Tired of over-enthusiastic crip chicks and their forty-seven !!! about everything.

I just choked on coffee. I want to tag it.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a thesis statement. Duh.

That's what always been challenging for me about writing nonfiction, Allyson -- it's not just you. Fiction is a lot easier, in a way, at least for me.

And it's all there, which is the thing. Some of it is just a little obscured.

They don't know what genius rolls among them, that's all.

But we know!

I've been thinking about a television series I'd love to pitch, and the bones are all there, but I find that the meat of it, the characters with their voices that should be so different from mine, is impossible for me to do.

I can't write fiction. At all. It's a different sort of imagination, and I'm rather embarassed to say, I think it's a character flaw on my part.

Writing essays seems an excercise in arrogance. Look at my life and how I see things. Me me me me me. Isn't it so interesting? Am I not just the most special girl?

Add to that my supreme feelings of worthlessness and what you get is insanity in paragraph form.

Isn't it so interesting? Am I not just the most special girl?

Add to that my supreme feelings of worthlessness and what you get is insanity in paragraph form.

I actually totally get that. I've written personal essays from time to time, and I actually have an idea for a book I'd love to do, but I always get stopped cold by the idea that no one will care. I grew up white, middle-class, decently educated, with nary an alcoholic or incident of abuse in my family, you know?

Which, now that I think about it, is not precisely what you were describing, but anyway. What you said reminded me of Buffy's conversation with Holden, actually -- the superiority/inferiority part.

I can't write fiction. At all. It's a different sort of imagination

Well, it isn't as if you don't know fiction writers. Fiction writers, if they're worth their salt, begin with the voice and take it from there. Suggest a collaboration to one/some/all, maybe? And while you're collaborating, you can maybe kick down that damned door, the one that leaves you thinking you don't have anything interesting to say.

Writing essays seems an excercise in arrogance. Look at my life and how I see things. Me me me me me.

But memememe is you sharing something that may open other doors for other people. It's you distilling the essence of something, something in the bright lights or in the basic dailiness (I love Robin's phrase and may have to steal it) that will resonate, echo, ping with someone who picks up your essay, says huh, what's she on about, WHOA, yes, that's right. If you do it right, your mememe becomes themthemthem. And that's what writing - essay or fiction - is supposed to do.

Isn't it so interesting? Am I not just the most special girl?

Yes, to both. And see above - the point isn't that you're special, it's that you just let someone reading get through the tollgate for free, so they could find their own road.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a thesis statement. Duh.

I think I shall print this out in 64 point type and hang it above my computer monitor.

ETA: But I may tie it onto a cluestick and thwap myself over the head a few times with it first.

You could tag it if you want, Allyson. About the only time I'd !!! that much right now? "Did you hear the news? Cheney's dead!!!" I'm just not big with that sort of...outpouring. And now I work remotely with people that do that, and want to "network" with my invisible friends. I was tempted to reply "He's happily married. I'm not sure he's into that." But as Belzer says, to myself I said that. I'm constantly the woman without a country, everywhere I go. People have suggested I write a full-length memoir, but I've not done very much yet...it's gonna take more than "It can think and everything!" to get me to the desk every day. And my expectations are all out of whack from people getting blown away that I don't wake up every day going "Nope. Can't walk today either."

I grew up white, middle-class, decently educated, with nary an alcoholic or incident of abuse in my family, you know?

We have so much in common.

Tragedy isn't really necessary. Life is hilarious in general, and fucked up shit happens to everyone.

If I may pick on erika, well, she's hilarious. She could write some smarmy "Chicken Soup for the Crip Soul" and be on Good Morning America bringing inspiration to the Footprints in the Sand masses. And maybe she should, and then she can lend me $100 bucks for LUSH supplies. And we can both laugh and roll in the cash.

But while erika is sitting in a chair, she doesn't really write about it, she writes from that observation point, and describes the surreal circus of well-meaning yet ignorant clowns with a razor bite.

There's nothing tragic in her writing, you wouldn't know she was in the chair unless she told you, and then, you might not believe it until you met her because nothing in her writing wallows in tragedy.

It's the "if I could get up, I'd punch you in the throat, jackhole" of erika's writing that makes me spit COMM.

And I think everyone owns a piece of that somewhere in their lives. My chair is mental illness, but I seldom write about it, or from it. Everyone has a chair, a tragedy of some sort, but it seems to me that it isn't the most interesting thing most of us have to comment upon. It's finding a way to discuss waiting in a checkout line behind an elderly person dripping in diamonds arguing about a 35 cent coupon in a new way, or being stuck next to a person who shit his pants on the Red Line which just broke down and there's no AC or any way out. Describing those un-extraodinary incidents to people is interesting. Making an anecdote into a commentary on the world at large is interesting.

Tragedy too easily becomes self-involved dreck, like Prozac Nation.

And I think everyone owns a piece of that somewhere in their lives. My chair is mental illness, but I seldom write about it, or from it. Everyone has a chair, a tragedy of some sort, but it seems to me that it isn't the most interesting thing most of us have to comment upon. It's finding a way to discuss waiting in a checkout line behind an elderly person dripping in diamonds arguing about a 35 cent coupon in a new way, or being stuck next to a person who shit his pants on the Red Line which just broke down and there's no AC or any way out. Describing those un-extraodinary incidents to people is interesting. Making an anecdote into a commentary on the world at large is interesting

Tragedy is a very grand word, and a very grand concept, and it's all been done. The interest - I'd rather think of it as the echo point, where what you say as a writer or a storyteller bounces off me and resonates into something shared, where the story and the response come together - is in the honesty of it.

The rest of that stuff, it's mechanics. Honestly. erika's razor points are as sharp as they aren't there because she's stuck in that damned chair - they're there because she distills and sends it out a particular way. And the particular way she sends it out, it's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, because it jars their echo points. But it's going to make a lot more people go "well fuck YES!"

You do the same thing; the only wrestle is with the mechanics. Your stuff hits echo points in me, and I've never fought in fandom or worked retail. It's right there.

So what's the problem? (edit: we're leaving for the day momentarily, so I'm not ducking or anything, or ignoring or anything. I'm just out getting olive oil.)

My problem is always the wrestling with arrogance. I'm never sure if what I'm writing is interesting or just navel-gazing, because I'm writing for my own amusement and not anyone else's. Sure, I want other people to read me, but that comes from the same place as wanting someone to join me for lunch. I'll tell you a story, and then you tell me one. It's a social exercise in that I want to talk to people through the keyboard, but I feel incredibly self-conscious that maybe I'm just talking AT people. Like a blowhard in a bar.