Purging the Past
Published October 3rd, 2011 | 
Do you keep a journal? I used to. From the age about 10 until I was about 22, I kept a regular journal. I briefly picked up the habit again at 29 and at 39. In general, I think it’s a good idea to journal regularly. I also think it’s a good idea to shred, burn or otherwise trash these writings every so often. It’s healthy to do so. Yes, by all means, publish your journals if any portion of these writings are publishable, but purge those unexpurgated entries every ten years or so. It’s as cathartic as the writing of those journals. It’s equal parts fascinating and embarrassing to read about your past. It’s also liberating to metaphorically destroy that past. It’s like shedding one’s skin. Dominie Browning writes on this very subject in a piece entitled “Burning the Diaries” in the NY Times:
I JUST burned 40 years’ worth of diaries. I didn’t plan to — or rather, I had always planned to, once I knew I was dying, or so old that I would soon lack the energy to gather wood. But I woke one morning and knew it was time to let it all go…
I started keeping journals when I was 14. I was compulsive about it. I scribbled daily and as I went through college, I filled hundreds of pages with dense, colorful ink, going right to the edge, ignoring the light threads of red margin markers, denying paragraphs their breaks, my nib flattening under the pressure of the stream of soul pouring forth. A psychiatrist once told me that I was obviously trying to psychoanalyze myself, which, professionally speaking, is considered impossible. But there certainly was and has always been a form of therapy in keeping journals. It is a way of self-soothing, as an adult, a way of rubbing the satin corner of your blankie against your finger when youre anxious about separation, or too worked up to fall asleep.
… I wrote about the bad boyfriends, the mean girls, the lying and cheating knaves I loved. I wrote about the wrenching pain of postpartum depression, the confusion and fear of becoming a mother, when I didnt have a clue how to do that gracefully, kindly, compassionately; I mulled over the unalloyed sadness of a dying marriage and the pure misery of mourning the passing of a hope that, before it fled, sowed the seeds of two beautiful boys. Certainly not the sort of detritus I wanted those boys to sift through if I died before I woke….
* This post is brought to you courtesy of cary cleaning services.
In Remembrance of Video Games Past
Published May 28th, 2009 | Yesterday, after finishing a writing project (and thus beating a deadline), I decided to reward myself with a little casual web-surfing. Since the much-anticipated game, The Sims 3 is coming out next week and I am unembarrassed to admit that I’m a die-hard Simmer, I ended-up scanning a series of video game previews of the game on YouTube. A friend of mine walked into the coffee house where I happened to be and caught me watching the video. From the look on his face, you’d think he’d caught me watching porn instead of what many non-Simming folk consider to be a kid’s game.
This encounter sparked a long, conversation about video games. Even though my friend was no fan of the Sims, like me he was a lifelong gamer. It got me thinking about how important video games have become in our culture — no longer just in the United States, but all over the world.
If you are an adult gamer in your 30s or 40s, video games are more likely than not a part of your personal narrative, kind of the way rock n’ roll and television factored into the baby boom generation’s history. I remember the first time I played PONG like it was yesterday: 1974, Wildwood, NJ in an arcade on the boardwalk.
My friend, who’ll turn 40 in a couple of months had similar memories. We talked about PONG and Asteroids, Atari 2600 and how far game consoles have come. We talked about handheld games and argued about who had the best game controllers. We also argued about whether the Playstation 3 was better than the XBox 360 (even though he said “360″ and the Nintendo Wii seems to be kicking ass in sales these days, my money’s still on the PS3). We also chatted about those ancient Text Adventure games that usher in the PC Gaming era. It was a fun trip down memory lane.
Resurrecting Old Projects
Published April 18th, 2009 | Some writing comes out of you as quickly and as satisfying as a good bowel movement (some of you know what I mean — it’s like you’re Beethoven composing a symphony). Other writing has to be coaxed out of you with a laxative, a pizza, or whathaveyou. But, what about those projects that only half come out of you before you abandon them either because you simply cannot make it work, get bored or distracted at the wrong moment? And you never entirely forget about those aborted efforts either. Usually, the stink of them stays with you like an orphaned sock left at the bottom of the laundry hamper. What do you do about them?
Most of the time, there’s a good reason why you abandoned the project. You lost interest in it. The premise wasn’t as interesting as it seemed initially. The writing of it was just beyond you ability. Someone else had already written a similar thing and done it much better than you could. It happens. Some ideas are fun to play around with, but not meant to see the light of day.
But what about those ideas you obsess over — sometimes for years, without developing them to fruition? Personally, I find it best not to force the issue. I’m all for sitting your ass in a chair and writing your guts out until you are empty, but good writing is a lot like a good wine. Sometimes you have to let it age a little while before you can pour it out. Otherwise, it leaves a bad taste.
There are several ways to bring an old project to completion without forcing the issue:
1. Identify the problem
Ask yourself why you abandoned the project to begin with. It’s not always so simple. Sometimes the writing gets too personal, especially if it’s memoir or something inspired by our own lives. So many of our experiences are tangled-up with negative emotions like fear, humiliation, heartbreak and regret. Sometimes we can’t deal with the issue in our writing until we’ve cleared-up the problem in our own lives.
2. Make a change
Maybe the premise isn’t the problem. Maybe you were just writing the wrong thing in the wrong way. Maybe that story should be a play or a poem or written from a different point of view. So, change something. Change the setting or main character. Find a fresh angle. Sometimes that one little piece is all that’s needed to make all the other pieces fall into place.
3. Timing is everything
Sometimes you write something and it seems like a failure and you just can’t figure out why so you set it aside and then something happens to bring that old project back to life. Several years ago (well, more like 20-something-something years ago) I wrote a story about this terrorist attack on American soil. I remember I had first written a paper in my advanced composition class on terrorism and had done all this research which convinced me that a major attack on the United States was inevitable. This inspired me to write a story about it. The story begins with the hunt for a white separatist leader of a domestic terror cell with International connection who was plotting to bomb Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The Feds chase him down and stop him before he detonates the bomb. Unfortunately, they don’t know about the suitcase nuke hidden in the Washington Monument during a restoration. I’m not saying that the story was so good there weren’t other reasons for rejecting the story, but one of the main reasons was the “failure of imagination” on the part some of the editors I’d sent it too. One editor even remarked on the rejection slip that “this could never happen. Remember, this story was written in the late 80s, before the first WTC attack, before Oklahoma City, before 9/11. The very idea that a such an attack could or ever would happen in this country seemed preposterous to some people during the Reagan years.
4. Be patient
Sometimes all you have to do is wait. My experience has been that abandoned writings have a nasty habit of reincarnating themselves in new work. I don’t know how many poems I’ve written over the years that share bits and pieces from old aborted poems.
The point is that life always finds a way. If something is meant to exist, you have to beat it into existence. Sometimes you just have to give it a fair chance to breathe.
