Writing is a little like flying–or what I imagine flying entails, at least–in that you’re searching for the perfect draft, invisible as it may be, to carry you aloft. It’s ugly, initially. You start with nothing, a blank canvas, and you try to fill the void by flapping your wings furiously. Eventually you take off, maybe even glide a bit, but what you really want is to find your stride and hit that current of ideas. Once you do, you soar, and you ride that current for as long as you can.
I mentioned, obliquely, how writing for reals was on the docket. This project began in earnest last week, and it’s frankly been hard, though not in the way you’d expect. General decisions have been made. It will be fiction, for one thing, and absolutely not of the fantasy or sci-fi variety. Expectations have been set about workflow: plot arcs, character profiles, storyboarding, concerns like that. The premise, however, continues to elude me. I’m searching for an idea that’s compelling to consume, sure, but also to create. We’re assuredly in the flapping phase, grinding it out as we freewrite on stark white sheets of paper.
What fires me up, though, are the scenes we’ve discussed, moments grounded in reality that are truly unique. I’ve never witnessed them in any of the media I’ve consumed, yet I can picture them clearly, both on the page and in, like, a teaser trailer, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In a way, some of the meat is already there, and it just needs a skeleton, kind of like a genetically engineered cow on a Taco Bell farm. We’ve already employed a tortured metaphor tonight, so I’ll stop there, especially since this one may actually involve torture.
The dinner prayer I wrote would’ve been a hit, had a few key elements fallen into place. For one thing, it was actually lunch, which necessitated some minor revisions to the text. But the overarching issue? I had mistakenly assumed I’d be expected to say grace, and instead of delivering the 25-second spectacle I had penned, complete with marquee phrase and recursive themes, the patriarch mumbled a three-second something and then it was chowtime. There’s a valuable lesson here. Somewhere.
It was a great trip. I mean that. Greenville is true to its namesake, with ample plant life that stretches to the horizon. There is a timeless feel to the city. I was fascinated to hear how some families had lived in the same houses since the ’70s and ’80s. This was a place where people grew up, lived, died, all within a tidy radius. Lunch itself was a homecooked affair in the dining room, surrounded by decor with decades of stories to tell. There were good laughs. I noticed the talk was best not when we were catching up, but when the conversation wended to modernity–current affairs or recent television shows, for instance.
I was certified all-American, which eminently pleased me. I distinctly remember scoring major points when I took my coffee black, but that was probably unrelated. The one nerve-wracking portion of the afternoon was when the topic of church came up. It’s a big part of southern culture, as you may imagine. At times, it almost felt like a grilling. History of the church? Background of the pastor? Style of praise music? I dug deep into my memories–the rare attendances, snippets of info from the website–to plumb for facts.
The answers I furnished passed muster, complete with detail and overdetail for extra padding. The simplest question–What’s the pastor’s name?–that would’ve brought this whole house of cards tumbling down wasn’t asked, fortunately, because for the life of me I couldn’t recall this basic fact during the conversation itself. Prevaricatin’ about church is shameful, I know, a dark stain of an oxymoron upon the soul. But I don’t know if I would’ve handled it differently. This was a pleasant lunch, after all, with southern hospitality and southern food. There were the true answers, you see, which would’ve ruined the mood and shunted me to the nearest prayer list. And then there were the right answers, answers far more compatible with that afternoon in Greenville. I walked away from this experience realizing that adaptability is far more important than preparation–and also, it wouldn’t kill me to go to church once in a while.
Secondhand Rants will return on Tuesday, February 19.