Tonight at school I had a story workshopped. This is a weird story for me because I wrote it too fast, and because I was listening to the wrong music when I wrote it, with the result that it ended up conflating a real life thing from my history into the story. Of course everyone was all, This is pretty good, except for this character who seems idealized and false and is not convincing at all. I should know better than that — just because it happens in real life doesn’t mean it can be useful (or believable) in fiction. Doh!
So now I am trying to fix it. And yet the same music still works so well for writing this particular story. Nickel Creek, The Wreckers, Tori Amos, Two Nice Girls, etc. Sigh.
Meanwhile, the lit journal at school has accepted my poem “trans(lation)” for publication this May. I haven’t had a poem published since I was seven years old, so this is somewhat bewildering. I spend half my time, it seems, wondering whether I am going to be a poet or a fiction writer when I grow up. I remain unconvinced that they are mutually exclusive, although the example that keeps coming to mind is Michael Ondaatje, about whom I hear rumors of snarkiness beyond even MY standards. BUT despite the snarkiness, Michael Ondaatje brings us The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, which is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I want to do, except about the boys in my stories (Wyatt, Shawn, Luke).
I dunno.
So I am trying to figure too many things out these days. Fiction or Poetry? Pagan or Xian? Gay or [sortof] Straight?
I need to go get more ink. It won’t solve anything, but it will help for a while. It will give me something else at which to worry and scratch instead of the other (more important) things that are bothering me.
Plus I need more ocean. Sigh.
Tonight’s listenings: “What Kind of Mouse Am I?” from Bear in the Big Blue House.
Tonight’s readings: Confessions, Matthew Fox; Fire to Fire, Mark Doty.
