electric mist

permission to be naked

In her entry, Dream Credentials, Tamar says, "And then? Well, I don’t have any credentials at all now. I parent and I write. Someday I’ll be published, maybe even sooner than someday. And that will be important for the validation and the chance to get my words out there, but in the end it is not the main event. It’s the corollary to the main event. Which is living it. I know that now."

Sometimes I wonder how it is that I have been waiting for permission all of my life to "be" a writer. I sense in myself the sort of tentative approach to the novel that makes me think I am sort of waiting to be credentialed... waiting for someone to come along and give me permission.

I am a writer -- that's what I do, it's who I am when I wake up in the morning. I live with that awful double-vision, in that I am in the world in the moment, but there's always a part of my brain taking notes, wondering how I would convey that moment, living in hyper reality because I'm feeling something and analyzing what I'm feeling and how I'm reacting and comparing it to people around me because I want to be able to convey that moment, in its essence and richness.

But there's a part of me that keeps waiting for permission to delve into the novel, to explore it, and I think Tamar hit on part of that -- it's the feeling of, "who, me?" -- how on earth do I think I can write a book someone would want to spend money and time reading? There's something about the way a script works that sort of lets you off the hook, as a writer, because you know what you're creating isn't the final product -- if there ever is a final product, a film, it's going to be because a whole bunch of other people have stepped up and plunked down a lot of money and a lot of time and turned that script, that blueprint, into a filmic experience. And it may be great or it may be awful, but it really isn't all up to the writer, as much as we'd like to take credit for the good things.

But a novel? That is pretty naked right there. That's about as real as it gets, because there isn't anyone else swooping in to turn it into something else -- there's you and your own efforts and your own storytelling ability and your own truth and willingness to dig deep and expose the ugly, because there is no beauty without the ugly, and you've got to be brave. That's hard. That's naked, and honestly, I find myself falling back on the script format because it's safer.

There. I said it. Safer.

I don't want to be about "safer." I want to be about digging deep, finding the story, ugly and all, and getting it down in such a way that people respond. So maybe, that's all the permission I need. Maybe.

Posted by toni at March 14, 2004 02:57 PM