Journals And Journeys

Once I had a writing teacher, a real teacher not an instructor, who told us we could write about anything, anything at all. Anything could be written about, just approach the subject matter correctly. One of our tasks was to keep a writer's journal, which was very difficult for all the members of my class because not one person in the class kept a regular journal. So a number of us got together and talked about the difficulty of this task, and task it was because the journal was a large part of our grade.

One girl thought that a writer's journal must be all the ideas and clever thoughts she had during the day and that was what she was going to put in her journal; another fellow said he thought maybe his journal was going to be a real diary type journal, like how he felt about his parents and his relationships, and a somewhat mysterious "best friend"; another guy said his journal was just going to be his poetry. The discussion proceeded like that, each person describing what they were going to put in their journal. I told the group I kept a dream journal, but thought because we had to turn this thing in every other day, that might not be such a good idea and everybody laughed. And when they laughed I got the idea that what my journal was going to cover was the progress I could make on each of my writing projects for the class. The fellow with the mysterious friend told me he thought that was the best idea, but everyone else thought their own way to proceed best and then we all went our separate ways till the next class session.

At the next session the teacher asked us all for our journals and dutifully, we pulled them all out except the fellow who said his poetry was to be the only thing in his journal. He asked the teacher, "what if nothing happened to write about?" To which she replied, "then write in your journal..nothing to write about today." He looked very puzzled. At the beginning of the term, he always dressed rather like a lumberjack in plaid shirts and Levi's and he wore his hair very long and loose and his beard and mustache could not have been cut for a very long time; he was a young man, so maybe it had been growing since it had started growing. Both his hair and his beard were slightly redder than strawberry blond, so when he came to class and I didn't know his name, I thought of him as Eric the Red. It wasn't until maybe the third class that I found out his name really was Eric, and he even had a Scandinavian last name. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but I really was, and I got taken a little off guard one day when he came to class with his hair cut short and his beard and mustache completely shaved off, and to everyone's surprise he looked a lot like Eric Stoltz. During that class period he didn't say anything to anyone except when I said to him at the end of class, "I uh see..you uh...gave up the viking look, huh?" And to my real surprise, he answered saying very quietly, "oh! I didn't think anyone would...you know...recognize...notice."

It was right then that I realized that the teacher was right. Anything can be written about. It doesn't matter what the subject is and it doesn't matter if the subject is deep or important or funny or serious. It can be written about if the writer can figure out a way to write down the experience. What is harder, is to write down experiences that have never happened, imaginary experiences. Fiction is the hardest thing to write for myself anyway, because I have to know how the thing is going to end before I start. If I just started writing like so many writers say they do, and just let the story tell itself, the story never seems to stop. Someone might say, well, that probably is because what you've got there is the beginning of a novel, and you are just going to have to tough it out till the end. Sometimes they have said they would like to read it when I finish.

What they don't understand is that those little pieces they've read aren't the beginning of a novel, they are more like the terribly small end slices that get left in some loaves of bread. You can't possibly use them to make toast, they are way too small to turn into a sandwich face, they are even too small to use for just good old bread and butter! The only things they might be good for are turning them into croutons or bread pudding if you can collect enough, which, because they are so small, usually takes so long, they have to be frozen or they turn blue with mold.

However, when I do know the end of a story, the rest just seems to write itself. The writing of the thing almost seems backward or upside-down. Navigationally, I know where I am going, all I really need to decide is which road I am going to take, and how I am going to travel; will I walk or take the train, drive or fly? And occasionally, that decision is more fun than finally arriving at the destination itself. And sometimes, I have to go back to the beginning to get something that I forgot, just like when you leave your house and remember halfway to your goal that the reason your going was left at home sitting on the hall table waiting to leave with you, and anthropomorphically, maybe its feelings are hurt because it thinks you've forgotten it. Maybe. Even that part is fun. And then there is a kind of happy-ever-after feeling when you finally arrive with the reason for going and all is going to be well.

I felt that way when I finished that writing class. So many things seemed to happen along the way, and I had to go back and find lost experiences that seemed to need exposure to the air. It was great fun. And there, at the end of the story, were all the people who had been my companions in the original journal meeting, whom it turned out, were all great stories in themselves. The girl with all her ideas written down in her journal? Frustrated because she couldn't seem to find her "voice" and took it out on everyone in the class. The fellow with the mysterious best friend, he wrote these incredibly beautiful sentences in the midst of horrible and horribly written stories and poems, just like flowers growing in garbage heaps. We became friends for the period of the term and he began to confide in me slowly over the term, and finally, on a rainy spring evening, with the streetlights sparkling on wet pavements, in a neighborhood coffee house, against what seemed like an eternity, he confessed to me that he, this young man of just twenty, was a member of NA and his best friend was a drug.

Just like most journeys, this one lost some travelers. Looking back at the experience, I remember some of them telling us in their own way, I wasn't really prepared for this journey and I must turn back now, or I may not make it home. One older lady, a charming person who liked to write about puppies and love, told me it scared her that maybe "the old gods" might rise up and come back to power; she ran for a school board office and did very respectably, even though she had died a month before the election.

Some simply vanished, like the man, Eric, who disappeared without a trace the day after he shaved.