I must have a "you can tell me your problems" kind of face. :-)
E
Writers are like scavengers picking through the giant garbage heap of life.
Well said!
I agree with you and Mark, LOL! I almost always relate a character's feeling to a feeling I've had, either made bigger, smaller, or slightly altered.
I use emotional moments, and build a story around them. I think. I don't know.
Oh I totally get it!
One of my main characters in one of my WIP's is, in part, a friend of mine. His gregacious personality was just too good to pass up. Sometimes people make comments to me and something in my brain goes "click" and I just have to use it.
I went to court over an accident and the man who hit me appologized profusely. He asked if he could do anything for me. (the car he was driving was uninsured and the owner of the car, David Smith, skipped town)When this man was begging for me to tell him what he could do for me I almost said, "Bring me the head of David Smith." But I was afraid he wouldn't get my humor so I held my tongue. Later I thought that would make a good book. I mean what if I really said that and then he took me seriously and....
Hate to give you the bad news, folks, but you still worry about your kids when they are 28 years old, married, and have a PhD.
But do they ever stop asking for money, Joe?
All I can say is that I had a very severe allergic reaction to my painkillers last week that put my whole body into shock. I don't know how I survived it. But the pain was so severe it is still vivid 4 days later. I can use that too!
A friend asked me if having a blog changed my perspective on the world and made everything seem like fodder for the blog. I realized that I sort of go through life in a fog, and it all becomes more real in retrospect.
spy:
Hmm . . . I believe I can chart most of my books from emotional point to emotional point, too.
E
aimless:
ROFLMAO. That IS a great premise!!!
E
Jude:
Mine stopped. She's 18. Of course, I pay for college and books--but the little day to day money train left the station--on HER part. She is an angel.
E
ELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love and prayers, hon.
E
robin:
Doesn't being a stand-up comic do that too (make everything fodder)?
E
Erica, good point! Yeah, but only when I think about it. I suppose I do file some things away in the "that was funny" category, but it's a very unconscious process with me.
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