How_Writers_Find_Stories

In the reading, the first section is concerned with how authors find and begin to cultivate their ideas to create stories. I found the reading to be reassuring in a way because it said to me, you’re not unimaginative, and this is the process. Somewhere along the road to literature, I began to feel like true original writing only came to “real writers” from the ether of nothingness. Like the Buddha sitting under a tree waiting for enlightenment, a real writer had stories thrust onto him from this magical source of inspiration; imagination. I felt as though I had no originality and a very limited imagination. My stories were about my travels, my experiences, about things that I heard people say and never finish leaving me (the only one who could now) to supply the ending. I thought that I was the only one who made up stories about “how it really happened” after hearing some news story that I couldn’t shake myself loose of. I used movies that touched me to lead me into ideas, actors to base character details (making an amalgam of two to physically describe my character). I even used settings and set designs to help develop settings in my stories! None of it seemed original. I can remember two specific occurrences of where these beliefs began. The first was “career day” in the sixth grade. Being an unfortunately inattentive mother, mine could at times say insensitive things flippantly and without much notice or regard to the effect they may have on the impressionable child she should have cared for. I came home excited to tell her all about “career day” and I burst through the front door demanding her attention. I carried on for at least twenty minutes, recounting everything that happed through the day; culminating with my big finish, “I want to be Stephen King; my teacher said that really means I want to be an author!” At the mention of a familiar name (that she is not particularly fond of), she looked up from her crossword puzzle and flatly replied, “There are only so many Stephen Kings in the world, what makes you think your one of them'” I was crushed, and did not mention (or even really think about) writing again until high school. That was where my second tragedy happened. We were asked to write a story about a unique experience and then the next day read it aloud to the class. I was terrified of rejection, and although I was uneasy about reading it aloud I found myself swept up in the story I was going to write. I stayed up most of the night working on it; which was unusual as I had been a fairly lackadaisical student in most areas. My story was about a first date with a much older man that I was at the time deeply and madly in love with. This date was magical because we literally did nothing but it seemed like I was living a John Hughes film. We met in a bar (I was a sophomore in high school), and I went for a drive with him. He drove us out into the woods and to a lake where we sat on the dock and talked until four o’clock in the morning. The windows in the car down, the stereo played Bach, Brahms, and Debussy into a still night that belonged only to us and the moon. I was wearing thigh high pantyhose and took them off to let my feet dangle in the water as tiny fish nipped at my toes, attracted to the shiny polish they were adorned with. Like Carlson discussed, my story lacked narrative distance. I wrote it as it happened and it began something close to this: “I met him in the bar downtown near ten. Before I realized, we were alone and had talked for hours. The heels I had worn that night were torture and when I took them off and began to roll my stockings down; my feet immediately begged for the cool relief of the lake water. The water closed around my toes as my feet sank…” When I read “roll my stockings down”, the teacher panicked and stood up waving his hands in a sideline “time out” gesture. He began to stammer and finally spit out, “I think that’s enough of this one for today, this was supposed to be a ‘G’ rated assignment people”. Snickers and taunts filled the air as my pasty white face burned red. I never returned to the class and in fact began missing school regularly after that. I could not walk down the hall without someone whispering about my now renowned (even if completely unfounded) promiscuity. That created a fear of rejection in my work that plagues me still today. If the teacher had simply read it first, or I had been instilled with any measure of confidence, it would have been avoided. But together these experiences conspired to stop me from sharing my writing for the following fifteen years. I found “Mutual Funds” interesting but then I always did like a good tale of bloody mayhem that ensues suddenly and without much reason. I feel that it was a good example of narrative distance and that it has changed the way I am viewing my reading. I find myself looking for the “lessons” in the reading I am doing now as opposed to just being taken in by the story. It was a tale of what I call a “note worthy” experience, and I believe that these happen (albeit maybe not as obviously as this one) to all of us every day. Not a day goes by where you can honestly say, “Nothing happened”.