Writers Have To Write

It’s Like Scratching a Spot That Itches

The Dog Looks Out For The Writer

One of the many reasons I'm a writer stems from how boring I am. Once a departing woman compared me to a sphere, present in life but perfectly featureless. Scathing, but close enough. But other people, now, that's a different thing.

People are kaleidoscopic and they don't know it. Locked in despair or apathy, chained to a daily treadmill, they live thoughtlessly. They wall themselves up alive with their own rationalizations about small failures, and they miss their own triumphs. They don't know how fascinating they are.

Try finding out – if you ask, they will tell you the damnedest things. And all you can answer is, “Really? What happened next?”

These real characters slide into fictional characters and march around in my head. Sometimes when I'm out wandering with my dog in the morning, I will snap back into the reality of the walk – first person point-of-view, present tense. The signs I've been absent show clear, the changes I haven't marked: wet boots, my jeans soaked up to the knee. The coffee has been drunk, the dog wants me to catch up. I've been talking to Maudy or Grace, Little Jan, Ezekias, or Tommy the Rat in my head and they've been answering back.

“That goddam horse shied back and quick as a flash, she jerked my thumb off.”

“No, I woulda nevah touched her, 'cause I'm not bi.”

“When he finally died, that's when the beatings stopped. The day after the service, I carried all of his clothes into the vacant lot next door and I burned them.”

“He was liquid fire. I couldn't help myself. When he asked me to pack a bag and slip into the car, I did. That was ten small towns back, when I knew my name.”

“This tattoo, see, on the back of my hand? It's for the time they raped me. I stare at it all the time.”

When on these morning rambles Maudy and Ezekias stop talking, I have to sort out where I am, what overgrown thicket of fir and spruce I'm in. Trudge downhill – I'll stumble onto the road. The next day I might be ready to write down what one of them whispered to me.

With all these people tramping around in my head, how can I not write? And they have to receive the voice they each deserve. The writing has to be good. They deserve great, in fact. And so the language has to be worked, over and over. Until they say it's right.