My Writing Life: Part I
Week 2 Stories:
8) "Funny Little Snake" by Tesa Hadley - O. Henry Anthology (2019)
9) "No Spanish" by Moira McCavana - O. Henry Anthology (2019)
10) "Girl of Few Seasons" by Rachel Kondo - O. Henry Anthology (2019)
11) "The Finkelstein 5" by Nan Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Friday Black
12) "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain" by Jamil Jan Kochai - The New Yorker
13) "Your Duck is My Duck" by Deborah Eisenberg - Your Duck is My Duck
14) "Next Door" by Tobias Wolff - In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
* * *
I read Life of Pi by Yann Martel in my senior year of Bible college. I was reading a lot back then, particularly C.S. Lewis and another student said, "You like that fantasy stuff?"
I told him I did, though I was slightly embarrassed by it. He asked me if I'd heard of this book. "Apparently a boy is stuck on a atwith a talking tiger," he said.
Talking beasts were my favourite, so I ordered the book, and when it came, I spent the next twenty-four or so hours reading it. I read through most of the night, skipped school the next day and read.
The tiger didn't talk, but the book spoke to me in a way no other book had. I was completely absorbed in it, and when I got to the twist at the end I felt so inspired I told my wife (at the time) that I really wanted to start writing. Reading Life of Pi was the first time I had been aware of the writer behind the work instead of just being enveloped in the story, the way he had manipulated me into believing one story, when all the while he was telling a different story.
I wanted to try that.
I had wanted to write for a long time before that. In eleventh grade everyone in my high school (a small school, with less than fifty students total in grades nine through twelve) was forced to write a poem. We were to write a poem and submit it to a competition with other private christian schools in our region. If we won there, our poems would be submitted to an international competition against church schools world-wide.
I was way too cool to write a poem. I was fairly popular (though who wasn't in a class of nine students?) and starting to skateboard, watching movies and listening to music I knew I wasn't allowed to at one friend's or another's, rebelling in my own way from the rigors of a Christian life.
I stole the lyrics from an Insyders song. They were the perfect band for this scam, obscure enough because they were a Christian band, so no one had heard of them, and loud enough most of the Christians I knew would have dismissed them as worthwhile music. So I changed a few of the words, submitted the poem, and felt smug in my skirting the mandatory poetry contest.
The problem was the poem won at Regionals and was submitted to the international competition. I felt guilty, but wasn't about to out myself, and was certain it wouldn't place at this huge poetry contest.
It placed third. And I was forced to walk across a stage in front of hundreds of cheering high school kids to accept a medal for something I didn't actual write; was forced to tell my parents I had won; was forced listen to Ma tell all her friends and family that her son was a poet; was forced to read the thing in front of my aunts and cousins and sisters at a family gathering; was forced to write an actual poem for my grandpa's birthday, since everyone believed me to be a poet; was forced to accept a notebook from my grandma as a birthday gift with an inscription that read: For all your poems.
I wrote actual poems to prove that I could do it, or to ease my conscience, one or the other, or both. And when I was buying my first car midway through twelfth grade and the old man selling it to me asked me what I was going to do when I graduated I told him I was probably going to go to Bible college, but that what I really wanted to do was be a writer.
He laughed at me, and when he could see I wasn't impressed with being laughed at, he said, "I'll tell you what I told my grandson when he said he wanted to be a writer. I told him, 'Well what have you written lately?' Cause writers don't just make jot notes every other blue moon. They sit down and write like they can't even help it."
"I write all the time," I said.
"Well good on ya. What was the last thing you wrote?"
"A poem. Yesterday," which was true, but which didn't stop me from feeling like a fraud either.
"Well I'll tell ya, college is probably a good idea, cause you're gonna be driving this boat for a long time if you think you're gonna make money writing poems."
Through college I would write poems when the muse struck me, usually to the girl I was in love with, sometimes about my love of Jesus. I'd get my musician friends to try to put music to the Jesus poems, but they never seemed all that into it, and the poems probably weren't all that good anyway. By the time I was reading Martel, I had pretty much decided I would try to be a youth pastor instead of a writer. But reading Life of Pi and then overhearing one of my profs talking to another prof about how well I can write a paper when he didn't know I was behind him (along with this serious fear that I had been reading the Good Book backwards this whole time, and actually had more questions than answers when I was this close to earning a theology degree) made me start on my first novel.
