My pirate-writing days. I was 12.
I've been doing a lot of writing, lately. No, I haven't been writing about vampires (even though I heart me some Salvatore Brothers). Neither have I been penning tales of adventures on the high seas (that's what I did when I was 12 and I was dying to see Pirates of the Caribbean). I have been working on writing about the world as I see it. Literary fiction, or nonfiction as the case may be, is an intensely private business, I've been told. It's all about your feelings and your emotions. And since I'm usually one to repress those pesky things, this has been an interesting experience for me. However, writing is the best place for me to display my character, so I've been collecting tidbits of observations about the world around me these past few weeks. The most mundane things are sometimes the most interesting things in the world, if you really stop and think about it. Which I did. And the result was this:I am searching through the sales rack in the back of the women’s clothing department. A tall boy with blonde surfer hair looks at me from across the aisle. I freeze like someone caught in the act of a crime and step behind a tall shelf of clothing. When I peek around the other side, he’s still watching. I glance in a mirror and wonder if something’s wrong with my face. Maybe I have something caught in my hair. A few minutes later I walk out of the women’s department to look at the book section. The boy is still standing there, but when I leave, he leaves. Why would anybody stare at me? I wonder. It bothers me that I will never know. I usually find amusement in watching other people's actions, facial expressions or manner in which they speak. I also think it's very telling about a person to watch how they drive. Case in point: My mom and I are waiting to cross Jefferson and Lake Washington. Across the boulevard a woman sits at the wheel of a green pickup truck. She pulls her hair from a ponytail and starts attacking it with a brush. Her movements are wild and violent. Her hair flies in different directions before she checks her reflection in the mirror. When the light turns green the truck lurches forward. She barely makes the tight turn. She drives like she brushes her hair. I wonder if she lives like it, too.
I think writing is all about injecting your true feelings into your work, which is why I am working on strengthening my nonfiction before I finish a work of fiction. Once I have that down, the sky's the limit, and I'm excited to see where all of this will take me. Until then, I have a huge weekend ahead of me and I'll probably be writing about that next week. Farewell!
