ESSAYS ON
WRITING

 

Anonymous

LITTLE BUGGY

It started, I guess, with that little buggy—really started, I mean, though the roots had been laid down almost since birth—in around the third grade. I could tool around in that thing, and when I was in it I was indestructible, and with a touch of a button (and there were always plenty of buttons) I could have anything from a pumpkin pie, no crust, to a super solar space modulator beam; and I could zip around, zip forward, zip backward, and I could zip up and down and through the water and in deepest space and through time and the dimensions.

I really liked that little car. I used to think about it as I drifted off to sleep. That was when the idea came to me: The floor beneath my bed would open, dropping me into a flowing crimson river; and as I traveled at breakneck speed toward certain doom, I would press a button and the bed would, yes, change into that little car.

So I wrote it down.

I wrote it during classes and after school and while I watched The Six Million Dollar Man. I started with the flowing river beneath my bed, and quickly graduated into my adventures against Mouse Man and Super Mouse and The Mouse that was Nasty. And after I beat the mice, I fought the men, like Owl Man and Evil Man and Nasty Man. Then I hit the really big time, in this little book, and fought people with names like The Black Shadow and Jim McCoy, agent of S.K.U.L.L.

And when fifth grade was over, I’d finished my first book. Eighty pages if it was a paragraph, was my book, written in careful letters on wide-ruled paper.

Then I started thinking. How to follow up my masterpiece? A friend and I were churning out “King Comics Corporation” at the rate of two or three comics a week…but these were simply excuses to draw two men hitting each other. I wanted a lot. I wanted realism. I wanted…what did I want?

I wanted to write a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and, come the end of the sixth grade, I had written two (one called Great White and the other oh-so-tentatively titled The Presidential Factor) and had gotten a friend to start working on publishing them for me. I didn’t gross ten dollars, selling those things to classmates, even though the teachers let me Xerox them at half-price. Still, I was inspired. For my first “real” book.

It hit me at the end of tenth grade, after I had recently written enough short stories to fill two anthologies. I had just written a ninety-page story, and I thought: hey, Why not expand it?

So I started, and found out I didn’t know what the hell “expand” meant. Was I meant to bloat it? Add extra characters?

So I started from scratch. The main character in my stories had always been an extension of what Stephen King calls the “I-guy.” And, it seemed, I just wasn’t strong enough as a personality to carry a book-length project. To keep a simple outline, I developed an idea that basically bracketed episodes. I wrote the start and the end in fifty good pages, then went back and began to fill it in.

As I went I sort of lost track of the gimmick of the novel, and it became loose and confusing. I finished, sent it to a contest, sent it to an agent, and was duly rejected. By both. It hurts a little, still, the little twinge at finding a one-page rejection, always with the finishing sentence: I can tell you’re a writer with promise.

But here I am, working on my new masterpiece, with two good working titles and a main character that should allow for hundreds of pages of interesting revelation. It is Brittle Leaves and Skeleton Trees, sometimes called Without Style or Grace; and who knows? Maybe it’ll be on the stands in not too long. And if it won’t; well, there’s more to come. Plenty more to come.

COMMENT:

There is a pleasantly vibrant evocation of childhood imagination in this essay. There is also, at times, a kind of transparent respect for slickness. A writer need not advertise the quantity of writing but rather reveal its quality by what it stated. This essay wavers between the phantasmagoria of imagination and meretriciousness. (SAB)

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This is good. It is interesting and well written. The person obviously has a talent for writing and the experiences demonstrate a persistence that will lead to success. We just might see something “on the stands” written by this person. (BPS)

Michael Chaskes College: Wesleyan University

WHY I WANT TO BE A WRITER

I do almost all my writing in my bedroom. The prewriting I actually do in bed, lying down, with my eyes closed. That way, no one can tell if I’m asleep or just thinking. Sometimes when I do that I really do go to sleep, but that’s part of it, you see.

While I sit and write, I look out the window. The blinds are venetian, and even when they’re totally closed I can still see out of them. The blinds make big horizontal stripes over the sky, and as birds swoop down, they are continually obscured, then visible, then obscured, then visible. The birds land on branches; then sometimes I can see all of them clearly, but usually I see only part of them, and sometimes none of them.

When I get tired of writing, I pick up a book. I have a lot of them in my room. Then I’ll read, or just stare at the cover. Sometimes my favorite part is the author’s biographic sketch. In his, Woody Allen says that “his only regret in life is that he’s not someone else.” I don’t find that funny at all.

Sometimes, I’ll get a drink and a copy of the paper or Newsweek. Newsweek always depresses me. I think it’s because they always think they know exactly what’s going on, even when the people involved don’t.