It was a fantasy novel (which I called a sci-fi novel because there were aliens) which was complete garbage, but it was fun. It was so much fun. I remember handing in my school work late and half-assed because I was spending so much time writing this novel.
When I graduated and went back home, I had no interest in being a pastor, and was determined to write the next great novel. I got a job that would pay the bills, but I was going to write until that paid the bills. The following year, I applied to a creative writing course through Humber College in Toronto in which I'd write a novel and receive tips and critiques from an established author.
I had given up on my fantasy novel and had decided to write a "serious" novel. It was kind of experimental--there were three separate timelines which seemed to be running concurrently, but which were really running in opposite directions, so that that the novel began and ended on the same day--and I thought it was rather brilliant, but I was no where near good enough to write that novel. The feedback I got were things like "Slow down"--or--"Try not to seize on the first image that comes to mind"--or--"I need to understand why these metaphors are meaningful to these characters."
I was frustrated with these critiques, but what really got me was when my mentor--I really wish I could remember his name, but I can't--asked me, "Are you purposely making each chapter a solitary story?"
I didn't know what he meant and told him so.
"I know you're calling this a novel, and I know the chapters are connected, but I'm finding each chapter can stand on its own as a story," he said. "Do you read a lot of short fiction?" he said.
I didn't, back then, nor did I take it seriously, and I was wildly offended that he thought I was just writing stories.
*
Life of Pi won the Booker prize in 2004, and in my quest to find another book as invigorating as Pi I had started reading previous winners. I read Penelope Fitzgerald and Salman Rushdie and Coetzee, Peter Carey, A.S. Byatt, Enright, Adiga, Roddy Doyle, etc, and I was trying to collect every past winner for my bookshelf. I was obsessed with Booker winners and nominees. When they'd announce the longlist, I'd try to get all thirteen on the list and try to read them before they announced the winner twelve weeks later.
And this obsession lead me to Margaret Atwood, which started a new obsession with her writing and anything she said or did, which lead me to pick up an Alice Munro title because Atwood had a blurb on the cover.
Alice Munro changed my life.
* * *
This is way longer than I had planned. I'm going to stop here and continue next time.
8) "Funny Little Snake" by Tesa Hadley - O. Henry Anthology (2019)
9) "No Spanish" by Moira McCavana - O. Henry Anthology (2019)
10) "Girl of Few Seasons" by Rachel Kondo - O. Henry Anthology (2019)
11) "The Finkelstein 5" by Nan Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Friday Black
12) "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain" by Jamil Jan Kochai - The New Yorker
13) "Your Duck is My Duck" by Deborah Eisenberg - Your Duck is My Duck
14) "Next Door" by Tobias Wolff - In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
* * *
I read Life of Pi by Yann Martel in my senior year of Bible college. I was reading a lot back then, particularly C.S. Lewis and another student said, "You like that fantasy stuff?"
I told him I did, though I was slightly embarrassed by it. He asked me if I'd heard of this book. "Apparently a boy is stuck on a atwith a talking tiger," he said.
Talking beasts were my favourite, so I ordered the book, and when it came, I spent the next twenty-four or so hours reading it. I read through most of the night, skipped school the next day and read.
The tiger didn't talk, but the book spoke to me in a way no other book had. I was completely absorbed in it, and when I got to the twist at the end I felt so inspired I told my wife (at the time) that I really wanted to start writing. Reading Life of Pi was the first time I had been aware of the writer behind the work instead of just being enveloped in the story, the way he had manipulated me into believing one story, when all the while he was telling a different story.
I wanted to try that.
I had wanted to write for a long time before that. In eleventh grade everyone in my high school (a small school, with less than fifty students total in grades nine through twelve) was forced to write a poem. We were to write a poem and submit it to a competition with other private christian schools in our region. If we won there, our poems would be submitted to an international competition against church schools world-wide.
I was way too cool to write a poem. I was fairly popular (though who wasn't in a class of nine students?) and starting to skateboard, watching movies and listening to music I knew I wasn't allowed to at one friend's or another's, rebelling in my own way from the rigors of a Christian life.
I stole the lyrics from an Insyders song. They were the perfect band for this scam, obscure enough because they were a Christian band, so no one had heard of them, and loud enough most of the Christians I knew would have dismissed them as worthwhile music. So I changed a few of the words, submitted the poem, and felt smug in my skirting the mandatory poetry contest.
