The Writing Class

Nothing was truly unbearable if you had something to read.

Just start the sentence...and see what happens. This is how we write.

(N)ot writing was hard work, almost as hard as writing.

(T)here are worse things than falling on your face right out of college...Like instant, unearned success. Like getting your first novel accepted by the first publisher you send it to. Like getting your first rejection slip at the age of thirty-five.

(D)ialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. 'When you're writing lines...you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.

Arithmetic is the death of story.

That's the hard work of writing. The imagining.

All plots are cliche.

(T)hey were at ease with each other, which was essential to a productive workshop.

Only in art were there cliches; never in nature. There were no ordinary human beings. Everybody was born with surprise inside.

What was the value, really, of an alibi between lovers, friends, or family members? Idea for greeting card: ‘Will You Be My Alibi?

Oh, but it is!" said Dot. "You see, I've taken many, many writing workshops. You'd be surprised how many." No I wouldn't, thought Amy, although she would be surprised if any of the other classes had actually encouraged critical reading. Dot was ideal prey for the sort of writing guru who praised everybody's use of metaphor whenever a metaphor, however exhausted, was actually used. No doubt Dot had been told more than once that her work was publishable, and Dot, hearing identical assurances given to others, had believed in her heart of hearts that she was the only one not being patronized. There was a local industry devoted to Dots: weekend writing conferences, during which the Dots could pay extra to have a real-live literary agent actually read one of their paragraphs; expensive weeklong retreats in Anza-Borrego or Julian or Ensenada, where the Dots could locate their inner voices; and at least three annual fiction-writing contests which the Dots could enter at will, for a hefty fee. Amy was willing to bet that in Dot's living room an entire wall was devoted to framed literary awards, including Third Runner-Up Best Unpublished Romance Manuscript.

You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.

Actually, the Sniper's sense of humor frightened Amy more than anything else. The parody of Carla's poem had been witty, the rudeness of Marvy's critique outlandish, and she was still, for some reason, focused on that "youse" in the Sniper's counterfeit email. "Youse" was like a spectral elbow to Amy's ribs. Dangerous, malevolent people should not be amusing. In order to be humorous, you had to have perspective, to be able to stand outside yourself and your own needs and grudges and fears and see yourself for the puny ludicrous creature you really are. How could somebody do that and still imagine himself entitled to harry, to wound, to kill?

But all this was beside the point. What scared Amy was the mere fact of what looked inescapably like recreational malevolence. The poem had been written by an adult, not some teen with an unfinished brain. Whoever wrote the line bootlicker, sycophant, toady intended damage, understood how Carla would feel, how anybody would feel, being called such names. The line was playful, offhand, the poem itself a smug, imperious cat stretch. The writer was having fun. Amy had been comfortable in the same room with someone whose idea of fun this was.

It was morning, and nothing frightened Amy in the morning, because her will to live never kicked in until after lunch.

Ultimately, nobody is predictable, least of all to himself…there wouldn’t be any point in writing fiction otherwise.

But she did have to do something creative, even if it was just some little thing, because she was not writing, and not writing is hard work, almost as hard as writing.

Carla was wearing a No Fear sweatshirt. You are too old, Amy wanted to tell her, for legible clothing.

She pretended to find dust ruffles feminine and cozy, but really they were just flimsy barriers beyond which lurked the malign viscosity under her bed.