I've done little or no writing during
the entire month of December, but
have made a New Year's resolution
that I'm going to do my best to stick
to. No. I am going to stick to it. I
resolve to finish my novel by the end
of March and, well, in the
unrealistic part of this resolution,
which doesn't involve me resolving to
do anything, I get a phone call. This
week it's from someone representing
Norah Ephron.
I hang up thinking it's one of my
friends, or my husband disguising his
voice. This comes from allowing
people to know me so well. So, in the
dream, I have an agent and a movie
deal starring Jennifer Aniston as
Joanna and Angelina Jolie as Gina.
This is obviously not literary
fiction I'm talking about here,
however; I can quit my job and stay
home and write and watch my children
flourish and fight and sleep on their
backs for a few more years, possibly,
only months more, and write and trim
back my carpet roses and write some
more. There is a book two.
It's exciting, this dream, goal,
fantasy, thing with a million names
that I think about more than doing
anything about, and well, who knows
if any of it will happen; all I know
is that I'm ready to try. I must
leap. Now. It all scares the shit out
of me.
You see, in this place I have that I
share with you, in some way that’s
perhaps not about writing - maybe it’
s about applying for a new job or
asking someone on a date - I don't
think I'm qualified, capable, or good
enough (or, well, I'm not pretty
enough for the date). I don't have
letters behind my name and, beyond
first year English and a Creative
Writing Level One course, I don't
have any formal education past high
school. To say that E.B. White and
Roald Dahl, two good picks, are the
influences in my writing would not be
a stretch, but I’m going to write a
novel that’s going to be published!
Ha! You’d be scared too!
I'm just making this up as I go
along, doing my best to open wounds
and spill them, sometimes, drips at a
time, onto a page, to tap into how it
feels to see the sky again and again
or to hold my child or kiss someone
for the very first time and write it
in a way that’s never been done
before!
Sure! Why not?
And the thing of it for me, all I can
say to you or to anyone about writing
and life and everything that happens
when we sleep, is this- are you
poised in anticipation? Laughing?
The thing I've learned without any
letters or a piece of paper - which
is a different dream - is to write
about the thing I learned about right
after food and shelter, in life, and
in writing itself, and that's this:
honesty is the best policy. It’s the
one thing that boils down to a cliché
that can only be told one way. It’s
not as long and complicated a word or
expression as we expect or fear it
may be. But it’s the thing I have to
try the hardest to do.
I am Esme in my story, worrying about
my death and what I’ll be wearing,
excited about the unknown in a
morbid, yet comical, way which I feel
is the way most of us view the
subject, a coping mechanism, of the
inevitable demise of us all.
Nora Ephron probably won't phone me
and Clive Owen might not play Tony
LaSalle, but this is the one fib I
allow myself, and I’ll keep pushing
through the bullshit and the smiles
and the tears that are happy or sexy
or not smiley at all; and I'll keep
writing about life and what it brings
- that one thing that resonates the
clearest...that one thing that might
be wacky, humorous, desperate or
written on a day that I worked late
and didn't kiss my kids goodnight -
that one thing that's the truth.
Many thanks to Tim Ljunggren and the
fabulous Kim Teeple, the newest
addition to the insolent rudder team,
for selecting me for this feature.
Happy New Year, everyone...xo...
# # #
patricia-parkinson.blogspot.com
proud member of:
canadian-writers-collective.blogspot.com
Best Online Fiction for 2005 (according to
storySouth:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/fandango.virtual/
gator/qob_page_13.htm
www.allthingsgirl.com/pp/as/001055.shtml
www.smokelong.com/flash/917/asp
patricia's novel-in-progress:
Cosmopolitans...
