He looked up from the short manuscript I’d dropped in his lap just minutes before and said only, "That was certainly tongue in check."
I laughed so loudly that it startled him a bit from his seat. "Honey, I think the term is tongue in cheek."
Trying desperately to cover his small mistake, he replied with a smile, "I wasn’t trying to use that particular turn of phrase. I simply meant that there were lots of things you could have said in that piece that you didn’t. Like how "Sarah" is a raging bitch who thinks everyone envies and adores her. Or how "Mandy" pretends to be this doting mother and martyr for all, but in her spare time has phone sex with almost-strangers. So, I said what I meant . . . you managed to keep your tongue in CHECK."
"Oh," crestfallen, I looked to the floor, "so you recognized Carissa and Angela in the story? I thought I did a pretty good job disguising them in the characters."
"Anyone who knows them would recognize them in this story."
I sighed heavily then stamped my foot with child-like anger. "I just can’t write fiction! I try and I try, but everything I write ends up being about the people or the events in my life. Why does it seem to come so easily for everyone else in my writing group, yet I spend hours and days agonizing over one tiny piece and it still comes out horribly?"
He didn’t need to rise from the chair and pull me to his chest. It wasn’t necessary for him to stroke my back with the lightest of touches. I just wanted it.
But it wasn’t his way.
He didn’t use touch to soothe. And though I am loathe to admit it, sometimes the reach of his words strikes deeper than the caress of his hands.
"You can write fiction. Only a handful of people would ever know this was based in truth. Your writing is flawless, the flow uninterrupted, the words carefully chosen and exact in their placing. Hemingway, himself, would be jealous. What you think you lack in creativity you make up for in sheer ability. Submit this for publication - under a pseudonym, of course - and it will be picked up immediately. Or just present it to your writing group next Tuesday and watch shock, awe and thinly veiled jealousy rise to color their faces."
I rolled my eyes and kept my petulant stance, but deep inside I was glowing. He wasn’t a man who used words lightly, he knew the weight that they held, particularly with me. And though I'm not deluded enough to believe what he said; I know that he thinks every word he said was true.
I wonder, again, if I write only for his praise. I stopped writing for myself long ago . . .
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2 comments:
Is this fiction? Because it doesn't seem like fiction at all.
But I often feel the same way. Everything I write, to me, seems so contrived and obvious.
I'm wondering the same thing as Bone.
If it's non-fiction though, you have to know the only way to write is to write for yourself. If you write for someone else's praise, it eventually falls short.
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