Ode to albatrosses

“Harriet, don’t be a gold digger!”

“I’m not being a gold digger, really.” I promised, “It’s just, well, I’m broke, and sometimes, it’s just nice to have things bought for you. You know?”

“Okay, fine, so what? You want to marry someone rich and famous?” she asked.

I shook my head and sighed, then pressed the phone back to my ear. “No. Rich, yeah, but not famous.”

“What??” she squealed out of the receiver, “What’s wrong with famous?”

“Well if he’s famous, and I marry him, if I later become famous myself, no matter how many merits I have, and how hard I’ve worked, it’ll all just seem like reflected glory. Every woman who has married someone and then became famous just fizzles out. No one fully believes that they’ve actually done it on their own. I want to become who I will for me, and not because of my husband, my family, or anyone else.”

“I guess. I just want to be famous. I don’t care how I got there.”

“Ah. So what do you want to be famous for?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always thought that I would write a book.”

Everyone thinks that. Eventually they’ll write a book. And I’m curious, why don’t you? What is it that’s stopping you from sitting down in front of the keyboard and starting to type the words that are floating around in your heads, just waiting for you to unleash them onto the paper? Everyone has a different reason, and I genuinely want to know. I think there might even be a book in it. The millions of potential writers, the stories, and the things that stop them from writing.

I’ll write a book. The truth is I’ll write many. But I can’t right now. She told me to write it. Told me to stop writing pages upon pages, only to get frustrated and just delete it all. Told me to get the extra money before uni- I’ll need it. But I won’t. She doesn’t write hers because writing is hard, and writing that much requires endurance. I don’t have that problem. I’m a more than prolific writer, and really am happy to sit there for hours on end and come up with a few hundred pages.

Or, at least, I used to be. When I was fifteen I was a better writer than I am now. I had a marginally smaller vocabulary, and far fewer real experiences to write down, but an immense imagination and a will. Recently life has got in the way. I’ve tried and tried, but every time I sit down I write variations of the same thing. The same tale, and it’s nearly enough for a three page short story.

My favourite author is Stephen King. Mostly, I can’t read his books. I enjoyed Carrie, and The Shawshank Redemption, but generally I’m not especially enamoured with the horror genre as a whole. So how come he’s my favourite author? His memoir, and guide to writing, On Writing. My problem with most Stephen King books is not the writing itself, it is the warped imagination behind it. But he does have the imagination. He has an enormous imagination, and that’s why his books sell. He can write about anything, and he’s prolific. I don’t have the imagination. I lost some of my imagination. We always do, if we could combine the extensive originality and imagination of youth, with a decent writing style and vocabulary that is acquired with training and time, then truly we’d make wonderful authors. But three year olds don’t write books, and I guess as an adult (sort of) I don’t either.

Labels: Introspection, Past tense, Poetic licence