Meta-Fiction

There was a time when I wanted to write. Like, for real. I’d been scribbling forever, it challenged me, and it seemed logical to keep on arranging words. I’d maybe write the next great American novel and chill excerpted in the Norton alongside Didion and Morrison. Together, we’d ensure that women are well-represented in the American canon—as writers, not women writers. My novel would be a multi-generational tour-de-force, probably about West Coast Jews or semi-dysfunctional upper-middle class families (write what you know, they say). I’d be Philip Roth with boobs. Then I wanted to write a collection of Gothic short stories twirling with supernatural conflict and deeply-flawed protagonists with blue, blue eyes. Next it was the education memoir: hard-hitting facts sprinkled with the real talk that comes with working in the trenches. My literary fantasies were either misguided or eclectic, but I knew I wanted to write.

College fed the dream; college is the perfect dream food. I took writing classes (in things like experimental fiction where I wrote stories with footnotes and without vowels), cared deeply about the difference between the em-dash and the en-dash, and got feedback from people whose words I respected. I wrote more pages than I drank cups of mediocre coffee, and that’s saying something. At the time, it all seemed blindingly important. Apparently, this is what $40,000 a year gets you. I can’t think too hard about true value.

It wasn’t until I decided not to write (like, not for real. Not for now), that I started to consider the danger—lurking beneath the imagined glamour—of a life spent devoted to the craft. Writing fiction is something you do mostly alone, which is why it often breeds angst, unrest and egotism among those who practice. Too much time spent poking around in your own churning brain, creating characters, charting their lives, making them hurt and then letting them go. You get to play God with people you created in seven days (or less, or more), and after a while the God-complex goes to your head. If you can control your characters, why not take control of your own life and the people in it? Form it like supple clay into the life you want. You start to compare your existence to that of your protagonists, and it can be hard to measure up. Your own life’s plot tries to be a step ahead of where it really is because you’ve already outlined how things should go. As a writer of fiction, you wonder why there’s not more drama, more color in your own life. There’s a very real danger of living in the words on your page instead of the words you speak and are spoken to you. Your grasp becomes rather loose.

This is why I’m glad I’m not writing for now, though I want to keep the pencil moving so it doesn’t dull entirely Why I’m glad to be doing something meaningful with real people—something more parts selfless than selfish. Last week, I had a weird series of events that reinforced why—for me, right now—writing is better left on the periphery than hitting center stage. At the very least, it reminded me why I shouldn’t take myself too seriously.

A boy I recently dated confided that one reason he no longer wanted to date me was because I’m too bossy. I wanted to scream DUH, Captain Obvious; Of course I’m bossy. It’s my flaw in the key of major. I know that. I self-analyze to a fault. Apparently, I even blog about myself. I’ve been called bossy since I was 12. I come from a long line of fine bosses. My roles include teacher and older sister to a loose canon of a younger brother. I like getting my way. Like the characters I used to create (and now keep tucked away deep in folders I only tinker with late-night), I too have assorted flaws. Mine came with me, though, there was no writer puppet master to form the perfect literary flaw. Astutely, he picked up on something I already knew about myself, but instead of working with it he wrote it off (pun intended).

I’ve started walking home from work—from Williamsburg to Cobble Hill. I go a mile through Chasidic Williamsburg, a mile through the Marcy Projects and then a mile through gentrified Fort Greene. Strangely, the Chasids, the Bloods and the Hipsters provide me with ample space to think. So on the day of the bossy accusation, I did just that. My ex used to call me bossy all the time, but I figured it was meant to be endearing. He loved me and so could appreciate my not-so-fatal flaw. I accepted his flaws like he accepted mine—that’s how strong relationships work. If human beings weren’t deeply flawed, wannabe writers would grapple for material and no one would become the next Roth. I worked on being less bossy, with him there to tell me it’d be okay even if, at the end of the day, I couldn’t stop inserting myself.

But when I was thinking-walking-analyzing after being called bossy yet again, I started to get worried. Maybe my ex actually hated the fact that I was bossy. Maybe there’d been a misread, and it was more off-putting than endearing. Maybe if I hadn’t got to it first, it would have been an offense worthy of a break-up.

So, because I am unable to talk myself out of my own bad ideas, I called him up to ask! We are at a point in our post-relationship where a random casual phone call is mostly amicable, but this idea was probably imprudent. Rehashing relationships had gotten me into trouble hours earlier, and I wasn’t quite prepared for a sequel.

My ex answered the phone and, after brief pleasantries, I posed my self-centered concern like I’d practiced in my head on Bedford Ave. Instead of analyzing it together or whatever I expected, he called me out like I needed to be called out so badly. Like only someone who still knows you a little too well can call you out. Surprisingly (perhaps only to me), the call-out was about writing not bossing.

“LEL, if you’re just calling me to get a quick sound bite for your blog, which I read, forget it.”

BUSTED.

And there you have it: He was absolutely right. For writers, the desire to write sucks you quickly out of reality—down the literary rabbit hole. I’d been living two double-spaced pages ahead of my scheduled plotline and planning my next written endeavor rather than just taking it all in. I wanted to pull the parts together from characters across the country and create something neat on paper. I’d fallen right into the writer’s trap. Subconsciously, I’d already been planning my companion piece to Tina Fey’s Bossypants. And yes, I know this is all Meta-Fiction, because here it is! My writing had become self-important and its fruition felt more real than real life. This is why writing is dangerous when left unchecked. Where real life is concerned, you can’t plan the plot before it happens. Real life doesn’t fit into perfect paragraphs, which collide flawlessly into theme and (un)resolved conflict. If you think you get to choose the drama you want, the flaws and conflict you find most interesting, and the conversations that work for snappy dialogue, chances are you need to get out from behind your laptop.

Point taken.