Monthly Archives: August 2012

It’s not stealing, it’s inspiration

Summer is the hardest time of the year for me. I always look forward to it. It’s that ingrained instinct left from childhood. Yay! It’s summer. Time to play! Two weeks in, I remember the ugly truth. There is no summer for Moms.

It’s an odd paradox–being alone and yet never alone. My son spends most his time gaming with his friends.  I don’t see him, but I hear him, so he is always here.

I’m in my office. I’ve been stuck on the same scene for a while, and I can’t seem to move beyond it. I hear the percussion of machine gun fire in the background.

“Drive the tank!  No not in circles, you idiot!   Hahahahahaha.”

“You excel at circular logic,” Kate said. “Do you have a point? Never mind the point. Is there even a verb in that sentence?”

“You can’t park on a respawn point, you cheater! Kill switch someone else’s game.”

“I always have a point, and verbs are overrated.” Jess replied, thinking Kate, the spawn of Martha Stewart and her high school grammar teacher needed a new place to park the nagmobile. “Go find some other underachiever to inspire.”

“You’re such a stupid noob.”

You’re such a stupid noob.

You’re such a stupid noob.  Argh!!!

I can’t really shut the door. I have to hear what’s going on around the house, so I pick up a pad and move to the sunroom.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s hungry for lunch and comes upstairs. As his mac and cheese is heating, he joins me.

“What’cha doing?”

I look over my glasses at him. “Writing.”

“Cool.”  He watches me scribble.

“I think the Patriots are going to the Superbowl this year.”

This is a typical opening gambit. His favorite topic.  I’d remind him that baseball season isn’t over, but we’re Red Sox fans, so for us, it is.

“That’s good.” A non-responsive response. Not that I have one, really. Although I’m fairly conversant about baseball, football leaves me yawning.  I only go for the tailgating.
He takes that as a green light and launches into a long discussion of the team’s prospects and wishful hoping that they’ll sign Maurice Jones Drew. It’s a name I know, only because he’s in ESPN ads. I can’t tell you anything about him other than the fact that he is short but still awesome at whatever it is he does.

“I think your mac and cheese is done.” The microwave beeps every 30 seconds to remind us. I start to count them.

“It’s got to cool first.” I get a recap of Tom Brady’s virtues as a quarterback. It’s also a name I know. I can’t tell you much more about him than I can about Maurice Jones Drew other than the fact that he is extremely good looking, and I know he’s the quarterback. I also know all of the gossipy stuff, but I don’t really want to discuss Tom Brady’s babydaddy status with my son. I want to discuss Giselle even less.

I try not to get impatient with the one-sided conversation. After all, I do love my him. Pretty soon, he’ll be at college and I’ll have to come up with all of my own material. He does his own laundry and makes his own lunch. My husband does neither, and I put up with him without too much trouble.

“Hackers suck. They only care about scoring points. Everyone leaves because the game’s not fun anymore. So they win? Who cares?”

They’d fought this  bloodless battle for years. The points came dearly and winning was pointless, not to mention temporary. Someday they’d both figure out it was better to leave the game before it started.

“Are you writing down what I just said? ” He shakes his head and walks towards the kitchen.

“Like I would write about hackers, and  by the way, no food in the basement.”

“I know.”

No, he really doesn’t, and it works for me.

Words by J. B. Everett

Photograph by Allie Holzman ©2011 Creative Commons

Me and My Shadow

I was listening to a discussion of avoidance on NPR. The speaker’s thesis was that we often avoid that which we aspire to, and that avoidance is attached to fear of exposing our “shadow self,” or revealing what is hidden.It was sort of new-agey, even for me, but I do get it. I avoid writing because I’m afraid that what I write will be crap, and that everyone will know that it’s crap.

I have a piece of flash fiction that I wrote a while back and submitted to a couple of outlets. One gave me a perfunctory no. The other gave me a “we liked the beginning and the end and the rest was weak.”  I thought the piece was great when I submitted it, otherwise I wouldn’t have. But after rereading it, I decided that they were right. It was terribly flawed. I should have never submitted it. It was worse than bush league, and everyone knew me for the poser that I am.

Meet my shadow self. Guess it’s time for a rewrite.

But have I reworked it?  Uhm. No. I’ve tried. Stared it down once or twice. It could only get better. What’s the risk?

I think about my son. He excels at avoidance. He puts off training and practicing, no matter how much I nag. He is, however, a responsible person. He’s the kid you want to water your plants when you’re away. He studies well in advance of his tests. So why the procrastination?

His behavior (and excuses), however, reveal a duality that goes much deeper than fear of failure.  Strangely enough, it’s edged with hope.  It’s Schrödinger’s cat all over again. That feline keeps cropping up again and again, pesky creature.

Before he tries, there are two possible states–awesome and awful. Afterwards, only one. Depending upon one’s faith in the outcome, there’s a twisted logic in maintaining the possibility of greatness, as if talent materialized overnight. The perfect idea, that extra burst of energy, that laser-like focus that allows us to exceed even our own expectations. As long as he doesn’t disprove it, he can still believe in it.

Denial and delusion are happy villages to live in, as long as you never leave town. Unfortunately, it’s a little overpopulated.

So the only way to solve the conundrum is to make a choice. I chose to know and move forward. Guess I have some revising to do.

It doesn’t make it any easier, or less painful. Inevitably, we all have to accept and confront that we are never as awesome as we would like to be.  I learn, however, from each rewrite, tuning the balance between concrete plot and lyrical language that makes a description of events a story, and a shadow self a character.

Maybe I’ll give my own shadow self a hug, after I kick her behind and tell her to stop the whining and start the revising.

Words by J. B. Everett

Photograph by Helmut Klug © 2009 Creative Commons