Category Archives: Writerly Travails

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

– Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Your Inka Chicken: I’m not a fan.
I told you twice, Sam I Am.
We tried it once and I am done.  My ham sandwich is number one.
Inka Chicken is not for me.  I despise it; why can’t you see?
Get it through your head at last; Inka Chicken tastes like ass.

These five lines of Seussian poetry were written by yours truly as the expression of a fantasy reply to someone who invited me to a restaurant I have a reputation of disliking.  I can’t say for certain whether he was being a smart ass or was just extending a courtesy invitation.  Based on the chuckle after extending it, though, I’m guessing it was the former.

Most of my writing is an embellished version of real life conversations and events from work, home, and outings.  This poem was no different.  In this case I was bemused by the persistence of my coworkers goading me into eating lunch at an establishment I had made clear held no appeal to me and I wanted to share my pain with my facebook friends.  You’re welcome. Continue reading →

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.

– Napoleon Bonaparte

There is a fable that suggests the best artists are tormented and there is, further, a rather ubiquitous belief that to be a really good artist, torment is prerequisite.  That the reason they paint so beautifully, write such stirring lyrics and musical compositions, and are capable of writing such dark and moving stories, is because the content comes from somewhere equally dark and confusing and hellish.  I characterize this observation as a fable because fables, while not being accepted as strictly factual, have at their core an element of truth that cannot be denied.

The fable that I, myself, have advanced for the purpose of humor is that this notion is particularly true of writers.  That we are somehow more vulnerable to the darkness foisted upon the human race than are the rest of you.  Like the proverbial pearl, from the substrate of our overly sensitive souls, an infection of what would be a minor irritant to the average person, causes unending tears that ultimately produce something pure and beautiful and nearly translucent.  And I’m not alone in advancing this notion.

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The first thing she said to me was, ”You know, for a long time I used to think you were a bitch…”  Just to be clear, this is how people frequently greet me at parties, so at first I didn’t make much of it.

– Cybil Stepford

To me, this is a blog opening  with no equal and I now find myself utterly smitten.  Cybil isn’t your ordinary girl.  In fact she’s really more like a guy than a girl, preferring whiskey rather than margaritas, and beer rather than mojitos, which is one of only a dozen things about her that I have come to adore.  What I love about her most, though, is her writing.

In a strange way her writing reminds me of my own, and in an equally strange way I’ve swept myself off my feet.

Cybil is a real-life friend of my friend Fran and he kept prodding me to check out her blog—but like most writers I shun the work of other writers when what precedes the prodding is fawning praise.  That’s because, as a writer, I prefer to be the recipient rather than the observer of it.

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