How to be a Writer Part I by Kirsty Logan
It begins in childhood, when you don’t know any better. You are
little, so imagine being bigger. Imagine being smaller, longer, wider,
inflatable, amphibian, in outer space. Make your Barbies into
assassins. Make your GI Joes into the Loch Ness monster. Make a mess,
make a fuss, make towers of blocks only so you can knock them over.
Just make.
When you are medium-sized, forget. Concern yourself with whether boys
or girls are icky or actually sort of interesting. Try lipstick. Try
purple shoes. Try tying things to your bicycle wheels that make loud
noises when you pedal. Abandon them. Fall off a swing and break your
arm, or trip over while skiing and fracture your leg, or learn to play
guitar and snap off all your fingernails. However you do it, break
something. Do not worry about stringing words together any more than
you have to.
Adolescence is the time for poetry. You may also try memoir – after
all, though your years may seem scant you’ve learned enough to teach
the whole world. You could solve everyone’s problems, if only they
would listen. Free verse is the only real way to convey the anguish of
your soul; formalism is fine but it’s just too easy to rhyme ‘woe’.
Try to get your heart broken as much as you can. Heartbreak is
excellent material for poetry. See also your parents, politics, city
lights, empty fields, the shifting colours of your beloved’s
azure-turquoise-emerald eyes, and the general unfairness of life. Keep
all your poetry, but never show it to anyone, even if you think it is
good. Especially if you think it is good.
“…Don’t put down your pen; keep it tight in your fist. It should stay
there until your hand is cramped to its shape forever…”___________________
Now you’re almost grown, at least in terms of height. You’ve done some
making, some forgetting, and a whole shitload of poetry. Now do it all
again. Imagine being dust-choked, mud-slipping, honey-submerged,
explosive spinning indescribable; break your thumbs trying to launch a
boat onto the blackened drunken lake; forget why you are even doing
this whole stupid thing. Take at least six months. Now you’re ready
for the poetry again.
Return to heartbreak, unfairness, and eye colours. Try not to rhyme.
After you’ve produced fistfuls of emetic poetry, put it all away. Lock
it in a suitcase, hide it in the attic. Burn it if you must. Now is
the time for narrative. There are stories all around you; stories
about lies and aeroplanes and veils and sleet and viruses and
hippopotami. Do not write the stories yet; just listen to them. Listen
to the people you usually ignore, because they are overflowing with
stories in a way that you are not. Pay attention also to the narrative
of your life: the time you got drunk on fizzy wine at New Year and had
to stumble around the streets with your best friend until you sobered
up because you couldn’t let your mother see you with such unsteady
eyes; the time a scoundrel whispered platitudes to you over morning
coffee and scrambled eggs, only to disappear with your iPod; the time
you travelled halfway around the world and found a slip of paper on
the bottom of your shoe that convinced you to go right home again. Be
particularly careful not to write these stories yet. Just pay
attention.
When you are tall and frantic and stuffed belly-high with stories, you
may pick up your pen. Make sure that you stare at the blank page for a
while; at least as long as it takes to drink several cups of
something. Write your first line. Delete it. Write a different first
line. Delete that. Write the first thing you wrote and delete it and
write it again. Now stop fussing and keep writing. Think of the words
behind you as a serial killer trying to catch you, or a burning fuse
leading to the dynamite on your heels, or the things you are trying to
forget. Let your hands make words faster than your brain can
understand them. Keep writing until your eyes can’t focus and you have
a blister on your finger. Forget to breathe. Now close your burning
eyes, get to your feet, and go outside. Breathe in the air that is too
hot or too cold; smell the bonfire or the brewery or the wet earth.
Don’t put down your pen; keep it tight in your fist. It should stay
there until your hand is cramped to its shape forever, until you don’t
even notice that you are holding it. Words are shifting and elusive,
and if you don’t write them down now, immediately, as soon as you
think of them, they will disappear quicker than breath. When you go
back inside, your written-on page will be gone. This is good.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Kirsty Logan writes, edits, teaches, reviews books and
waits tables in Glasgow, Scotland. She is the co-editor of Fractured
West and the reviews editor of PANK. She has a semicolon tattooed on
her toe. Find her at kirstylogan.com
Part II of How to be a Writer will be published on August 5th.
© 2010, Metazen. All rights reserved.
Related posts:
[...] Kirsty Logan, Metazen, How To … [...]
[...] Why don’t you read part I of How to be a Writer? [...]
[...] Logan instructs on How to Be a Writer (Part 1) at Metazen. She also writes on Beauty at [...]