Thursday, May 25, 2006

At some point after I learned how to write but before I'd decided that I was interested in neither poetry nor the world of professional figure skating, I supposedly wrote a poem about Nancy Kerrigan's mother. I do not remember this. But, my mother does, and she claims that it is her favorite thing I've made by putting pen to paper. My mom has long-championed my writing--whether deserved or not--partly in an effort to encourage me to pursue it as a career. What a life it would be, she'd say. A blue clapboard house by the ocean with a desk by the window and nothing to do but fill the page. You'd like it, or love it, even. I thought it was bologna, a romanticized version of a borefest. Sitting inside all day by yourself, alone, making things up. I'll get a real job, thanks.

But now that I have a real job, I am seeing the draw of that clapboard house by the ocean. Granted, I live by the ocean right now. But my house isn't clapboard. And it isn't blue. And I don't have a desk by the window or any pages to fill or any time to fill them.

Mom always encouraged me to take writing classes, to try out writing in a rigid setting with deadlines and criticism and instruction, to see if I could somehow turn my talent of late-night term paper production into a honed skill. I never took one. In high school my avoidance stemmed from a strict adherence to the notion that smart girls take science and math. At university, a disdain for criticism. Certainly I did my share of writing, but a professor grading a paper on the merits of its contents and a professor grading a paper on its merits as a piece of writing seem like two different beasts. I didn't care to meet the second one.

But now I want to get away from this desk and over to that one, the one where I can sleep in if I want and work all night if I'd rather and abandon for any other desk, anywhere.

But first I'll need some practical training, on structure, on method, on approach.

So I'm taking a class. And, by the way, as it turns out, Mom was right. Maybe not about the Kerrigan Poem, may it never be found, but certainly about this little thing of nurturing a skill to see if it can grow. Hopefully it can.