. Spinning .

No doubt about it, planning out a story is harder than just typing what’s freely floating in your mind. And stubbornly flaunting directions to avoid adding an element that is proven not to work is useless folly. You end up with watery, unjelled Jell-O.

But the thinking, thinking, thinking about a story sometimes will spark the next line. On two stories I’m working on right now, one of which has been hanging at the last scene for months, I may have finally found a direction.

What I’ve needed to ask all along—and have laid out here in a post many moons ago—is: So? It’s the rude equivalent of “What happened then?” but it’s often a faster solution because its very quality of challenge spurs one to immediacy in response.

I’m often stubborn, slow and clingy, in writing just as in life. While no one changes overnight, and sometimes can never be changed at all in some ways, it behooves (I had a high school principal who just loved that word; he’d drag it out with a piercing stare that was quite effective and still visualized to this day) us to lay down our weapons, especially when we’re using them against our own ambitions.

I see it now, the problem. Answered simply by my friend, Neha, the question both to life and writing that I’ve struggled with the past few weeks. You’re trying too hard.

Each story starts with an idea, an egg that drops within a womb and catches on when meeting with a wiggling sperm cell of excitement that forms conception, and eventually the birth of a living tale.

But up till now, I’ve listened to what is told to me; the characters are so apart from me I felt a mere mouthpiece for their sharing. The painful word-by-word of writing that has become my way of late is in effect, a taking over by an author of someone else’s life. I am Leonard Bernstein conducting same as the Engineer can guide his train to a chosen destination. I am the plotter and the planner in a place I’ve never been. Try and try and try to chart a course, to know when violins must play the softer solos; the speed, the pace.

It’s harder this way. I’d rather be a listener, for I truly don’t know where I’m going on this journey.

I need to be re-inspired. To hear Waylon’s strong voice rumbling up inside of me. Willie’s words to cry for made-up scenes that cover for those uncryable. And Emmy Lou with sweet clarity of pain and purpose that changes straw to golden notes in every verse. Heading to the shop that’s closed this week to give me time to face myself and my abilities. I’ll cut up cardboard into corners, and myself as well. Piles stacked neatly into boxes that are reachable and used up four by four. Or discarded—the waste should be discarded, burned to ashes or put in plastic bags that suffocate.

Outside too. Clean late summer air that threatens to inhibit thought and breath with the rising sun, but offers sounds and smells that cause my mind to fly until it hits late afternoon. A weeding out of summer. A dusting of the rug before the leaves can fall and mess the brain with colored dribs and drabs that move along by breezes once they’ve let go of trees.

And why can’t I?

I cannot tell a story over a paragraph long. This is what I’m beginning to clearly see from my concerted efforts in my writing lately. I honestly don’t know how to break out from that opening paragraph into a tale worth telling.

When I re-discovered the short story form in recent years of courses, I was elated because I had been sitting on a complete novel that was written in three months (sadly in need of complete rewriting or complete deleting). I ground out short stories in classes, then continued my efforts and hopefully improved my writing style, found some kind of voice, and via the study of poetry, learned compression and imagery. However, I still haven’t mastered narrative—story—an arc that rises through conflicts to a climax and resolution (or not, depending on form). It seems like I don’t know how to end a story, and get lost in the telling of it, no matter how nicely or well it MAY be written.

Then this, an article from this morning’s New York Times regarding the possible demise of the short story form due to many reasons, not the least of which is the slowdown of stories being published in the magazines we used to depend upon, and the slow decline of sales of anthologies that is putting the short story in the realm of academic periodicals. These are all well and fine, but these publications tend to be found in libraries and on campuses and are more well-known to writers and instructors rather than the general public, thus their lack of recognition and salability. This book, which I have just ordered, can be found here: The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories.

No problem; I write for me. Or do I?

Of course not. Yes, I write because I love it and need to do it. But will a ballerina dance if she knows she will never have a stage and audience? Creativity is personal, but it must be shared. So the market’s not great, and you have to be great. And here I am, Mistress of The Thousand Paragraphs.

In the Fall 2004, Issue 52 of Glimmer Train, “My Search for Red and Gray Wide-Striped Pajamas” by Peter Selgin, this quote from the protagonist, Steven:

“I know what Uncle Nick means when he says I need a kick in the ass. But it’s not a kick in the ass that I need. It’s what some people call ambition, and others call motivation, and others call God. Whatever–they’re lucky to have a built-in “kicking machine” they can rely on, whereas people like me, we have to kick ourselves, or be kicked. When I hear the word “potential,” my first impulse is to lie down somewhere soft and go to sleep. And though potential may seem like a fine thing, stored up for too long it eats away at the soul. You go through life thinking there are other choices, and so all days are rented and not wholly owned. Like buying subway tokens one at a time, or hiring a hotel room by the hour, hour after hour, day by day, year after year.”

The story is a fairly simple one of a young man looking for something as represented by “red and gray wide-striped pajamas” just as his recently deceased father wore when they shared some untraditional but extremely memorable times together. He (Steven) remembers a piece of advice his father gives him: “Want everything, need nothing.”

Besides Selgin’s impeccable style and attention to detail, his story is one that is filled with relative tidbits that make both his protagonist and the reader who they are. We can relate to the feelings, the drive to seek and find, yet the inclination to just get by. The difference between the character revealed to us as his father, and that of his father’s brother, Uncle Nick, is an abysmal, and yet there are ties that bind Steven to both to the extent of taking Uncle Nick’s daughter—his cousin—as a lover because she has the same eyes.

We get a close up view of a life, empathize with inner wants, and we learn lessons that can affect us as writers as well as readers, just as we are being entertained. What more can we ask from writing.

Standing on the cliffedge, leaping off reluctantly and yet with joy. Wondering on the way down if I can fly, or will a crushed heap at the bottom be the end of it.

Having problems writing stories–story even, just the single one that’s still living in my head. It’s slowly oozing out on paper when they spilled gaily out before in waterfalls of words and commas. Not a block, no problem there I think, but more a discontent. Every word is scrutinized and cut before its ink is dry and settled in. Better, better–yes, but did the turtle truly win the race that day above the hare?

Tough. This is tough. And frustrating beyond belief. I wonder if there is a way to go exploring when so much here needs my study and attention. Branching out in new directions, taking paths that lead somewhere new and different; I wonder if I can, or should, at all.