The Straw in the River

I’m sitting on the banks of the Mississippi river. The grass is rather crusty and brown because this summer’s been so hot and rainless. As such, the water level is low, but a soft wind is moving it along in little foamy wakes, and the lapping harmonizes with the crickets in the long grass, a pleasant atmosphere in which to write.

Today is my second day at the community college. I had my second English class today, Intro to Creative Writing. True to the mold of all English classes, Professor Riehl began the class with an activity (an introduction of the students to each other utilizing name cards and markers) followed by a reading and discussion of a poem and short story, and the perusal of the syllabus the size of a novel.  It was all very characteristic of an English class and I loved every minute.

Prof. Riehl explained that this class would cover poetry and fiction, which is right up my alley, until I realized that she meant literary short stories and not genre fiction. No six-hundred page historical fiction novels in this class. Literary fiction, she says, is character-driven, where genre fiction is plot-driven.

Something clenched inside my stomach…could it be anxiety? I was kicking myself mentally. Com’ on, Grace! You’re a writer. Maybe you’ve never attempted stories fewer than one hundred pages that are “character-driven,” but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it…right? I thought about all my favorite books, many of which are literary: To Kill a Mockingbird, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Jane Eyre, all of which I enjoy because there is so much depth to the characters. (Similarly, I prefer slow-paced British shows and movies (often based off books) to the fast-paced, action-packed American counterparts, because they speak to the heart rather than dazzle the senses.)

I’ve always held the belief that fiction should reveal truth about human nature, and tried to capture that in my stories through my characters, as well as create intricate plots. But I began to doubt my ability to do this, both in class assignments and my novel writing.

I’m currently reading a book called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. Where sometimes crass, it holds a lot of good points. She talks about a mental radio station called KFKD (or K-F***ed) that every writer has. Out the right speaker come the inner voices of congratulations, self-exaltation, and exceptional writing abilities. Out the left come those of doubt and self-loathing, a recitation of every writing failure and flaw. It blares in my head every day (especially in the English classroom) and I have to force myself to tune out when sitting down to write.

Perhaps lately I’ve been tuning into the left speaker a little too often, which is why I haven’t made any progress on my book, because I’m agonizing over all my flat scenes and cardboard characters. And then I sign up for a class that requires stories driven by stellar characters. Needless to say, my confidence deflated like air let out of a bike tire.

At a point in her life when Lamott was constantly turning on KFKD, she came across a passage in a prayer book: “The Gulf Stream will flow through a straw provided the straw is aligned to the Gulf Stream, and not at cross purposes with it.”

As I sit by the river, watching the flow of the current, this passage holds so much truth. “When KFKD is playing,” Lamott writes, “we are at cross purposes with the river.” The flow of the river is the innate ability to write within me. My own mind is the straw, through which the river will either flow through or against. When I get to a certain point, when the busyness of life, and the noise, and the commotion fills my head, all I can hear is the left speaker.

So I must sit by the river, tune out, take a deep breath, and plunge in, trusting the current will take me where I need to go.