Nevada Writer

Why I Write

by Melanie on 28/11/07 at 10:40 pm

Good question. It is my heart’s desire. That’s my best answer. Fiction has always been my friend. It has been the art form that moves me the most deeply, and to which am inescapably drawn. As to who I envision as my audience, that is also an interesting question. After I almost died, I wasn’t in great shape psychologically, and during that time I had a strong feeling that I didn’t need to write for an external audience. I had already written a wonderful book, and I could read it anytime I wanted to in my head. I literally had the image and feeling of flipping through pages. I didn’t need to share it. This was a strange sensation for me, a mini-revelation of sorts since I had never felt that way before. I love this book I’ve already written. It’s scintillating. It has highs and lows, epiphanies of spirit, heart and soul. The plot is twisted and filled with drama, tragedy and joy. It’s a page-turner.

I realized, however, at some point in my recovery, that as soothing and wonderful as it was to have my own internal book to read and not have to share with anyone but god–if there is a god–wasn’t going to cut it in terms of becoming a fiction writer and actually accomplishing something in real life.

Speaking of that. I feel that the art of short story and novel writing is so difficult that trying to master the traditional forms is hard enough without trying something in the anti-fiction genre. I also sense that some people, and perhaps rightly so, want to skip the traditional form and go right to the “keep-the-audience-guessing” form. I see that as a bit of a copout. It’s easy to write a bunch of loosely related paragraphs and then say, “Hey, I’m an avant garde writer. You, the reader, are an idiot if you can’t figure this mess out.” To me, I am starting at the bottom because the bottom ain’t that easy.

My audience, I imagine, in my most hopeful moments, would be something along the lines of readers of anthologies and the New Yorker magazine. I’d also love to live to see my stories turned into screenplays and movies. I’d like to write my own screenplay. I really worry about having time. I work so much that it’s extremely hard to find time to write. I wonder what my fiction writing would be like if I could focus on it, say, 40 hours a week? What if I could focus on it for even three hours a day? I literally don’t have the time now. I do get up early, like Bob Laxalt, and I try to write in the a.m. when it’s quiet and everyone else is asleep. But, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., I am busy with work. when I get home, I usually still have to watch the kids. Give Angie a bath. Take care of the dogs, etc. I know it’s no excuse. I’ve learned to be able to do some writing and some homework with the tv playing “Dora the Explorer” or “Spongebob Squarepants” in the background. (Tip: cut the sound as low as possible. Kids have pretty good hearing.) And then we all have to get to bed. I’m not exercising. It’s not healthy. But that’s the cost of kids, and without them my psychological state would be so fucked up, I probably wouldn’t be free enough internally to write–like before.

Like when I lived at the motel on the beach in Venice, Calif. I had nothing but a coffee can and the motel tv. Miami Vice and Penny, the guy next door who helped me get the place, were my only friends. I had an electronic typewriter, too. I had gotten out of UCLA (that means graduated) and I had a job, but I was still practically homeless. This is a much longer story, but it’s why I liked Willy Vlautin’s novel so much. I lived the motel life, not by choice, for far too long. so long in fact that I swore I wouldn’t move for five years. I’ve been here for fifteen years now. It’s another reason I fought so hard against the bossholes, and kept my job. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to take my kids away from their home.

What do memories mean?

I can’t believe there’s a Cream concert on tv. Aside from the Beatles, they were my favorite band. I saw them at the Fillmore Audtiorium in San Francisco, which reminds me of something bad my mom did. She threw away my Fillmore postcard collection. I was on their list and they sent me mini psychedelic poster post cards. The reason it wouldn’t be so great to get these from eBay is that the ones I had had my name on them. I kept them in a special jar, with my gum wrapper chain and the rest of my very special stuff. Even the jar was special. It was from a restaurant that I had worked at. An old, glass mayonnaise jar — but huge, at least a gallon. Why would someone destroy my mementos? Esepcially when they were stored in one, lone jar. Not much else mattered to me. I cleaned out everything before I left for England when I was 16. I can’t even remember much of the details of the Cream concert. I wasn’t on drugs. wasn’t like those other kids in that way.

