Riffs on a theme
01 February 2011 12:55 PM Categories: On writing
How I successfully avoided writing this morning:
laundry
thinking about last night's writers' group meeting
cleaning
dishwasher emptying
pondering 80s band names
exercising
music
daydreaming
talking on the phone (a long overdue and good, if a bit unsettling, conversation)
I need to complete my assignment for my creative nonfiction class. I need to take the story of Kevin's death -- the long day, the endless winding down, the surreal quality of it all -- and find a different way in. I've written about 3000 words, most of them the wrong ones. I need to do it, but keep on avoiding the task.
In this week's "lecture," our teacher was talking about finding the theme, the underlying topic that holds a piece of writing together, something that takes it out of a story of a series of events into something larger than itself. This is what is missing from my current draft. It's missing from some of my other work as well. People die. They rush into it, they take their time about it, they go out in an explosion of gunpowder or in the slow drip of blood and breath. This is not a theme, this is a fact, and it's not enough to make Kevin's last day compelling story material.
So what is the theme? Has it revealed itself yet? It finally hit me: forgiveness.
My forgiveness of Kevin through his long slow horrible hospitalization. My self-absolution through being there every day, through every up and down, by being kind to someone who was unable to treat me with kindness. His apology. His forgiveness of himself (the day before he died, three of us in the room during his confession to the hospice minister, the story I already knew but that Kevin's son was hearing for the first time, our role as witnesses, to the story, to Kevin's pre-Vatican II Catholic abused child fear of being bad and going to hell). Fear of what would happen to him after death kept Kevin going for a long time. He confessed and was absolved. And then his body slowly let go, loosened its grip on life.
OK. I have a theme. It's the same theme that runs through almost everything I write. Now I have to figure out how to approach it, in my voice, without going overboard. That last day where we weaved in between his hospice room, where death was taking its time, and the outside world, where spring was everywhere, where we had to eat, where people rushed and lived and acted as if they were immortal? I have to make it real and rich and, ultimately, about something else.
Fingers crossed that I can pull it off by Sunday night.
laundry
thinking about last night's writers' group meeting
cleaning
dishwasher emptying
pondering 80s band names
exercising
music
daydreaming
talking on the phone (a long overdue and good, if a bit unsettling, conversation)
I need to complete my assignment for my creative nonfiction class. I need to take the story of Kevin's death -- the long day, the endless winding down, the surreal quality of it all -- and find a different way in. I've written about 3000 words, most of them the wrong ones. I need to do it, but keep on avoiding the task.
In this week's "lecture," our teacher was talking about finding the theme, the underlying topic that holds a piece of writing together, something that takes it out of a story of a series of events into something larger than itself. This is what is missing from my current draft. It's missing from some of my other work as well. People die. They rush into it, they take their time about it, they go out in an explosion of gunpowder or in the slow drip of blood and breath. This is not a theme, this is a fact, and it's not enough to make Kevin's last day compelling story material.
So what is the theme? Has it revealed itself yet? It finally hit me: forgiveness.
My forgiveness of Kevin through his long slow horrible hospitalization. My self-absolution through being there every day, through every up and down, by being kind to someone who was unable to treat me with kindness. His apology. His forgiveness of himself (the day before he died, three of us in the room during his confession to the hospice minister, the story I already knew but that Kevin's son was hearing for the first time, our role as witnesses, to the story, to Kevin's pre-Vatican II Catholic abused child fear of being bad and going to hell). Fear of what would happen to him after death kept Kevin going for a long time. He confessed and was absolved. And then his body slowly let go, loosened its grip on life.
OK. I have a theme. It's the same theme that runs through almost everything I write. Now I have to figure out how to approach it, in my voice, without going overboard. That last day where we weaved in between his hospice room, where death was taking its time, and the outside world, where spring was everywhere, where we had to eat, where people rushed and lived and acted as if they were immortal? I have to make it real and rich and, ultimately, about something else.
Fingers crossed that I can pull it off by Sunday night.
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