Divulge

But first, a joke:

Two old fellas in a Dublin pub, staring morosely into their pints.
"I'm writing a novel," says the one.
"Neither am I," says the other.

Or maybe it was Brendan Behan and James Joyce, and for all I know it really happened.

So here's a secret. In the past year or so, I have written the grand total of three - count 'em, three - short stories. I know they qualify as short stories because I looked up how many words you need, and we're certainly not heading into novella territory here. They're a little longer than flash fiction, perhaps, but not much.

It takes me a long time, what with not having much of that in the first place, and all this blogging you people demand that I do, and the fact that I have to stop and wait for the muse to tell me where to take things and sometimes the muse is busy washing her hair or touring China so she doesn't get back to me for a while. But I sort of love it. (Or, like exercise, I love having done it.)

The process, though. The process is interesting. Take this last one I finished, for example. I started it on a whim, and loved the beginning. I loved the beginning - the fairytale tone, the romantic setting - so much that I didn't really want to take it anywhere. Because as soon as you start sending a character down a path, you make a change to them. They become someone more concrete, more real and more flawed. The glorious endless possibilities of the blank page are closed off to them one by one, as words fill up the space, making them do specific things. You feel you're not living up to the potential you gave them. How can they be ethereal creatures of delicate magic if they also have to be plodding people who go to school and try to make friends? But I don't want to write elves and sparkles, and I don't want to write tragedy and deep suffering and high literature: I want to write something more like a whimsical take on reality, to entertain and distract.

And then, once it's done, I thought, I'll leave it alone for a while and come back to it with my editor's hat on, and rip it to shreds. When I don't love it so much, when I can see the cracks and the creaks and what I would say to a stranger. Because I'm a good editor, even if I don't have a lot of experience with fiction. I have to trust my own opinion even on my own writing, if I can just get a bit of a remove from it.

It didn't work that way. I re-read the story last night and it was as if every move, every word spoken was carved in stone. It had become history, and to change it would be to betray what had really happened. I couldn't find a thing to rip up. I have no idea if this is because it really is perfect (not so likely) or because no matter how long I leave it, the words came out of some space in me that won't bend to my editorial dictates.

(This is why the world needs editors, people. Stop thinking writers can edit their own work. Two functions. Two people.)

Funny old stuff, writing. I don't know what to do with my stories next. But I should probably start another, just to see if I can do it again.