Swearing off Writing
One More Time
by Joan
Shaddox Isom
About every other month,
I swear off writing for good. It's a habit, a cycle that I can't
break. For years, I've puzzled over my compulsion to sit at the
computer until my fingers are like gnarled sticks and my shoulders
so stooped I could double for Quasimodo. I'm not alone. Why we
write has been explored endlessly by authors whose names are household
words. Anthologies are published on the subject, theories have
been proposed and psychological studies made. In truth, I've tried
my hand at the topic myself, but nothing of any profundity ever
came to the page.
One thing I know, a
person who writes should evoke either an image of dignity or a
spit in your face attitude. I've been straining toward the former
since I wrote my first play in third grade, but here is what invariably
happens to me:
One of my publishers
insists on calling me "Jane," even in print, even in their book
catalog, which is where I caught the error first, before it ended
up on the actual book cover. They pay no attention to my written,
Faxed and E-mailed pleas to note my change of address. My royalties
from this book, if I have any coming, will go off somewhere in
snail mail oblivion. When I call my editor, she's never there.
In fact, she may have moved on a year ago. Who would know?
I usually swear off
writing for good after I've given a reading or a presentation
to promote a book, something writers are expected to do. The naive
public fantasizes a scenario like this: An author will be flown,
at publisher's expense, to a major city where she'll be met at
the airport and whisked away to first class accommodations. Someone
will come to take her to a lovely dinner, then on to the bookstore
or conference center where hordes of people will be waiting and
chanting her name. She will graciously approach the lectern and
give her talk while people jostle for a good position in line,
craning their necks to see her, hanging on her every word. She
will sign hundreds of books, the bookstore having stocked five-thousand
copies. At the end of the signing, they'll give her a dozen roses
(they checked with her family so they know her favorite color),
take her for a glass of sherry in a quaint little pub, then drive
her to her hotel, promising to pick her up in the morning and
get her safely to the airport.
Sure, if you're an
Opra pick.
Here's the real story:
You call up major
bookstores, knowing your publisher probably won't, and you tell
them you have a new book. Only one seems remotely interested.
She yawns and put you on hold. When she returns, she says you'll
have to talk to Jerome and he's not in. You work on catching Jerome
from August 3 through September 28. When you finally reach him,
he complains because you haven't called sooner, as their calendar
is almost full. He grudgingly squeezes you in on November 19,
between signings for Bosom Bikers: Seeing America Up Front,
and Tractor Pulls: Their Contribution to Our Culture. You
imagine sharing the bookstore with your conservative relatives
and swarms of men either in black, studded leather or overalls,
and perversely, you agree.
You scan the newspapers
the week before your signing, hoping your event is listed. It
is not. You get yourself to the bookstore location any old way
you can (translation: you pay for your own airline ticket or you
drive there). When you walk in, you see a sign with the title
of your book and your name, the latter spelled incorrectly. They
give you a table the size of a kindergarten desk, perched near
the entrance so that the wind blows your hair every time the door
swings open. No matter, the hairdo you tried to effect didn't
work out anyway, and people wandering by give you maybe a half-second
glance, except for one who sees your name, recognizes it from
a book of your earlier work that has some Native American themes,
and says, "You don't look like an Indian." Clearly, he's disappointed,
perhaps expecting feathers or at least a breech clap. You fill
the time by reorganizing your purse, making a list of your friends
who have not shown up (for later retribution), and you ponder
the long, dark road down which your obsession has taken you.
Or, you get to the
conference center where you are one of the featured speakers.
They won't show you where the bathroom is, and they try to make
you pay the registration fee. At the general assembly before the
group splits up to go to various sessions, you are introduced
last, with no mention of the title of your book. The celebrity
speaker is a writer known by her first name only, which is one
vowel letter. She is not prone to modesty. She tells the group
she is, in her words, "Kin to important people, people so important
that she can't tell you their names." It would be dangerous, she
infers. You consider the fact that you may be a bit too retiring,
and you long for a more distinguished name.
They take you to your
presentation room down some dark stairs. Dispiritedly, you look
for the bathroom on the way, but it is not forthcoming. (Later,
you accidentally find it behind a concealed door made to look
like the paneling beside it, but apparently only a minute, arcane
few are party to this information). You end up in a moldy basement
with a 30-watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling. People straggle
in and talk among themselves. When you get their attention, you
are upstaged by strange shrieks and whistles from some unknown
source. No one seems to notice the noise but you. When you finally
are driven to ask if anyone else hears anything weird, you're
told there's a parrot under the table in a cat carrier, but you
never find out why. Upstairs, after the sessions end, they are
selling books. Yours are there, stacked neatly underneath those
belonging to the Writer-Kin-to-Important People whose books are
snatched up like Gucci bags marked half of half.
On your long drive
home (you were not, of course, offered dinner) you convince yourself
that if you could just find that one word, or maybe a one letter
nom de plume, your writing career would flourish. Somewhere between
hysteria and depression, you try out various sounds as you drive.
A? E? I? O? U? Something in the timbre of your voice reminds you
of the parrot incident and you pull off the road, stop the car
and laugh-no-you howl. Before your next book signing, you decide
to take matters into your own hands. You stack the deck with relatives
and friends, sending out hundreds of invitations. Some show up,
probably out of pity, and buy the nine books the bookstore has
generously stocked. When you ask the manager why he didn't order
more, he explains haughtily that he did order a dozen, but three
had sold the day before. So people won't be disappointed, you
end up signing personal copies out of your car trunk in the parking
lot in a 45-mile-an-hour gale.
Back at home, you go
to the supermarket and someone asks what you are working on now.
Wildly, your mind flick back over the hundreds of just started
or unfinished files in your computer. Before you can stammer out
an answer, she asks about your twin brother, which you don't have,
but apparently because you wrote about one in a short story, you
should. Hurriedly, you try to conjure up the protagonists in every
piece of fiction and poetry you've ever written, hoping you haven't
any who sound too depraved. Paranoia sets in. Is everyone pushing
their carts to other lines, perhaps speculating that you are really
the axe murderer in a mystery you wrote for a tenth grade English
assignment?
Sometimes I imagine
my friends sorting through my stacks of unpublished manuscripts
and boxes of reject slips after my demise. "What on earth was
she thinking?" they will ask each other.
My writer friends and
I joke about starting a treatment center for people who can't
stop writing, but most days I deal with my obsession positively
by opening a fresh file and starting another piece.
And during really grim
times, there's always the memory of the parrot.
Joan Shaddox
Isom is the author of The
First Starry Night (Charlesbridge) and coeditor of The
Leap Years: Women Reflect on Change, Loss and Love (Beacon
Press). Isom's fiction, poetry and plays have won awards, and her
work has appeared in numerous publications, including anthologies.
Of Cherokee descent, Isom lives near Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
