One Trick Pony
On Wednesday I introduced my grade 6 Writing Group to the Patty Griffin school of writing. You may know of this lesson-I've used it before to great success with other classes. Basically, I take Making Pies by Patty Griffin and teach short story elements, characterization, pacing, titling-you name it, the song has it. It's pretty fantastic to have a kid come up to you the next day and say "Here, I wrote a story based on that song!" or "Hey, I bought that song on iTunes!"
After the weekend I've had, I am going to cheat and pull out the same lesson for my adult writing class tomorrow. I'm starting to feel like I only have that one lesson that reaches my writing students. As I've said before, I am so envious of musicians-they can evoke a feeling using the all the tools in their musical workshops. I want to be able to do that with my writing. Joseph Boyden can do it, so can Sarah Selecky. Darcie Friesen Hossack's stories stick in your mind just like sad songs after a break up. I want to do that. Pacing and rhythm...tone...all that stuff.
Right now, though, I'd like to be able to write anything. Since sending off my manuscript, I have been unable to write a single worthwhile thing. The last time this happened, I'd just moved my characters to a new setting-Stanley Park. They wandered around the park and my empty head for days, looking for the right path, any path. I just kept writing and like that old Vancouver sunshine, the story made itself known, finally breaking through the mist.
And now, nothing.
I miss the people that have lived in my head the past four years..I keep thinking of things I should have said, ways I could have made things better. Clearer. More representative. More evocative. Places I went to write, I now can't go without thinking of the last time I was there, Jeff or Claire sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. And music...The bands and songs I listened to, endlessly: 80's stuff-Foreigner, Nazareth, Journey, Trooper-to get in the right time frame of mind. Elton John's Levon, when Jeff leaves...on. Brake, when Claire is driving north through Duck Mountain. Skyway Bridge, when Jeff folds up the picture of Claire and sends it on its way up the Saskatchewan River, Medicine Hat to home. And all that Green Day and Bob Schneider for the hard stuff, the sex scenes, the drugs, the fights, the kidnapping.
Can't get motivated to work out, didn't eat with the fam, was completely ADD all weekend. Laundry half done. Breakouts. Chocolate binges.
All this is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I must admit to mourning a relationship that, after four years, is irrevocably changed, if not gone. Even if by some miracle a publisher overlooks the melodrama and decides my novel is publishable, it won't be the same. It's time to let go, for sure. Things were getting a little stagnant. Jeff was starting down a destructive path, and Claire was getting a little too precious. Daniel was fading away, and Shane turned into a bit of a jerk. Probably should have broken it off sooner. We always stay too long.
Now to battle the fear-what if, like my Patty Griffin writing lesson, this is all I've got? What if I AM a One Trick Pony? I've already started my novel's sequel. Ack! It's like moving on to your boyfriend's brother after the breakup! Don't do it!
Blog it, my friend said. At least you'll be writing. And, yes, I'm writing. If you can call this writing. But I guess naming it helps, because this feels more than a little self-indulgent(the very description of a blog.) It's time to get back to work. I have a girl hiding out in the post 9-11 NY subway, key in hand, just waiting to see what she's supposed to do next. There's a boy who needs me to untangle his metal hook from the back of a girl's sweater as they dance. I have a post-partum war bride who must get her ass up out of bed and go visit her other child, stuck in the Fort San TB Sanatorium. And yes, I think Jeff's mom needs her story told-it's the one that started it all, the one thread I pulled out of my completed manuscript just to keep it under 400 pages.
None of this includes the non-fiction pieces that wait-and all those MFA assignments that are coming my way...I have lots to keep me busy. So time to say goodbye. I have new places to imagine, new people to create.
Song of the Week- Making Pies
Book of the Week - Fifteen Days by Christie Blatchford