| |
We in this land of overabundance have such a fear of waste. Don't waste
time, don't waste money — and for God's sake, clean your plate! We're
trained to focus on the future, to keep our eyes on the prize. Earn good
grades and join the right clubs and teams; gain acceptance into a good
college; secure a good job. Along the way, be sure to keep your eyes open
for a suitable mate.
Whatever you do, don't waste yourself on people and pursuits that don't
advance you down the path of success.
I confess: I've wasted time. Lots of it. I spent years and thousands of
dollars on an education in music. I played the violin and got most of the
way through a master's degree in musicology before I admitted that it wasn't
what I wanted. What do I have to show for it? Well, if you turn on the
classical radio station, I can probably identify within twenty seconds
what's playing, whether or not I've heard it before. But that's hardly even
a good party trick.
Once I lamented to another writer about all the time and money I'd wasted on
music, and she looked at me like I was crazy. She said that there was music
in my writing: she could hear it in the rhythm of my phrases, the sounds of
the words I chose, the pacing of my stories and the way they proceeded to an
ending. All of this, she said, came directly from my experience with music,
and I should be grateful for it.
I thought she was just trying to help me feel better about my hefty student
loans, but in time I came to appreciate what she was saying. Would I be a
writer now if I'd pursued a future in business or medicine, or even in
writing from the beginning? Probably, but my work would sound completely
different. And all the stories I've written with musicians as characters
(there are many — surprise!) wouldn't exist at all.
I was reminded of this during a recent email exchange with Charles Tuomi,
one of this issue's contributors. "I've spent five hours a day on a
commuter train for the last year," he wrote. "With this story being
published, at least I'll have gotten something out of the experience." He's
absolutely right — we wouldn't have the pleasure of publishing "I Hope He
Likes It" if he hadn't let himself wonder about another passenger during
what must have felt like a phenomenal waste of his time.
During my first night alone after a painful breakup, I wondered how I could
have wasted so many years with nothing to show for it. As I wallowed in
grief, I found myself whispering phrases, trying to articulate how I felt,
and then writing them down, as if observing a character grieving. I stopped
crying as the words came, paragraph by paragraph. Soon I had a complete
story. Suddenly, the years I'd spent in that relationship seemed worth it,
because I'd gotten a story out of it. Three years of my life for about
eight hundred words — a savvy trade? I think so.
We writers are lucky because we get to use all we've ever seen, done, heard,
and felt in our work. All of our experiences — painful, pleasant, and
pedestrian — are the raw materials of our art. Like quilters who sew
patches from their children's baby clothes, we are the great recyclers, and
nothing is wasted. Not the long journeys down dead-end roads, not the times
standing in line at the supermarket, not the times changing diapers or
seething in traffic or waiting for the plumber to finish fixing the toilet.
All of the people we've ever encountered may show up in our writing — our
favorite babysitter, who played cards with us after the younger kids had
fallen asleep; our prom date, who'd raised goats for 4-H and named them all
after snack foods; the next-door neighbors who seemed always to be screaming
at their little dog. We may not even be aware of it when they do.
Everything we experience is fodder to feed the writer within us. Everything
goes into the compost pile, becoming a fertile mix to grow our stories.
If not for pursuits that prove fruitless, or at best unfulfilling, what on
earth would we write about?
By the way, if you glimpse yourself in one of my stories, and it's not a
flattering portrait ... well, it's probably someone else.
|
