I think I need a therapist

I'm developing an interesting perspective on my narrator, who just happens to the be the 12 year old me. The more I think of her as a character, the more cynical I feel about her. When I started writing, I felt like she was more tragic and a little heroic ... the way lots of teenage girls are. Being a teenager is brutal, you know? But these character studies have turned her into someone I don't quite like.

1. She's obsessed with food.
2. She's passive-aggressive.
3. She uses the misery of others to her advantage.
4. She's a perfectionist.
5. She's secretive.
6. She's afraid of everyone.

Oh, cruel, cruel mirror!

I think I need to write some moments when she comes out looking good! Some happy fun moments. Some instance of truth and beauty. Why would anyone want to read about a character like her? I also have to write some scenes where she doesn't just sit back, observe and react, but where she tries to advance an agenda. She needs to get active.

I've heard songwriters say they have trouble writing happy songs, because they come out sounding cheezy. I totally identify with that. Okay...next post: a happy scene!

Vacation tchotchka

I'm on vacation this week. Yaaaaay! I told my mom I had the week off, and she was like, "Oh. If I had known I would have come out to see you." I KNEW she was going to say that. I think she said the same thing last year when I took a week off in the fall. Also, the topic of blogs came up, and she asked me if I had a blog. I can never lie. I'm really bad at lying, even over the phone, so I said "Yes. But I'm not telling you where it is." I just don't know how she'd feel about reading some of this stuff--especially the autobiographical stuff that involves memories of her. And I don't want to censor myself because I know she might be reading what I write.

I started off my vacation by taking an awesome weekend workshop with the playwright, Will Dunne.

I wasn't sure how writing plays would translate to writing memoir, or even fiction, but Will led us through a number of exercises that I think would be helpful for anyone who's doing creative writing--even if you're writing non-fiction. We read for drama, no matter what the genre. We mostly worked on character--determining motivations, strategies for dealing with events that come at them--and letting the characters tell you what they want to do. I worked through Annie's character in one exercise, and found it very powerful. She has a lot of baggage that makes her act the way she does. I knew that, but somehow the act of writing it all down made it all much more important to the story. Before, it was all just in my head.

So now that the weekend is over, I'm trying to do the same thing for the other girls in the River piece, and I'm using this work to create some background chapters. I don't know if I'll eventually include this in the final piece (or even the first draft), but I may use parts of it. And I'm hoping that this work I'm doing will help me write more authentic, richer characters overall.

The hardest thing has been imagining myself as a character, since this is an autobiographical piece. Putting myself through those character exercises, I had to ask, what were my motivations? My strategies? What were my fears, loves? What was I angry about? We go through life rationalizing the hurtful things that happen to us--we come out of it thinking "it was them, not me." Treating myself as a character, I had to examine the good and the bad. Maybe it will help my narrator (me) be a more well-rounded character too. But ouch.

Anyway, so I'm planning to do lots more writing this week. And shop for a new car too. My old Subaru is in the shop for the second head gasket replacement in two years. I think it's about time to trade the bugger in. Good thing I decided to stay home instead of taking a road trip!

Glowy man

We were out on Annie’s lawn just as the sun was setting. Her house was behind us, its warm lamplight spilling out onto the grass, but our eyes were turned toward the dark. We sat on the crest of a slight hill that rolled down toward the line of trees separating the house from the train tracks below. It was just an inky curtain to our eyes, this place where the lawn met the woods, and we projected what we wanted onto it.

“Did you see that?” I said, and my three friends strained their eyes to see.

“What?” they said in unison.

I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real or not, but there against the shadowy wall of trees was a figure.

“There. Over there,” I pointed. “Right at the edge of the trees.” No moon, no streetlights. We all peered into the darkness where the faint trace of a man glowed as softly as if he’d been dusted in chalk.

“It’s like, a man. A glowy man,” I whispered.

“Shut up!” Sara laughed and thwaped me on the shoulder.

We’d spent the whole day together—the four of us. It was the kind of day I long for now. No obligations, no plans, there was time to be bored. Before I’d even roll out of bed I would dial the pink plastic phone that sat on my nightstand and call all three of them. “Hey, what are we doing today?”

Annie’s mom had driven us to the mall and we’d spent the afternoon walking laps from the food court down to Sears. We blew through the Limited, the Gap, Claire’s, all our favorite stores in the first hours. There were others like Rave or Lerner that we’d never go into. Those stores were for girls from towns like Cheektowaga and West Seneca, where they spayed their bangs into huge walls and wore tight, acid washed jeans. The mall was an exercise in us versus them. A handy tool in making comparisons and judgments.

Oddly enough, the boys from those towns were another matter. We’d look for the group of boys that most closely fit our requirements—no feathered hair, no high top sneakers, no heavy metal t-shirts—and start following them. Innocently at first, maybe just looking and giggling at them as we passed them at the other side of the promenade. Then more overly, looping back around as they passed and falling in behind them, with enough distance between us that they were clearly in view but so we could talk without them hearing us. We’d follow them in to the arcade sometimes, and on this particular day, Annie had worked up the courage to ask on of them—the cute one with the OP t-shirt—whether he liked Sara or not. We stood outside in a huddle as Annie went in, and held our breaths until she returned.

“What’d he say?” Laura wanted to know. We all did.

“He wanted to know which one you were,” Annie answered. “So I said you were the one with the super straight brown hair, and then he said, ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’”

So there we were, sprawled on Annie’s lawn, discussing whether the boy really did like Sara, which of the other boys were cute, what we should do if we ever saw them again, making bold promises about getting phone numbers, as the day slowly extinguished itself before us. No moon, no streetlamps, just a halo of light from the village in the distance.

“I think I see him,” Annie said, pointing to the right. “Over there?” I nod my head.

“Oh my god!” Laura whispers”

We all see him. He has the dim phosphorescence of a dying lightning bug. My heart was in my throat.

“Is he real?”

What do you think he’s doing here?”

“Annie, should we call your mom?”

We all speculate round and round but no one moves toward the house.

“It’s the glowy man!” Laura shrieks, and we’re terrified and charged all at once.

“I think I saw it move!”

“Holy shit.”

I couldn't tell, because it was true that the glow had shifted to a new place, but looking at the old place, it was possible that there was still a glow there too, but it was less present, and the new spot was getting brighter.

When I look back on this moment, I know it was our imaginations. Our eyes pulled in the light from around us and cast it onto the dark space, filling with of all things, a man. In my mind, he was 30 years old, wearing a brown suit. He had short, dark hair. How this man got to be there at the edge of the woods, I didn’t know, but it seemed he wanted to watch us.

“It’s getting closer!” We were on our feet—laughing and screaming.