Don't bother me I'm writing

Imagine: The only child who pokes holes in her parents' condoms to get herself a sibling. The social outcast -- who seeking a day off from school -- tries to break her leg on the stairs. The underage smoker who tapes her school picture to her father's expired driver's license. The inexperienced driver who wrecks the family station wagon in the driveway and stages the scene to look like a bicycle accident. My repertoire of failed plots and harebrained schemes leaves characters like Lucy Ricardo and Mary Clancy -- mother of the scathingly brilliant idea -- with something wanting. Plotting is something of an addiction, really. And even now -- having been foiled in every dastardly deed -- I frequently entertain the most ridiculous scenarios perhaps to make life more interesting. But here's the thing -- the single most important tenant of plot-building -- less is more. Bold and beautiful schemes are a blast to ponder, but near impossible to execute. The Forge...

"There was no magic banner that appeared over your crib at birth saying, "Yes, this one, let's make this one's life an agonizing, lonely struggle with very little money and even less success. Let's make this one a WRITER."--Caroline Sharp  Writing is a disease--a sort of psychosis--and people who do it well share the same set of symptoms or neuroses--which ever term suits your fancy. A friend lent me a great book about writing through writers block-- A Writer's Workbook --by Caroline Sharp. In it, Sharp identifies many truths about the chore of writing--perhaps most affirming, if you identify yourself as a writer, is a tidbit from author Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote the forward. Gilbert recollects a phone conversation she had with a writer friend about not writing. The friend posed a hypothetical question: "Would you rather wash all your dirty laundry, run it through the drier, fold it, put it all away in your drawers, and then take t...

Most girls play house. They pick it up in preschool before they know much about babies or spousal dynamics -- woman = wife + mother, man = father + husband, and babies materialize from nothing. The game evolves in kindergarten when children discover that novel thing called pregnancy. Then comes every father's worst nightmare -- the day their daughters incorporate gestation into their play stuffing pillows or balloons down their shirts to replicate pregnant bellies. It's usually based on their desire to be mothers like their mothers and grandmothers.  That wasn't the case for me. Pregnancy and having children in my mind was synonymous with being an adult. I mimicked pregnant women because I foolishly believed that people would take me more seriously. Exhibit A: Plums for sale! My grandma asked me once to rake up the plums that had fallen from her tree in the yard and throw them in the trash. I wanted to sell them. I made a sign and packaged the plums in ...

My friends and aunts and parents sometimes ask about this "book" I'm writing. I don't like calling it a book, because a book is something that is published, and I don't know that anyone with a printing press will ever be interested in my writing.  I'd rather refer to my project as a 50,000-plus-word story. Not that I've written 50,000 words -- that (50,000) is the goal, because a 49,999-word story is one word short of a novel. I cagily evade inquiries regarding the aforementioned project, refusing to share so little as a sentence with even my closest friends and family members. This thing is personal to me. It's part of me like my children are part of me. The idea of putting it out there turns my stomach inside out.  I can write and share a million diatribes against myself with little angst -- I prize my self-deprecating humor highest of all my attributes.  I'm not nearly so comfortable with my serious bits.  Please keep that...

In my former life as a newspaper reporter I loved interviewing children, because their quotes were always amusing if not hysterical and ridiculous. It was with that in mind that I asked Lily to help me write a story for this evening's post. And though I'm biased as her mother, I'm fairly confident her story will amuse and at times even frighten you. Our tale of woe begins in a play attic atop a a fine pink- and white-painted Victorian cottage, home to the Busher family -- Jon, Clare, Liliana, Cecelia, Olivia, Sophia and Ariana. The girls were playing Barbies with Mother Clare, who was deep in Pride and Prejudice sprawled over a lavender pouf embroidered with white and yellow daisies. The music of the girl's play voices amused Clare as she pictured Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy sparring in the English countryside. The room was warm and smelled of cinnamon and apples. Their blissful afternoon was interrupted by an explosion of breaking glass and leaden...

