Goals

My goal for the summer is to write every day that I am home. I want to do this for several reasons. My first post might as well be about why I want to write.

First of all, I enjoy words more than anything. I believe that if I have a personal legend, it is to write. I hate to start this blog out with a reference from a book I loathe, but unfortunately, even a crummy author can lead me to thinking. I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho recently because I had to teach it. When I bought it at the book store, I even commented to my husband that "This is not the sort of book I would normally read. See the shiny letters?" I do judge books by their covers, and any books with shiny letters are up to no good. That was an omen. (For the record, I do not believe in omens, but it is a little joke because The Alchemist adamantly supports omens. Alas, the curse of referencing books that the reader may not have read.)

The Alchemist is basically a poorly written self-help book disguised as a novel. I knew I hated it while I was reading it, and it was hard to hide my distaste while teaching--I had to work hard not to roll my eyes and reveal my cynicism with my tone of voice. But I truly came to despise it when I was making the quotation identification portion of the test. Normally that is my favorite part of the test creation process. I get to revel in my favorite quotes without the annoying task of trying to come up with questions about them. The only criterion is that the quote has to have something that gives away who said it--it cannot be generic or unidentifiable. It was while making this part of the test that the extent of Coelho's weakness emerged. Most of the quotes could have come from anybody in the story. The characters weren't characters. They were all just mouthpieces for the author's own quacky beliefs. For example: “Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World” (Coelho 111).

I ended up having to use mundane quotes like:
“I found these one day in the fields. I wanted them to be a part of your inheritance. But use them to buy your flock. Take to the fields, and someday you’ll learn that our countryside is the best, and our women the most beautiful” (Coelho 9).

Another reason I want to write is because if an idiotic book like The Alchemist can not only get published, but be widely read and heralded, then I ought to at least try my hand at it. I ended up reading the Bible that way. I read in Dolly Parton's autobiography (I was young, bored, it was laying around the house...) that she read the whole Bible. It was the first time it occurred to me that any one would actually read the whole Bible. And I thought, well, if this bimbo read the whole thing, then certainly I can. So I started with the new testament, then read the old, then read the new again. There's a lot of crazy stuff in that book that they don't tell you about in Sunday school.

In addition to judging a book by its cover, I also judge it primarily by the way it is written. My love for a book depends very little on the content of the story. I like it when an author expresses fresh ideas, or has a clever way of describing something. Most of my favorite books are about topics that are extremely foreign to my own life. A brief list: The God of Small Things, Lolita, Clockwork Orange, Trainspotting, The Shipping News, Macbeth, Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, The Death of Vishnu, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Second to the way a story is written, I like rich character development. I like complicated, interesting characters. For example, I just started reading A History of Love, and already, on the first page, in the first paragraph, I can tell this is a well written book:

“The place isn’t big. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, kitchen table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, impossible, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door. If it happens to be Bruno, I let him in without a word and then jog back to bed, the roar of the invisible crowd ringing in my ears.” –Nicole Krauss

The Alchemist has extremely boring prose, no fresh ideas, and terrible character development. But I probably hated it most because wrapped in that mundane prose was a message that I believe is indeed true. We should all figure out what we want (our personal legend) and do what it takes to acheive it. So, the book was actually effective (grrr!) in that it made me think about what I really wanted. What is my personal legend? I want to be a writer. But the problem is, anyone who writes is a writer. I want to be the next Shakespeare. I want to be a brilliant writer. I want to be able to do what the writers I love can do: Take the mundane and make it brilliant. Write sentences that cause mental orgasms in readers.

But as anyone who is reading this post has now realized, I am a far cry from an accomplished writer. Enter Malcolm Gladwell. Over winter break I read his book Outliers and what I liked so much about it was that it gave me hope. One of the things he points out in the book is that genius isn't as much of a "gift" as we're led to believe. Most accomplished people spend 10,000 hours on their craft before they have their breakthrough. So if I wrote for 417 days straight, I might stand a chance.

Having a dearth of friends and an overly reflective mind as a teenager and college student, I logged a lot of hours in journals. While living in Namibia as a Peace Corps volunteer and working as a teacher in China, I wrote many finely-crafted e-mails. So I've got some hours in, but I need more.

And, my secret wish, which I might as well put out there from the beginning, is the irrational wish that this blog will magically get discovered, someone will realize my brilliance (which will hopefully emerge over the next 10,000 hours of writing) and offer me a publishing deal.

Another reason I like to write is that I like to produce something. I like the idea of producing a lasting artifact of my thoughts. I seek immortality through writing, since I have rejected Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. While I'm on it, I've also rejected all the other imaginary gods, prophets, and saviors. I don't want to seem biased. I wonder if a high proportion of writers are atheists?

Have I covered why I want to write? Let me summarize: I like writing, I want immortality, I believe if I write a lot I will get better at it, and I despise bad writing (like Coelho) so I want to improve so I don't have to despise myself.

Of course, as an English teacher, I know that fine writing requires a lot of editing and revising, and perhaps on blogs there really isn't an incentive to continually go back and revise. I'll have to think about this.

The other problem that plagues me is that I don't think I can write fiction. But I am intrigued by the idea that through fiction, you can tell the truth. Maybe I can be like David Sedaris--take the truth and embellish it, construct it into a story. Anyway, I plan to just write what I think, and maybe I'll be the character. And I know I'm true, but the readers can consider me a character.