Castles

Today the sun shines upon our cottage, the air outside is warming, and I canceled our cable television subscription. 

My son’s idea. “Mom, why don’t we cancel cable?”

Sure, yeah. Done. It’s all crap anyway. Television, gads, it’s Crack.

The only thing I still love about cable television is True Blood, and I must know someone in this town who can still afford HBO and will allow me to stick my head in the window an hour so I can drool over Sam Merlotte. Sam is my Crack. Oh. I like Pam too. I like Jessica. And R.I.P Talbot. We miss you.

I transmit from Republican country. We’re still surrounded. February 28-March 4 is “Ignore Sarah Palin Week.” 

Imagine you’ve generated so much attention you now drive thousands, perhaps millions, of people to actively attempt to ignore you as a nationally organized event. Holy crap.

A friend once referred to Sarah Palin as an opportunist. Of course she’s an opportunist. Everyone is. We’re all chronically desperate for attention. But one more time for the record, Sarah Palin doesn’t speak for me simply because she’s female and has a big mouth and knows how to garner notoriety. Sarah Palin is the anti-me, actually. Sarah Palin hates women.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Meyer pretty much hates vampires.

Not so long ago my son suggested I write Twilight, and I responded, “Honey, somebody already did.” A story like Twilight wouldn’t occur to me in a million years. It wouldn’t grow from me organically. I’d have to force it, which is too bad. Stephanie Meyer tapped something. She tapped something huge.  Still, she hates vampires.

Historically vampires represent sexuality in literature, in all the stories, so ask yourself what Stephanie Meyer says about sexuality with her vampires? What did Bram Stoker say with his, and Anne Rice with Lestat? 

Interesting. Stephanie Meyer bugs a lot of writers. For one thing she does everything in her novels Stephen King warned us not to do in On Writing. Like adverbs. Oh. She does everything all my writing teachers said not to do, and all my mentors in graduate school too. Like adverbs and adjectives and over wrought narrative and ridicules characters. Oh well.

One of my favorite quotes about writing is one from Lillian Hellman, which goes something like, if I had to give advice to young writers I’d say never listen to writers talk about themselves or writing.

So there. I think Susie Bright said there’s freedom in never worrying about what other writers say about writing. Actually, I think Susie said there’s freedom in never publishing anything you write because of course once you publish, people will judge what you wrote. And if you write memoir, people will judge not only you’re writing but your life. That hurts.

But here’s another reason not to listen to writers talk about writing. Writers lie. Yeah. Writers who say they never revise are liars. Or if they say, “Oh I only revise once then I’m done.” Bullshit.

Thing is, as writers we talk about ourselves too much because what we do, write, is solitary drudgery. We’re alone for hours at a time. And if you’re me, you have no social life. Also, for most of us, there’s no money in writing; there aren’t any awards or fellowships. For most of us, no one will read much of what we write or care.

Only a few of us live in castles. But I might be buying a manufactured home soon. It’s true. The world would be a giant cesspool of ugly without writers. People would commit suicide fives times more often. Books. My granny had them all over the place. Summers I went to  stay a month with her in junior high and high school, I remember books. I read Gone With the Wind and The Sheik and The Stone Carnation.

My granny sent me her copy of The Stone Carnation a couple years ago. She said, “I know you liked this.” I loved it. She still reads a little through her one good eye, my granny, if the nurses prop her up on pillows. I just wish I could curl up with her.