May 5, 2005

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  I’ve probably started writing in this little box three or four times.  Sometimes I don’t even get that far.  I just came from class and am as motivated as I’m likely to get, to write anything for anybody. 

  
  

  I haven’t written anything since I left Xanga.  And, as most of you know, I didn’t really leave I just quit posting and commenting.  Although, lately I’ve begun commenting some.  I was starting to feel like I should give back some, instead of sneaking around reading everyone and not contributing.

  
  

  I haven’t felt much like a writer.  I have suffered over credibility issues.  Shaken deeply by Moon’s “trickery” I failed to see the point of these nightly sessions.  I went back and read her comments and Emails and remembered what promise she thought I had.  I guess we know what that’s worth. 

  
  

  Closeness with strangers seemed like a dumb idea.  Besides, I was supposed to have the novel completely done before I went to Florida next week.  All that Xanga time should have been spent doing more productive writing.  So I started editing.

  
  

  And I’m not saying there aren’t some really good sections.  But parts I did before I started taking the writing class need to be redone.  What my teacher calls “telling” needs to be rewritten so that it is “showing.”  That involves coming up with a whole lot of dialogue. 

  
  

  I thought I liked editing but this is pure drudgery.  And it doesn’t shine, these parts that I’m fleshing out.  I never hear anyone talk about selling anything and it seems like you all are such good writers.  I gave up my fantasy of being a real writer. 

  
  

  Then something happened tonight that made me want to write again. This young girl read her piece and when she got done my stomach was in a knot.  I was pretty sure she was writing about herself because the language was not what was compelling.  It was the story of losing your mind.  But it was subtle.  She hadn’t been herself for a couple months and the way she described her changed thought process, which she was trying unsuccessfully to get control of, was fascinating…..and frightening….and real. 

  
  

  I started to think about how when we deviate from the self we are used to, how unnerving that can be.  I was standing out in the hall, hiding, crying.  I don’t know if I was crying because I couldn’t write or crying because she could.  I think maybe I was just moved.  The human condition and the fact that this young girl had, in very plain language, hit upon such a sophisticated yet common quagmire — The possibilities are endless.  If anybody can write about deviating from the self, it’s me. 

  
  

  I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor.  I’ve had little tits, huge tits, no tits.  In one year I went from being physically in my prime to being bald and bedridden.  Instead of being secretary of the PTA, “mother of the year” and star court reporting student I became a bellydancer, erotica writer, pot-smoking bad mother of the year (because I left)  I used to have such a full social calendar and now I don’t keep one. If you look in my closet I have a complete wardrobe for all those personas and my address book has phone numbers of all the people I used to socialize with from those worlds.  I am none of those people and all of those people. 

  
  

  And I think I just figured out why I’ve been so upset.  I liked the idea of being a writer because I could include all those personas.  Those other images were never completely a good fit but I really liked the sound of “writer.”  And so I started to take myself seriously.  Suddenly I had a very strong, new-found sense of self.  That Moon was a fraud made me feel like a sham.

  
  

  But tonight, feeling my stomach unclench, noticing my alarm, I knew I, too, could evoke emotion in others.  And as I listened to the teacher and my favorite guy talking about how you can’t start out a story using second person if you’re going to ultimately write it in first, and I knew it read better keeping that line in second, I didn’t care if I ever got published.

  
  

  So I guess I’m back.  Oh, and “Moon” – FUCK YOU.

  
  

   

  • 2:57 am
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