My first car was a silver 1982 Buick Skylark, named Kim after a girl I couldn't stand from school. She was great as far as piece-of-crap clunkers go. She only required a quart of oil every 20 miles, so everything I owned -- an ankle deep collection of clothing, school work, handbags, shoes, fast food wrappers and unidentifiable trash -- was splattered with greasy dribbles from near-empty containers of 5W40. The radiator was more temperamental than the engine, forcing me to run the heater full blast on the hottest days of summer to prevent the bitch from overheating. This fine bargain of an automobile that my parents bought me a few months shy of my 19th birthday seized up on our first road trip together a few miles west of North Bend stranding me on the side of I-90 with my friend, Erika. Several state troopers passed us up before a kindly trucker stopped to help. He suggested that I pour ice-cold water directly into the radiator that was s...

Imagine a little girl in pink granny glasses. Her haircut gives her a boyish look and she’s dressed in a purple checked sweater with red high waters and electric-blue duck shoes. A couple of kids on the playground tell her how cool she looks, and -- not comprehending their sarcasm -- she smiles brightly and thanks them. That was me -- the dork in ginormous glasses. I answered to many names in elementary school -- loser, duck feet, four eyes and a few others I'd rather forget -- smart, pretty and fashionable I was not. It felt like the end of the world back then. All the popular girls braided each other's hair during story time at the library while I picked my nose and talked to myself.  I'm not ashamed to admit it. I  was  a dork -- as big a dork as it's possible to be -- and it gave me character. I think  Lester Bangs  said it best : "Good-looking people don't have any spine. Their art never lasts." No one called 4-year-old Paris Hilton -- or Linds...

I'm the lady who locks her keys in the car while the engine is running on a rural road where driveways are marked by signs that read "Trespassers will be shot on sight." I'm the lady who backs her car into a ditch looking for a haunted cemetery with her best friend on Thanksgiving, and  then on Christmas gets pulled over with the same friend -- who threw a cigarette out of the window -- going 15 miles-an-hour over the speed limit with a busted tail light. And -- if you think all I need is a bus pass -- I'm also the lady who waxes her legs on a work night and can't get the wax off and pokes a hole in her down comforter while she's sleeping. That's me -- a ticking time bomb -- a disaster waiting to happen, always. And though I complain quite frequently that my luck is the lousiest luck in the world, I thrive on the drama. A conversation that starts with "my husband lost his job the day after our daughter was born" is much more entertaini...

I return from the brink of death with this sweet recollection from childhood: I navigated a very peculiar phase in my fourth year of life on this a planet – a sort of Dr. Frankenstein period in which I attempted through various methods to engineer a playmate. It began on Christmas with the excruciating disappointment that all children feel upon receipt of their last package – that inevitable “where’s the other stuff I asked for?” moment. Santa Claus forgot to stuff a sibling in my stocking. And there hatched the first of many schemes to expand my social network. I wished to become a mother hen – which to a 4-year-old who doesn’t grasp the basic principles of procreation means sitting on eggs from the ice box. The plan was very simple. Step 1: Build a nest in my bedroom. Step 2: transfer one carton of eggs to aforementioned nest and sit. All but two of my unborn friends were smashed – tragically – in their nest of fancy throw pillows and freshly launder...

"Now you may ask, what if my characters won't talk to me? What if they won't even visit? The only answer is to think and think some more, and then go out and read and look and listen some more. Do not sit and mope. Do not sigh. Do not throw up your hands and give up on the whole project. Do not go back to the drawing board. There is nothing more depressing than an empty drawing board. No, go back to the world, which is where all characters originally come from."   ALLEGRA GOODMAN I crossed paths with a pair of   Natural Born Killers  tonight. Their voices grabbed my attention as I strode through the sunlit plaza connecting my office building with the transit center. The man -- we'll call him Mickey -- dressed in blue Adidas track pants, a wife beater and a flat-bill DC baseball cap -- was scratching violently at his face and arms.  His girlfriend, Mallory -- in a matching wife beater -- screamed at Mickey from across the bus ba...