Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Taking It All Off: Part Two

(continued from yesterday's post)



“My heart is raw from revelation,

keening to be covered,

yet I am pressed on by the elation,

of the you I have discovered

when I tiptoed to the edge, the edge of you,

only to flee from your intimacy,

then crawl to the edge anew..."



I am in awe of the teenager who had the courage to write these daring words to a twenty-three year old man she hardly knew. In a made-for-TV movie, the script would have called for the man to callously rip up the poem, rejecting me along with my rash lyrics. I would have spent the next two and a half hours descending into alcoholism, prostitution, and petty crime, hitting bottom in a murder-suicide moments before the last commercial break.

Why didn't these tragic consequences occur to me as I wrote? I think it was because I was so high on "elation" that I ignored the risk. I had the courage to write. I had the courage to reveal myself.

And that’s when I knew, sitting there with that letter from long ago in my hand, that I was finally hearing Revelation speak. It wasn't a command to write young adult thrillers. It wasn't the title of my middle grade novel that would capture the Newbery Medal. It was simply that I had been looking for answers in the wrong places. I had been searching the sky for a booming voice when I should have been searching myself. I had been awaiting a revelation, when I was the one who was supposed to be doing the revealing.

If I wanted to see “What I Was Here For,” I was going to have to take off some clothes and look. At myself. More than that, if I wanted to write convincing fiction, I was going to have let other people look at me in my (emotional) underwear. Or in even less. For it is only the revelation of my soul will draw readers to my words. Readers who hope to watch me dancing naked there, and learn something from my awkward steps about the dance they were created to perform.

Can I do this? Can I do it for my intended audience of young readers? Children are not ashamed of their nakedness. More than that, they snub any book in which they sense the author is a coward. If I want to earn them as readers, I will have to write about my ugliest mistakes and my most humiliating moments. I will have to write about laughing so hard on the third-grade playground that I peed in my pants. I will have to write about dreading school bus conversations, when I had to fake knowledge of the Fonz to conceal my family's embarrassing lack of a television set. I will have to write about crying in sixth grade when my best friend hid my glasses, and ridiculed me for my near blindness–in front of those she expected to be her new best friends.

How will I be able to do this? My hope is that elation will shove me on, that the promise of its heady joy will push me off cliffs and into snakepits. That its glow will not allow my work to hide in the recesses of my desk drawers. Without elation, I would cringe at Revelation's voice. For it really did say, "I have created thee to dance naked on the tabletops of Knoxville, Tennessee." And everywhere else I want my words to be read.

14 comments:

  1. Brava! That was well worth the wait. Thanks for the honesty and inspiration.

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  2. Thank you so much for sharing this essay. Baring our souls is the hardest thing a writer must learn to do, when we spend our lives trying so hard to hold onto it and protect it. You are courageous . . .

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  3. Courage is the gift one writer can give another. When I write, sometimes I think: OMG! OMG! I can't do this! And then I'll be reading something amazing, and I'll think OMG! OMG! Look at what she/he just did!

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  4. Oh. I needed this nudge. Now I'll have to work on my dance...

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  5. OK, HipWriterMama...I'll be saving a place at (I mean, ON) the table for you. :)

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  6. "{Children} snub any book in which they sense the author is a coward." Word. Awesome.

    Thanks for the excellent read.

    I'm wracking my brain, trying to remember where I read the other day about writers writing from the heart (at another blog -- I know this isn't very specific in the slightest, but I promise it was a good read. If I remember, I'll send).

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  7. I think I remember those days. I of course, burned my book of poetry for long ago. Thanks for the reminder.

    I have worked with kids and it is true, they can smell a cowardice jellyfish from miles away and are disgusted.

    If you can't take chances with words, then when can you take chances?

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  8. "...the next two and a half hours descending into alcoholism, prostitution and petty crime, hitting bottom in a murder-suicide moments before the last commercial break."

    Hah! Okay, you KNOW your Lifetime! Seriously, "I had been searching the sky for a booming voice when I should have been searching myself." --

    We're always waiting for lightning when there's a breeze wafting around us, kicking up the dust of our dailiness, urging us to pay attention, to tell the true.

    I think you're headed well into the wind.

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  9. This is so true! And you have hit on the main reason I want to write for kids and teens: because I long to send out the message 'Don't worry: we all go through it, and it doesn't last forever.'

    As for courage, I wrote poetry too as a teenager, but you'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to show anyone now. At least yours is good!

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  10. "...kicking up the dust of our dailiness, urging us to pay attention, to tell the true." Oh, I do love that, TadMack!

    Mary: now that I've seen your writing at your blog, I may have to find a (water)gun to hold to your head. I'll bet your poetry rocks, too.

    Amy: "If you can't take chances with words, then when can you take chances?" Indeed. Go forth and proclaim this!!

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  11. And thanks, eisha and jules, for so faithfully always stopping by and encouraging me. You guys and 7-Imps definitely give me courage for the journey.

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  12. One of my mottos has been, "IF I don't trust myself enough to share myself, why would a reader trust what I write."
    Great Post!
    Bill

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  13. Amen to that, Bill. What a great motto to have!

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  14. Sweeeet, Sara! Well said.
    :-)

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