The problem was the poem won at Regionals and was submitted to the international competition. I felt guilty, but wasn't about to out myself, and was certain it wouldn't place at this huge poetry contest.
It placed third. And I was forced to walk across a stage in front of hundreds of cheering high school kids to accept a medal for something I didn't actual write; was forced to tell my parents I had won; was forced listen to Ma tell all her friends and family that her son was a poet; was forced to read the thing in front of my aunts and cousins and sisters at a family gathering; was forced to write an actual poem for my grandpa's birthday, since everyone believed me to be a poet; was forced to accept a notebook from my grandma as a birthday gift with an inscription that read: For all your poems.
I wrote actual poems to prove that I could do it, or to ease my conscience, one or the other, or both. And when I was buying my first car midway through twelfth grade and the old man selling it to me asked me what I was going to do when I graduated I told him I was probably going to go to Bible college, but that what I really wanted to do was be a writer.
He laughed at me, and when he could see I wasn't impressed with being laughed at, he said, "I'll tell you what I told my grandson when he said he wanted to be a writer. I told him, 'Well what have you written lately?' Cause writers don't just make jot notes every other blue moon. They sit down and write like they can't even help it."
"I write all the time," I said.
"Well good on ya. What was the last thing you wrote?"
"A poem. Yesterday," which was true, but which didn't stop me from feeling like a fraud either.
"Well I'll tell ya, college is probably a good idea, cause you're gonna be driving this boat for a long time if you think you're gonna make money writing poems."
Through college I would write poems when the muse struck me, usually to the girl I was in love with, sometimes about my love of Jesus. I'd get my musician friends to try to put music to the Jesus poems, but they never seemed all that into it, and the poems probably weren't all that good anyway. By the time I was reading Martel, I had pretty much decided I would try to be a youth pastor instead of a writer. But reading Life of Pi and then overhearing one of my profs talking to another prof about how well I can write a paper when he didn't know I was behind him (along with this serious fear that I had been reading the Good Book backwards this whole time, and actually had more questions than answers when I was this close to earning a theology degree) made me start on my first novel.
It was a fantasy novel (which I called a sci-fi novel because there were aliens) which was complete garbage, but it was fun. It was so much fun. I remember handing in my school work late and half-assed because I was spending so much time writing this novel.
When I graduated and went back home, I had no interest in being a pastor, and was determined to write the next great novel. I got a job that would pay the bills, but I was going to write until that paid the bills. The following year, I applied to a creative writing course through Humber College in Toronto in which I'd write a novel and receive tips and critiques from an established author.
I had given up on my fantasy novel and had decided to write a "serious" novel. It was kind of experimental--there were three separate timelines which seemed to be running concurrently, but which were really running in opposite directions, so that that the novel began and ended on the same day--and I thought it was rather brilliant, but I was no where near good enough to write that novel. The feedback I got were things like "Slow down"--or--"Try not to seize on the first image that comes to mind"--or--"I need to understand why these metaphors are meaningful to these characters."
I was frustrated with these critiques, but what really got me was when my mentor--I really wish I could remember his name, but I can't--asked me, "Are you purposely making each chapter a solitary story?"
I didn't know what he meant and told him so.
"I know you're calling this a novel, and I know the chapters are connected, but I'm finding each chapter can stand on its own as a story," he said. "Do you read a lot of short fiction?" he said.
I didn't, back then, nor did I take it seriously, and I was wildly offended that he thought I was just writing stories.
*
Life of Pi won the Booker prize in 2004, and in my quest to find another book as invigorating as Pi I had started reading previous winners. I read Penelope Fitzgerald and Salman Rushdie and Coetzee, Peter Carey, A.S. Byatt, Enright, Adiga, Roddy Doyle, etc, and I was trying to collect every past winner for my bookshelf. I was obsessed with Booker winners and nominees. When they'd announce the longlist, I'd try to get all thirteen on the list and try to read them before they announced the winner twelve weeks later.
And this obsession lead me to Margaret Atwood, which started a new obsession with her writing and anything she said or did, which lead me to pick up an Alice Munro title because Atwood had a blurb on the cover.
Alice Munro changed my life.
* * *
This is way longer than I had planned. I'm going to stop here and continue next time.
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