Hey there internet,I'm working on my Nonfiction portfolio right now, and I find that I have hit a wall. I need to have 24-30 pages written by Thursday and I currently have 13.
Discouraging.
Thus, I have decided, at the urging of my loudly vocal friend Sunshine, that I should just try to write quickly in an attempt to get all the crappy writing out in one fell swoop.
Word Vomit.
Like a luke-warm puddle of bile, my non-fiction will flow out--not always smoothly, there will always be the unavoidable chunks, pineapple perhaps--but quickly, always quickly, constantly spewing. Then I can go through all the puddles and pick out the bits that are usable. The rest will sit, steaming in the hot sun, until a man with a blue jumpsuit and a mustache comes and covers it with sawdust.
That is how it will be done. An eloquent idea, loudly vocal Sunshine. Eloquent indeed.
So, here is the word vomit for the two essays I have thus far:
Essay #1 - "Smart Ass"
This essay is about when I was in second grade and my school librarian called me a smart ass. By doing this, she unknowingly impacted the narrative arc of my life, nearly forcing me into a career path where I would end up a mechanical engineer.
So far, there are a few scenes detailing my need for acceptance--mainly in the form of parent teacher conferences--and I also talk about one time when I picked my nose in Mrs. Weber's class. Then the pacing shifts a lot, and we go through high school and college in a blur before reaching a half-baked conclusion where I anti-climatically reveal that I have now become a creative writing major.
That's what it's about. Let's word vomit a little bit to see what else it's about, shall we? For this word vomit, I will take on the role of my internal editor--a shorter, older, bespectacled version of myself--who often critiques my writing as I write it.
Internal Editor:
Jim, after reading this piece, I must say that I am fairly confused. The idea is to be ironic, is it not? We see your uncomfortable moment with the potty-mouthed librarian and the resulting turn away from literature. Then, at the end, you spring it on us that, oh dear, you're becoming a writer.Yep. That's what the story is really about. Looks like I'll have to spew out a few overly cliched scenes about the real meaning of words and then go from there.
But, the climax of the story is the part that you skip--those awkward in-between years when you come to the realization that the librarian's comment showed you the power of language. After you realize this, you can get all sentimental about the impact that words can have and talk about that for a while. Once the reader begins to cry--both from the beauty of your sentiment and also from its terribly cliched telling--you can hit them with the punchline: you now consider becoming a librarian! Often! That's the overarching, stuck-up back-story that you need to hide underneath the story about picking your nose.
Essay #2 - "Furnished"
This essay, despite its disappointing title, is the one that I like most.
The essay details the furniture that I have owned--starting with my dad's large leather chair, continuing to a scene of the furniture store where I had my first kiss, then a quick little section about my filing cabinet, and then--booyah--cap it all off with buying a queen size bed. The underlying psychological idea is that as I accrue things--like furniture--I also lose things--like childhood. Or something like that.
So, let's get the cliched parts out first for you to suffer through, dear blog reader:
We all grow up and gain responsibilities, which both free us and tie us down. Something about furniture.That ought to do it. All the worst aspects, regurgitated here, for you. They are all out of the way, and we can move on to the parts that are worth reading.
Maybe some day I'll actually post the good parts on the blog. That would make more sense. An entire post about vomit seems counter-intuitive.
Oh well.
love always,
-jim.
