Is eating me alive. Sheryl asked me during my individual conference to consider why I'm writing about this period in my life. That this is perhaps the key to the essay itself. And I don't know. I had to pick something. What a terrible answer. And I tried to back off and write a travel piece but it's not very compelling. It is also perhaps noteworthy that I wrote this draft while at home on my parents' computer. Whether consciously or unconsciously I'm not particularly at ease with saving an essay on my parents' desktop about sex with girls, sex with boys on Havana's sea wall and drinking until I couldn't tell the difference between the asphalt roof and the night sky. Though my parents are respectful and I'm sure wouldn't open it.
Sheryl gave me a book of women's travel essays called The Unsavvy Traveler:Women's Comic Tales of Catastrophe, edited by Pam Houston. It's good. It's been helpful. It's a collection of fractured travel essays--humorous and not entirely successful trips. Especially helpful was the atrocious piece I read last night from a woman who traveled to Cuba. Reading something terrible always gets me pumped up. At least what I write will be better than that. But a lot of them are good and I'm going to bring the book down to the computer with me and look at some of the intros to get me in gear. Sometimes my trip sounds funny. I didn't like it very much. I felt out of control and generally disconnected. I was a reluctant traveler. But sometimes it doesn't seem funny at all. Absurd maybe, but in a sad sort of way.
On Friday I finished a book called Sickened, by Julie Gregory. It was a memoir of being the victim of Munchausen's by Proxy. It was something between The Glass Castle and Running with Scissors. It was good. It was hard to put down. At the end of the book she said something that stuck with me--that the writing of her memoir was so exhausting. That it was like pulling a hair out of your throat. It was a relief but sometimes once you start pulling you have to just pull and pull and pull. It wasn't a super solid metaphor but I like the visceral feeling of it. Pulling a hair from your throat. Such a bizarre sensation.
And last night I started Lauren Slater's Prozac Diary. It's good so far. What's most familiar is that she's taken Prozac then wakes up one morning and feels normal. For the first time. That it's disorienting. That you feel part of the world for the first time and you understand how "normal" people make it through the day. (Or that "normal" people enjoy the day, it's not simply about "making it through.")
Anyway, it's helpful so far. She said something about opening up her Kierkegaard and Nietzsche books and looking at the underlined portions and feeling like she'd be ok to never read them again. She didn't need to intentionally go so far down into the depths of depression and meaninglessness anymore. That it didn't resonate with her as it did before. She also made me laugh when she described philosophy texts as an elite form of self-help.
Back to the Cuba essay which is at the moment sucking. (The life out of me, and just sucking in general). But I'm sitting with coffee with soy creamer and that's really good so I think I'll begin again...
About Me
- emilyrodgers
- www.emilyrodgers.com I am a musician and writer. I write songs, poems, stories, and memoir. I am signed to Misra Records (www.misrarecods.com) and am pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.
4 comments:
This is great Emily. You are thinking it out and will come to answer because of this. I agree that the process of this final essay has been tough (as you read in my earlier blog post). I am still struggling with my essay and began re-writing the whole thing all over again.
I am still resisting to tell the real truth because I don't want to admit it to myself (I don't want to admit it to myself because it hurts and I cry, but I am crying through it).
I agree with Sheryl that thinking about why you are writing this essay will direct your thoughts to complete it. What is the underlying memory that is making you write about your experience in Cuba? Just tell the truth and tell us why you are telling us this story? Why is this story important to you? To your readers? What did you learn? What do you want your reader to take away from it?
I'm also struggling with my essay, especially with the difficulties in explaining how something changed so drastically for me. And I'm finding there's just so much that contributes to any and every story, it's hard to know how to narrow it down to the one tale. And with the various threads in your piece, I can see how that could easily be overwhelming. Maybe it would help to find one thing to write about (such as traveling, or the landscape, or whatnot) and then to find out why that one thing is important to you. How is changed you. Maybe? Keep writing, though, that's the important thing. :)
great discussion, it reminds me a little of two of Marc's favorite comments- 1- we write to get to know ourselves, and 2- remember the one about eleven drafts? how the writing is like bellows - we have to expand too much then whittle it down... (mixing metaphors, i know)
anyway, emily, i like your descriptions of cuba and your dramatic and detailed story line including and maybe especially the kissings and drinking, with or without the thread of mental illness. So, even if you write it as three stories now, eventually i bet they (could) all come together.
I think we are all struggling in some way. Thanks for detailing this (I attempted to voice my own struggles last week, and it's nice to hear yours). Not that I'm happy to hear it, per sé. I think you can make a travel piece interesting but I also think the scandalous parts of your last draft are rife for dissection/elaboration. I'm interested to see where you end up.
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