Avoiding Writing Whiplash

This past month I learned two things: It’s not easy writing a novel without an outline, and it’s not easy driving a car without a speedometer.

(Or, for that matter, with one. My first speeding ticket, at 16, involved a Cops-worthy chase, almost getting pistol-whipped, a court appearance -- during which I giggled -- and immediately learning that reckless driving was a serious matter with serious, monetary consequences. My husband’s driving record? Well, let’s just say that he can get from Point A to Point B faster than The Road Runner can say, "Beep-Beep.")

But I do not want to rehash my collision -- not brush -- with the law; rather, I want to talk about how hard it is to gauge your writing and driving speed when you have no meter to employ.

I’ll tackle the speedometer issue first. For the past month our Jeep’s (you guessed it!) speedometer has been broken. It happened right after the vehicle received a spanking new transmission (can you say, Ca-Ching?), four tires, and an oil change. Almost as punishment for the Jeep’s bad behavior, we simply refused to get another part fixed.

It is hard to describe the strange juxtaposition of inhibition and liberation when I’m booking it down the interstate with no way of knowing my speed. At some stretches I feel like I should lower all the windows, crank up the heat -- since it’s winter, and I’m more cold-blooded than a reptile -- blast “Born to Be Wild,” and throw ticket caution to the wind. But I am still quite scarred by the memory of Judge Fagan’s glowering eyebrows and the resolute clunk of his gavel, and even more scarred by how much going 80 in a 40 cost me. (I mentioned I was only 16, right?)

Thus, for the majority of these interstate stretches, I do not drive like Mario Andretti but creep along like a cataract-filmed grandma. Sometimes, though, if I’m really pressed for time I try to tail “front doors” (those driving faster than you; therefore having a higher chance of getting pulled over before you), but then Judge Fagan’s face appears on my windshield and I become paranoid, wondering if my “front door’s” going 95 in a 65, and we’re both about to lose our licenses, and perhaps our lives, forever. So then I swoop up beside the car, press the side of my face against the window, trying to read their speedometer with my left eye while focusing on the road with my right (I haven’t quite mastered this). You know what’s really ironic about these efforts? It usually takes me far longer to get to my destination because of them.

Here’s my novel outline issue: I hate restraint, in any form. I hate directions. I get spit-firing mad when a GPS turns me around. I even hate cookbooks because the whole “1 tab of this and 1 dash of that” inhibits culinary creativity. I hate computers because you have to read manuals on how to maneuver within the programs (in 8th grade I was assigned a personal computer tutor; in college my writing with the new media professor, after looking at my Dreamweaver project, said, “You’re just not linearly minded”). Take all of this “Don’t Fence Me In” mentality and you get a girl who thinks outlines rank right up there with Chinese water torture.

So, yeah, I began this novel without an outline. (Surprised? Neither am I.) I had a hazy idea where I wanted the novel to go and what characters I wanted in it, but all those nitty, gritty details I figured would work their way out in the writing.

They didn’t.

Within a month my characters had taken on a life of their own, mutinied, and capsized my novel. Place me inside an outline or else, they seemed to be saying in an ominous, we-know-where-you-type tone. I dreaded it. I kicked and screamed (well, I felt like it anyway). But then I thought of our Jeep's pesky speedometer that no longer works, and how a working speedometer could be compared to an outline.

I thought of how much easier it would be glancing to the side of my laptop to gauge my speed instead of cramming my face against the social media window to check out the speed of other writers; to cruise through the story’s plot rather than giving myself writing whiplash at every twist and turn; to know when it is time to slow down my writing pace, and when the road is free and clear to swerve into the hammer lane and nail it.

So, yeah, my novel has an outline. (Surprised? So am I.) I now have a crisp idea where I want this story to take me and what characters I want in it. Despite this, a few nitty, gritty details remain unexplored, but I figure these will just work themselves out on the drive.

A Story No One Is Left To Tell

Even when I was little I was fascinated by graveyards. Not the new ones, mind you, with their tinkling wind chimes and fake flowers scattered over the grounds like Mardi Gras confetti. I loved the ancients that were old and crumbling with slats of rock teepee-ed over the mounds to keep robbers and coyotes from digging up the remains. I loved the stones that jutted from the earth like rows of loose teeth and -- after peeling away the moss creeping over them -- finding names and dates recording a story that no one was left to tell.

Graveyards these days are different. I should know--I go to one at least twice a week. (I’m not morbid. It’s the only place that has a good walking path within walking distance of our apartment.) Sometime in the 50s they began gluing cameoed photos of the deceased onto the granite. It’s disconcerting, to say the least. As you traipse along the path pictures of young men smiling from beneath rakishly tilted military caps stare out at you; along with Glamour Shots portraits of women with shellacked hair, sultry lips, and royal-blue feathered boas; along with young girls with gap-toothed grins and curling pigtails; along with couples bedecked in their wedding finery -- all Chantilly lace and pressed suits -- who passed away 52 years after marriage. Disconcerting or not, every day I return from the graveyard the lens through which I view my life is refocused.

You see, I’m in the midst of writing a novel, and although I truly love to write -- even if I knew I never had a chance of publication I would still -- I find myself constantly checking my heart's motivations. I want to be sure I simply remain a vessel the writing pours out of rather than a jackhammer penetrating an artesian well. I want to be sure I am not networking a name for myself but am simply trying to recount a story that needs to be told. I want to be sure I remember that, in the end, all my temporal drive will amount to is another August 15, 1986 -- ? etched into a stone. And that perhaps some girl with life seeping from her fingertips will pause before my grave. And perhaps, if her walk allows enough time, she will peel back the moss covering it. And perhaps she will then stare at the vapor of my existence while pondering the story of my life that no one is left to tell.

