Busty Sphinx

Oh, my. Yes, I am glad this blog is anonymous. And that nobody reads it. Here I am, relaxing with a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels while my husband reads me funny stuff from Wired.  I did a couple school visits today, I’ve been reading Miss Snark’s blog, I finished my novel outline yesterday. In short, times are good. Clever people are out there to say sharp, witty things.

And then, I happen across this blog written by some whiney writer who talks about despair demons and quotes people who say you ought to belittle yourself.

This is not good, I think. This writer needs to get a grip. She needs some chocolate pretzels, some Monty Python. She needs a big box from her friend Mandy in Texas containing a Christmas Ornament in the shape of a rather busty sphinx with stumps for legs. (Yes, such a package did arrive two days ago. It also contained chocolate pretzels. And I have not yet written to thank Mandy.)
If this blog ever gets readers – an event I am assiduously trying to avoid – it is doubtful they will want to read angsty post after angsty post.

I sometimes read blogs by teenagers who undoubtedly wear a great deal of eyeliner and I want to post replies so that I can keep them from killing themselves. They’ve all got such terrible relationships with their mothers and I could be there. I could fix it all. I’m nice.

But then I don’t post replies.

It is a very odd phenomenon that has people posting essentially private thoughts for others to read. It reminds me of that movie, My First Mister, where the girl writes obituaries for herself and then makes them into paper airplanes and flies them out the window.

Well, I am not writing obituaries today. I could post some angsty poetry, but I think I’ll pass.
The point of this post, is that there is no point. “Have a focus in your writing,” I tell my students. I put little cards on my computer with pithy statements on them to focus my stories. I look for a good lead. I never start a sentence with “there is.” I avoid using the word “I” over and over again. Except here.

Here, I will write wildly bad content. I will ramble and foam at the mouth. I will feel sorry for myself. I will write things that seem, at the time, so very beautiful that I weep all over the keyboard. I will quote monks who lived in caves and I’ll offer apologies for George W. Bush (Okay. Not any more. I’ve reformed. Even if he hugs me and prays for me.)

And why, dear reader, is this so? Because I’m using a medium that requires nothing of me. I can break all the rules. I can bore people. I can even misspell things and make up words like “angsty.” Yes, I understand, I am using bandwidth for this drivel. But people use bandwidth for worse.
All of us need to do a little pretend-audience writing. It’s like journaling, only better. It allows one to be grandiose, to preen, to shoot off one’s mouth. But the trick is NOT to go looking for readers.

When I was first published, everyone who came into my house had to look at my byline. In fact, the most telling comment I got about this process was from a woman at church, at whom I elatedly waved my first story. “Look! Look!” I cackled. “Wow,” she said, “someone with your same name.”

So this is the equivalent of writing a journal and then leaving it, enticingly, in a coffee-shop. You go home and fantasize about all the people reading your despair. Someone will find it. They will care. They will search for you across the void. They will buy you a latte and some chocolate pretzels.
The next week you return to the coffee shop in your black trench coat. You glance around covertly and spot the journal. It’s exactly where you left it. When you pick it up, there is a nice rectangular shiny spot underneath – the only place the dust hasn’t settled.

But perhaps all writing is like that. We’re all trying to have the conversation. And sometimes we do have it. More often, we don’t.

But I know I’d be writing if I was the last person breathing on the planet. I’d write it for the cockroaches. And they’d think it was just beautiful and cry little, cockroachy tears.