I’ve had massive amounts of anesthesia in my life, including ketamine, a horse tranquilizer that was used on the battlefields of Viet Nam because it is a fast-acting, hallucinogenic amnesiac. it can be injected quickly. It doesn’t really kill pain or block nerve endings, it works by disassociating your brain from your body. I was given this drug during the birth of my first child. Those total idiots! For months afterward, I had the sensation that my life was nothing more than a slideshow being played on the screen inside my head and projected outward through my eyes. Let alone that the “trip” I was on (instead of watching my child be born) was like being thrown into a terrible black and red hell of swirling darkness and pounding feet in which my family members’ faces might pop in and out of view. Tip: Never, ever in a million years have Dr. Jay Marken be your anesthesiologist (or your wife’s or even your dogs’). You probably don’t know that you can ask for a specific anesthesiologist. Ask for Dr. Draper or Dr. English. Dr. Draper can do kids and adults. I trusted him with my 30-pound daughter. Dr. English is a friend of my family and a Med School doc, married to Dr. Hug-English. Anyhow, anesthesia can rob you of some of your memories. I thought that four days was an afternoon when I had Angie. They kept dosing me up with Atavan and morphine. I don’t even remember being told what had happened. Yet somehow, I eventually knew. It’s very freaky to have no memory of something. If i didn’t have a diary, I would not have remembered Penny’s name. I knew it was a girl’s name, which was odd because there are few men who are outwardly as masculine as Penny. The first time I met him he was a bouncer in a bar/restaurant on the pier in Santa Monica. Back then he was totally buff. He weighed about 250 lbs. and was about six-foot-five. his head was shaved, and in a T-shirt he looked like a black Mr. Clean. it was odd that we became friends, and I mean only friends, although everyone thought we were lovers. (It’s so annoying. Why do people have to think that?!) Nothing could be further from the truth. We both had a mutual revulsion for one another physically. I was really skinny. I had brown hair. He liked big-boobed blondes. the conversation would go something like:

“You ugly!”
“You ugly, too. Fact, you even uglier.”
“And yo mama, too.”

Penny, wasn’t the best articulator around. But he took me in and let me stay in his motel room on the beach in Santa Monica with my two cats, after my psychopathic boyfriend got arrested and the motor home we were living in got towed (That, too, is another story, one that makes me wonder if there might really be such a thing as divine protection in this life) his act of kindness was so gigantic, so remarkable that I felt I owed him a debt of gratitude for the rest of my life. That’s why I visited him when he was sent to jail (I don’t know why . . .or at least, I can’t remember). I do remember making multiple visits to the L.A. County Jail (what a sad place . . . during visiting hours, the mothers and their little children line up fifty, sixty deep to see their men) to visit Penny. That when I found out that his real name was something like Sylvester. I guess the nickname derived from his coming from Pennsylvania. He was about 40 then and had been to Nam. He once told me rape was a much worse crime than killing someone in the war, because that kind of killing is impersonal and distant, whereas rape is in-your-face personal and up close. He used to hang out an play chess or checkers at Venice Beach. He must have also had a place downtown, near Hollywood and Vine, because I remember visiting him there.

My memories are my life. When my mother threw my mementos away, she threw a part of my life away. i can’t remember what date it was that I went to the Cream concert. I can’t remember if I went with my brother. I cant’ go back and look at the post cards. Even if I can find them online now, I don’t know which ones I received, or when. The anesthesia had taken a bit more. She was so callous when I asked her about the jar.

“Oh, I couldn’t be bothered to actually keep all that stuff.”
“But, mom. I didn’t have anything but that jar.”

Anyhow. She’s now de-junked a bunch of crap on me, and I now have Christmas ornaments with names i don’t recognize – my mother and step-father have scattered the memories of their children and grandchildren hither and yon. But a memory doesn’t mean anything to someone not the owner.

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