You Choose #1: Not the Write Way
My name is Ima Wanabe and I’m a very frustrated writer on a serious odyssey to discover why I remain unpublished. One would think attendance in an MFA program and six summer writers’ retreats would be enough to get my work read by someone other than classmates and teachers, but no, that hasn't happened yet. My whole life is all about writing, and my lack of progress continues to be a mystery to me. I have read all the writing books, hundreds of them, including Stephen King’s On Writing, in which the main advice is to write a lot and not give up. Duh! I religiously watch each new episode of ProWriterTV and iWriterly on YouTube, along with every single installment of Screen Courage, which is saying a lot. I leave great comments, too. I subscribe to Poets and Writers, Writer's Digest, and Bookmarks Magazine. I also almost managed to hit the 50,000 word target for NaNoWriMo eight years running. My Google drive is filled with dozens of nearly complete short stories and six partial novels and an unfinished novella about an aspiring writer, of which I am very fond, and which I just about sent to Simon and Schuster. And then there are the poetry scraps and doodles. So many lines of poetry!
During the last few years my quest for success has become more diversified and now includes a number of techniques guaranteed by my friends, Craven and Misty (who are writers like me), to show me the light at the end of my tunnel of despair. These forays into the alternative world began with a weekend of verbal abuse and sleep deprivation at an EST revival in Sausalito, aboard a houseboat once owned by the prolific philosopher Alan Watts. It was intense, especially the part about not having access to a restroom for twelve hours. Then, in March of 2019, I began subscribing to the Writer's Diet program, from which I receive a recipe card every Monday to allow me to recreate the meals eaten by famous authors such as Kate Chopin, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ursula Le Guin. In addition, my friend Misty sold me a whole set of cards with yoga poses designed to achieve the precise positive mental attitude I need everyday. In September of 2019, I traveled to visit Craven’s friend in Brooklyn who sold me a lock of Isaac Asimov's left side burn, the one he always fiddled with while writing. It is very gray and curly, befitting its wise owner. Last July, at the height of the pandemic, I Zoomed into a Kagyu calligraphy class taught by a genuine Tibetan Monk who was actually painting live from his secret sanctuary in Rio Linda. He wore an orange mask to match his Kasaya robe. Very feng shui. Best of all, following up on a tip from Misty, I recently found on eBay one of the real--I can’t believe my luck!-- typewriters used by Ernest Hemingway while he lived in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba. It even has a burn mark from one of his cigars. I hope mine is the winning eBay bid, for with that Corona No. 4 in my possession, I will surely find the success that has eluded me thus far.
Commentary:
ignotum per ignotius
This little doodle was fun to write because I think it's funny and Professor Hall said it is, so it must be. The mediocre quality of the prose is intended to convey the impression of someone who has written a lot and has the mechanics under their belt, but has yet to develop any depth, relying instead on exuberance over craft. The poor writer is lost in the forest of misguided efforts, and I admit to feeling some kinship with this wrapped-around-the-axle character, despite our different enthusiasms. Since I tried to write in a voice somewhat apart from my own, the experience reminds me of a first-person horror story I wrote in high school which featured the diary of a teenage boy with Down syndrome.
My intent was to go down an array of fruitless self-help pathways and thereby reinforce the importance of completion and follow-through if one is to be successful as a writer. It's no good to "almost" do anything, and time spent pursing alternative routes to achievement are often just expensive forms of procrastination. In my experience, challenges are best faced head-on.
The part about the Tibetan Monk is intended as a personal tribute to my Asian Humanities professor, Christine Vona, here at Sierra. I enjoyed her class and learned valuable life lessons during the course, such as the importance of being present in the moment. I have attempted to remember and incorporate the ancient Asian philosophies in my daily walk, and I thought the inclusion of a shallow appreciation of Tibetan art would add an inoffensive spin to my parody. Among the perhaps too subtle touches of humor is the unnecessary capitalization of "Monk," treating the word as a proper noun.
As for the Latin phrase above, it means "the action of offering an explanation which is harder to understand than the thing it is meant to explain," and is thereby in keeping with the impression I tried to convey in my favorite piece written so far...
