| Enough Sandwiches |
| Confessions of a wannabe writer |
| A sad but true story, by Carrie |
| Ever since I was but a wee thing, I've had the somewhat irrational desire to be a writer. I say irrational because, I can't explain why. It cannot be rationalized; I just feel driven to. I guess it's better than feeling driven to, say, stab people with forks, so I'm not complaining. I mean, everybody needs a hobby. I do wish it would let me sleep, though. I have the desire to write, and publish, a real honest-to-goodness novel. Not just any old done-to-death cliche that'll collect dust on the shelf and pass away like a fart in the wind. No, my friends, I mean some resplendent, blindingly true piece of brilliance that leaves people scratching their heads (rather than their asses, I'm sure) and questioning their existence. Something so damnably inspiring...Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself here. When I was a kid I told stories, and early picked words as my weapon of choice. I also asked a lot of questions, particularly Why. Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to go to bed? But why? I showed mucho potential. People were amazed when, at roughly age three, I was reading signs at the supermarket. Still asking why. (My mother answered my questions to the best of her ability, even if some innocently inquisitive remark made her dive 'twixt the sale rack and the soup can display in embarrassment.) My vocabulary today, and status as the Friendly Neighborhood Dictionary, can be attributed to my reading a lot as a tike, and constantly asking, "What does that mean?" So, when did the itch to write start? I don't know. It might have something to do with my grandma, Norma Wise (RIP), whom I idolized, and who was a poet. A published one, to boot-- with her poems in real, bound books. That people bought. I would sit in my room and set the full-length mirror on the floor, then lay there and look at the world from a different angle. Or hung upside-down from the bed, imagining myself walking on the ceiling...kicking the fan blades with my feet...climbing out the window and flying, and countless other adventures. I got to wondering: Why think normally? Why not color only outside the lines? Why can't I be in a real book? I reckoned I was made to write, and I was gonna do so, darn it. Where did I go wrong? At the tender and stupid age of eight, I lugged out Grandpa Wise's old typewriter and after lots of incessant clicking, produced part of a story. That was in third grade. My teacher liked me. She told my parents she'd make a pun and I'd be the only one in the class to 'get it'. At the end of the year, she gave me a blank white notebook, saying she hoped I'd fill it. Said notebook was graced with a few haphazard poems and sketches, but never filled. And the aforementioned story? Amounted to 30-something pages at most, then fizzled out. I cut myself slack for that. After all, I was only eight. But I started an ongoing pattern of self-sabotage from then on. I started numerous attempts at novels, always either hating them and ripping them to shreds, or abandoning the project altogether. In fifth grade, my teacher advanced me to sixth grade writing. Not only did I make some older, more 'mature' friends, I was exposed to all kinds of genres, and loved the teacher. My final exam piece, I was told, was A++ material. The only problem was, um, it was a week late. In eighth grade, I got bored and wondered why we didn't have a school newspaper. Gathering up a band of my beloved Rat friends and fiends, I went back to my favorite teacher, then the principal, and we were granted our own weekly newsletter. Due to procrastination, perfectionism and really bad management (me), it flopped after a few issues. Sophomore year, I got a deal with Jeff Smith, reporter from the Flint Journal. The newspaper that's read by people all over Genesee county and other parts of mid-Michigan. I'd be paid 10 bucks for every article I wrote, and 5 for every survey I took. After a few of those, I once again betrayed myself with procrastination. (Don't you wanna just slap me?) Then and ever since, I've kept up the pattern despite all attempts to do otherwise, and blown my opportunities. I became known to everyone around me as the "tortured artist"-- always either tardy, dissatisfied, too attached, or just not finished, with my work. My attention span simply too fickle to stick with a project. What scares me is that my dad, the man I've vowed never to be like but can't help it, the (sorry dad) paranoid schizophrenic, the drunk-- was always the same way: throwing himself headlong into projects, then quitting. He used to be a writer, too. Until the day he got frustrated with his writing and burned it all. Still I dream. I dream of yelling "Eureka!" with a wonderful idea and streaking down the streets. I dream of reading myself in print and big royalties, and people exclaiming, "It's brilliant! Here, take this suitcase full of cash!" ...But writing just isn't that romantic. Writing is being broke and hungry, and trying to get some fucking sleep at some godforsaken hour with ideas swirling in your head. (Or even worse, lack thereof.) It's wrist cramps and long dry spells and glaring white empty pages. I'm comforted, however, that there are successful people who were just like me, namely the late great Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame. The man quoted as saying, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by." The man whose publishers often had to lock him in his house with the word processor and force him to write to meet due dates. People always asked him where he got his ideas, and he'd give them some wild story, like, "Oh, I was lying drunk in a field one night..." but the truth is, he sat staring at a blank screen and agonized. He'd avoid writing and put it off by making a sandwich, or taking a long bath. Pretty soon he'd be very very clean and very full, and it'd be back to the blank screen, upon which he'd suddenly need a cup of hot tea, or a lengthy jog around the block to work off the effects of all those sandwiches. Yeah. There's hope for me yet. I'm currently working on another novel. I'm farther on this one than I've ever gotten, and still plugging away at it. (Track my progress here.) I'm going to finish the sucker if my friends have to chain me to a chair and force me to write at gunpoint. And I'll dedicate it to tortured wannabe writers everywhere. Can I do it? Will I break a long legacy of self-sabotage and actually be somebody? We'll see. After this sandwich. |
| "Hi, my name is Carrie, and I'm a wannabe writer..." |
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