Is there anything more beautiful than a clean white screen, emphasized by the zen metronome of the cursor? It's foreboding and perfect, and if you're like me, you can spend hours, if not days, staring at it, contemplating your unworthy humanity in the face of its innate vastness and wholeness.
Somehow (and I don't know how) we find the courage to tarnish this landscape with the yellowed sweat of our very human words We walk in the snow with our keyboards, and, much to our surprise and delight, create a promising first paragraph. Everything is precise and sparkling for a couple of pages. "This time will be different," we tell ourselves. "My writing really has a new clarity."
And then, one day, no matter what we do, the pests arrive. Don't act like you don't know. The pests bite and piss and tangle passages of prose so thoroughly that no matter how many times we rework them, they just don't work. We try deleting them and rewriting them, but the very ground is cursed. Whatever ends up in that particular space is destined for incoherent, belabored mediocrity. It's the fucking worst.
Such albatrosses used to keep me blocked for days, but I've recently developed a way to untangle them: Open up a new document. Paste in one of your problem passages:
After Sunday supper, Tucker set about getting everything ready for Dalia. He had a bouquet waiting in the refrigerator, purchased yesterday at Walmart, a mess of neon carnations and baby’s breath, its star a limp red rose. His mother had chosen it. There was also a ring, a slim, ten-karat gold band with a tiny flower of aquamarine, in his pocket. His parents didn’t know about that part, and he knew they wouldn’t like it. It was a courtship, not an engagement, and the ring was supposed to come later, if at all. In Clay County, it was common for women to receive their rings a few years into their marriages, following a particularly bountiful tax return.
Total morass, right? But we're going to turn this ugly beast into a free-verse poem:
His supper half-eaten, he began to prepare.
There was a Walmart bouquet in the fridge,
chosen by Mama-
a mess of neon and baby's breath,
starring a limp red rose.
There was a ring to place in his pocket,
slim yellow gold,
studded with a tiny aqua flower that shined
in the right light.
Mama and Daddy didn't know that part,
and he knew
they wouldn't much like it.
The ring was supposed to come later,
not during courtship and sometimes
not even for engagement.
Clay County women got their jewels later,
3 or 4 years and 2 or 3 kids in,
after a good tax return.
Pushcart Prize material it's not, but the bones are clearer, it's more specific, and the pests have fled for the next page in search of a new paragraph in which to burrow. Let's turn it back into prose:
His supper half-eaten, he began to prepare. There was a Walmart bouquet sitting in the fridge, chosen by Mama (on special, she'd told him) - a mess of neon and baby's breath, starring a limp red rose. There was a ring to place in his pocket, slim yellow gold studded with a tiny aqua flower that shined in the right kind of light. Mama and Daddy didn't know about the ring, and he knew they wouldn't much like it. Rings were supposed to come later, not during courtship and sometimes not even for engagement. Clay County women got their jewels three or four years and a couple kids in, after a good tax return.
It's not as perfect as the blank page, but it's serviceable enough to move forward. What's your favorite method of literary pest control?
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