At an artist’s colony a few years back, I became friends with a novelist of some repute. One day over lunch she told me how impressed she was by playwrights. She said she didn’t know how we did it. She had tried to write a play years before and, in her estimation anyway, failed utterly.
I responded to this in the usual way I take compliments – full-on deflection. (Side note: I find this incredibly irritating when others do it, yet can’t stop doing it myself. Who decided that the polite way to take a compliment is to disagree?). In my mad attempt not to accept the praise, one phrase kept recurring in my mind. I tried to avoid using it, but it stubbornly kept popping up. The phrase was, “Real writer.” As in, “But you’re a real writer. How can you want to do what I do?”
I know, I know, I know. We don’t appreciate our own gifts because they come to us naturally, we all have to learn to love ourselves, blah blah blah. I don’t care. Somewhere inside I still feel this way, and it comes out around novelists. It’s worse around poets. How can they do all that incredible stuff with, like, a hundred words? That’s some kind of weird word voodoo (it takes me a hundred words just to get someone into a room). How can I call myself a writer around someone like that?
Given this glaring streak of insecurity, it’s strange that I've ventured into another form of writing. Yet here I am, starting my fourth decade on the planet, finding that I love to write essays. Writing for Extra Criticum played no small part in this (thank you, Rolo!). The birth of my son, Henry, played an even greater part. Being Henry’s father is such a transformative experience that I simply had to write about it. But I felt no instinct towards playwriting. Instead, I have produced a series of essays which will eventually be a book, tentatively entitled Daddy’s Not Tall Enough to Touch the Moon. I have had a wonderful time writing them. The response to them has been incredible, almost overwhelming. So what’s the problem?
The problem is I’m still not real writer (FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!).
I should explain: I’m having some problems with transitions. Not transitions like husband to father, playwright to essayist. I mean transitions in writing, from one sentence to the next, one paragraph to the next. I call it my “And/But/Indeed/However” problem.
When you’re a playwright, these problems don’t exist. Writing plays basically means writing dialogue, and dialogue usually mimics actual speech (Side note: Play dialogue, however realistic, is actually very different from real-life speech. The trick is to make it SOUND like real-life.) So in plays you can start your sentences and paragraphs with all the “ands” or “buts” or “becauses” you want. When spoken, it sounds natural. In the right actors mouth, it can even sound poetic.
On the naked, unforgiving page? Not so much!
Have you ever seen a page littered with sentences that begin with “And” and “But”. It looks awful. It’s careless and sloppy. This, I’m convinced, is how so many prose writers have become dependent on the words “indeed” and “however.” So instead of saying, “And I realized…”, they write, “Indeed, I realized…”. Instead of saying, “But when I thought about it later…” they write, “However, when I thought about it later…” This is all perfectly correct. The meaning is very clear. There’s only one problem.
I fucking hate “indeed” and “however”.
I don’t know about you, but I NEVER say “indeed” in real life. Indeed, I tend to hate people who do. I do occasionally use “however”. However, it is usually when I am feeling extremely awkward and uncomfortable.
It’s so humiliating. Here I am, years into a writing career, and I can’t figure out how to start a paragraph. I edit my work looking like a cloddish eighth-grader, biting down on my distended tongue as I clumsily erase all my awkward transitions.
What to do? Well, at my father’s suggestion, I bought a book on writing. Strunk & White’ The Elements of Style, which to my shock is kind of a blast to read. Whether it will help solve my problem, only time will tell.
Or perhaps you’ll be able to tell, dear devoted Extra Criticum readers. Let me know how my transitions are over the next few pieces. Who knows? Maybe I’ll become a real writer after all…