Speaking of Zebras...

With a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes, my husband said, "Come here--I have to show you something." Always susceptible to intrigue, I followed him into our bedroom. The lights were dimmed, and I could see an odd flickering coming from our pedestal table. I stepped closer. It was a child's nightlight with images of an African safari strolling across the screen: lions with tasseled, tawny manes, slate-colored hippos with curves that could give Beyonce a run for a Hershey's bar, giraffes with necks as long and malleable as the branches of a weeping willow. But these animals were not the ones I was focused on. For there, drinking from a shallow pool, was a herd of zebras.

"You remember?" my husband asked.

I touched the screen as the comically striped creatures shuffled by. "Yes" was all I could reply before my laughter bubbled up and engulfed us completely.

My husband, Randy, and I began dating in the summer of 2006 when I was 19 and he was 26. Because of the age difference, I assumed he’d want to get married and begin planning a family immediately. At the time I had just completed my sophomore year in college and -- along with a slew of journalism dreams Diane Sawyers hadn't even attained -- I wanted to join the Peace Corps where I’d teach English to French-speaking students in Africa, grow a coffee bean plantation, backpack across Ireland’s highlands with my best friend, write a Southern novel, run a full marathon...You get the picture. I knew that eventually I would succumb to domesticity, but I was not going down without a fight.

In August, the weekend before I was heading back to college, Randy and I were on a date when he pointed out a flamboyant, zebra-print purse a woman had slung over her shoulder. Seeing an opening, I smiled and reached across the restaurant's table to touch his hand. I began with “Speaking of zebras...” and then promptly expounded upon my desire to go to Africa for a few years--fleeing Randy and the commitment he represented (I didn't say this exactly, but he understood more clearly than if I had).

Randy didn’t speak much after that--what could've he possibly said? But as the weeks passed and my junior year commenced, he continued to love and support me even though my dreams did not coincide with his own. And when I was faced with tragedy, he walked through my grief every step of the way. He cried when I had no tears left to shed. He prayed when I had no words left to utter. He sent flowers, care packages, emails of encouragement. After his display of unwavering faithfulness my perspective shifted. I realized that I could not move to the “Dark Continent” if Randy could not go there with me. I could not hack my life from the sun-scorched land (I know I’m borrowing from Out of Africa, here) if he was not there to labor beside me. I could not pour my heart into people if, at the end of the day, I could not go home and open my heart to him. In short, there could be no adventures in my life if he was not part of them.

Now, four years later, I am not writing this from my straw-thatched hut. I have not taught English to French-speaking African students. I do not own a coffee bean plantation. My best friend and I have not traipsed the highlands of Ireland. I have not written a novel (one that’s publishing worthy, anyway) or ran in a marathon. But you know what? I am married to the love of my life, and every adventure we experience is more exciting than the last. And let me just tell you that it sure beats viewing a herd of zebras any day.

The Erosion of Memory

"Some stories are true that never happened." ~Elie Weisel

My memories are being eroded; they are being washed away bits and layers at a time. And once I walk through the valley of my mind, stooping to sift through the remains, I realize that I cannot separate the pieces that are fact from those that are fiction.

I do not know when this loss officially began. Some of it is probably because of Time: that crafty little clock ticking over the world, softening the edges of our memories so they are unable to prick and stab as they cycle through our souls. More than this, though, I believe the washing away happened after I twisted the details of my life to fit into the novel form. Through writing Segregation at Springcreek, I wanted to analyze every portion of my past and -- in the end -- more fully embrace my present.

Well, that part worked. After nine months, I’d composed a scrapbook filled with stories of my life and how they slid together to form an almost cohesive whole--but, not quite. Gaps in my memory yawned here and there, which I filled with snapshots of fiction. Soon, I could not recall which pages of my scrapbook story were true and which mere figments of my imagination.

Don’t believe me?

Just this week, after writing about the moment I first fell in love with my husband, I was lying in bed, all moony-eyed, while replaying the scene in my mind as I had written it. Suddenly, I gasped and almost elbowed my already slumbering husband, for the memory as I had written it, in reality, had not unfolded that way at all!

It wasn’t a tremendous shift in the-moment-I-knew-I-loved-him story (mainly just the setting had changed) but it was a shift nonetheless. It terrified me. Does Alzheimer’s run in my family? I thought. I should’ve thrown that peeling Teflon pan out months ago and stopped using that one kind of baking powder that health nut warned me about!

After that I remained awake, shuffling through memories and those I had written like they were separate stacks of almost-same cards--trying to reassure myself that I could distinguish fact from fiction. But I couldn’t. People were present in my memories that -- when I truly thought about it -- were completely removed from the circumstances in which those moments took place. Altercations erupted, words were spouted that I had always wanted to do and say but had never worked up the gumption to utter. I was like Clementine Kruczynski in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind except I was the one who -- through writing -- was deleting and cutting away certain painful remembrances and pasting them with something far more pleasant to recall.

My memories are being eroded; they are being washed away bits and layers at a time. And once I walk through the valley of my mind, stooping to sift through the remains, I realize that I cannot separate the pieces that are fact from those that are fiction.

Oh, wait -- I can't remember -- have I already written that?