Inescapable.

We should not discount the experiences we have or the people who come into our lives. We should try to see experiences and people with wide open eyes. Everything and each person has it or his or her place; we should honor this by trying our hardest to find that place.

It’s nearing the end of another semester and everyone is tired and stressed. I imagine it not being as draining if we were robots that did nothing but learn. Robots lack emotion. They are metallic and hollow. They process what you tell them and when. They don’t think; they don’t have to; they just do do do.

Humans think. Worse, we feel. It’s hard to stop those spinning emotions, those fleeting emotions, and those emotions that won’t let you go. It’s harder yet to think through them, analyze them, understand them. It’s such a deadening process. Even if you can see the end, you are not there yet. Even if you were, the end would change. The end will change; another process will begin.

Understand, though, if nothing else, you will be fuller because of those processes. In those processes you experience things and you meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise. And, yes, people come and go. But when they come, cherish them. Learn from them and let them learn from you. And when they go, shed a tear if you have to, but never forget why they were so important to you: why he was so important; why she was.

Let the importance become part of you. Let it shape you. For this is happening anyway; you are always being created. And if you accept what is good and learn from what is not, you will become, you will inescapably become.

On being alone.

I have an itch: I want to take a train ride. I have successfully idealized this itch like I have many others. I would go alone and, if possible, be gone longer than I could handle being gone– but being gone a while is part of the romance.

I would be alone, sitting by the window, watching the night sky fly by, drinking something requiring the attitude and appearance of age– or a driver’s liscense –to obtain.

I would feel free. I would feel unattached. I would act as though I had no possessions– only my memories to grapple with and dreams to dream.

There by the window, my story, as it were, would be reset, if I would only let it.

Given the chance, would you change your life– would you make it exactly what you want?

When alone, the choices you make are your own. When alone, you could lose everything, yourself and mind included, and it would only affect you. When alone, you can become anyone and no one will be the wiser.

So there I am: rolling through the country on a train: rewriting and rethinking: drinking just to enjoy the pleasure of doing so.

Life as story.

In my mind I can see the past, vividly and without any sense of reality. I imagine the way life could have been and the way life was. I don’t re-imagine the past purposefully; my mind goes memory-jumping, and I am left as a passive observer of false realities.

I can also see into the future: goodness, happiness, and me working fervently at a computer in an open room with the ethereal sound of rain falling in the city. I walk across the hardwood floor and step outside. Street lights change yellow, red, green and reflect in windshields and puddles on the sidewalk. I breathe deep and go back to my work.

If I were a character in my own story, I would have to ask myself: have I reached the point when a character makes his own choices, free from the writer’s pen and will? Have I taken on a life of my own?

Or am I following a thrid person omnipresent narration that I will and always have been following, regardless of choice or my perception of choice?

Each of us has a story: past, present, future. And our stories are pieced together seemingly random piece by random piece. It feels like so many pieces are missing. It feels like what is happening right now is supposed to and was always going to. It feels like you have a sense or idea of control, but really you have neither.

Will I end up breathing in the rain? Maybe. But the story could always take a turn.

 

 

 

The story is inside and out.

Imagine Emily Dickinson writing most of her hundreds of poems, only seven of which were published before her death in 1886, in her second-floor bedroom.

While Dickinson is seen as a great poet, applying her methods of solidarity seems detrimental to living a full, healthy life.

At one point, not so long ago, I could picture myself spending long hours cut away from life in an office, with the door closed, maybe locked, and me, writing and writing and writing. I had romanticized the idea of writing in solitude and, in doing so, I had swiftly pushed people away.

To truly focus on writing I indeed need to minimalize distractions. But people and their stories are the only chance we have at making our own writing good.

We learn from professors, students, friends, family and strangers. We learn craft; we learn methods; we learn stories. Only so much can come from your own head, and every now and then you have to get outside of your own realm of thinking.

Every now and then, you just have to give your life up—let go, become detached.

When you can let go, even temporarily, you can stop observing yourself, and when you do venture into the world as a storyteller, you can truly start to observe others, and build a repertoire of faces, quips, and tragedies you can later use when alone in your office.

This time, however, the door will be open and I will not push people away.

Rewriting.

Whether you call it rewriting or editing, it comes down to rethinking the story as it is now. To achieve perfection in storytelling you must edit and you must rewrite. If the two are any different, the difference is, rewriting is more intimate and personal.

I always hear about directors deciding to cut favorite scence or authors scratching beautiful sentences. It’s always hard, but they know it must be done, and after they do it the story is better served.

In Max Barry’s “The First Draft,” he says, “What I’d give for the ability to erase my memory after each draft, so I could read my own books for the first time again. It would all become so clear: where the story sagged, where the promising leads left unfollowed lay, where my characters’ motivations got muddled and, oh God please yes, what the core of this goddamn story really is.”

The hardest part about rewriting might be finding clarity; being able to know what needs to get cut and what needs to stay. I’ve said it before: you can never get enough perspective on your story.

But with so much perspective, how do you know who to listen to? Maybe you have a single person you trust; maybe a handful. But maybe not. Maybe you are left with the impossible task of finding clarity in multiple perspectives. Maybe you agree with some ideas and disagree with others. Maybe you don’t know what to do with your story; where to take it; where it will end.

Maybe you need to clear your mind, because you can’t clear your memory. So, you step back and let the story alone for a while. But not too long. After all, you still want to achieve perfection at some point.