Or maybe that’s not it. I don’t know.

There’s also an alarm clock in my room. I hate the clock almost as much as I hate the calendar. It only tells two kinds of time to me: “plenty of” and “almost out of.” I think “plenty of” is worse because it’s an illusion, and when I think I have “plenty of,” I look back at the clock a little while later and I’m already “almost out of.” I don’t like the alarm too much either, it’s too loud.

Well, maybe none of that tells you why I want to be a writer, but that’s really it, or most of it. Or some of it. Sometimes I feel like the best place to do all my writing would be outside somewhere, by a lake in Maine or something, like an artist with an easel, my typewriter and I, all the time. But then it would rain, and all my work would get wet and ruined. So I just stay in my room. I have trouble seeing out of the window, but everybody has to make do, don’t they?

COMMENT:

Michael’s essay reminds me of Andy Rooney. He speaks of simple, everyday things in simple ways, but his observations are offbeat, refreshing, and honest. The best part of this essay is that it lets the reader into the private life and thoughts of the writer, into his personal self, just as Holden Caulfield did. It is totally fitting that the essay was handwritten and not typed, because of the unavoidable tone of formality that accompanies a “perfectly presented” piece. (AST)

Nikolas R. Elevitch
College: Yale University

I DO MANY THINGS, but there’s no question that the most important to me is writing.

The other things I do I like for different reasons. I like running, for example, because it is a way for me to make noise physically and competitively. Writing is also venting, but it comes from the quiet voice, quiet breathing, and the loud mind.

I like playing in a rock band because that too is noisy. I can use my hands playing the bass guitar and work with Philip, the drummer. The drums and bass have to be tight, fit in a groove, be the pulse of the music. But what I like most is the way Philip and I build off each other. Philip might introduce a quick off-beat roll and lead into hitting the upbeats between the quarter notes. I have to adapt to this change, but at the same time, I follow through with a rapid walking line from 4/4 to 7/8. Philip keeps hitting those upbeats and the groove changes, the song rises to a new level, a new rhythm.

This partnership is not unique to a band. What brought out and developed my ability to write is a partnership I had with my friend Rob. We would have rap sessions in which the purpose was to create a continuous flow of laughs (keep the other guy laughing).

A good metaphor for our rap sessions is our first Ping-Pong game. Rob was about to serve the ball, but ended up serving a volley of images. He paused to help me imagine Ronald Reagan falling asleep on his desk and accidentally leaning on the red button. I said that the maid would come and ask what he wanted. (So much for the power and control of the President.) I then closed my eyes for no reason and snored, and he did too. We did this for a minute and then began something else. We would do this all the time, while eating, watching TV, etc. Actually there was rarely a serious moment. We constantly searched for things out of context to chuck into the buildup, things funny just because of the way they bounced off each other, weird and from the blue.

But when I want to do something all by myself the most important thing to do is write. Once accidentally I sat at a typewriter and played with words, chucking things on the page just for the sake of getting it out and feeling the keys go click, and out came a mixture of words built upon from one another. To my surprise, this first poem later went on to be published in the Boston Literary Review. It was so easy to get on paper the images floating around in my mind that I wrote many more poems throughout my junior year, getting three accepted for publication. The big obstacle for me had been getting these images to work well together. They played off the subconscious, each other, and the sounds of the words themselves.

I spend time alone writing in a room at the top of a building that I walk to at night with a flashlight. I can look out at the Hudson River, the lights on the other side, and the trees blowing in the darkness on my side. Out of the 200 scientists that work there, maybe one diehard remains, his lonely car in the parking lot. I close the door and sit at the typewriter and start:

My activity is mud wallowing.

To begin again:

I left home but didn’t know where to go. I remember what my dad told me the night before, ‘Son, you must get a mate.’ I am an animal, I know that. But I was intent upon following the food supply, not a mate. Or at least my instinct. But not a mate. I am lonely and strange. Last night I did go straight to the fridge for a Coke, but I only did it because I rolled a 6-sided die and came up 3.5. Maybe I should just plop down here on the street and renounce everything, submitting myself to destiny. Someone will care for me. (I fell facedown in the mud, my pants leg catching a nail on the doorstep and ripping.) I submit myself to the street—as it is. Let myself be carried away with Main Street America. By the dice. My life might turn up all 3.5s, summed up in one word. Probability.

I stop. I realize that I’m going in circles. But I’ve uncovered something along the way. So all I can say is that when I write, I investigate ideas and feelings, my own and other people’s. I bandy with the images in my brain and learn about, for example, my frustration with Main Street America, and the monotony of my walking toward destiny as it shows in real life through daily repetition. I fall in the mud. I even take on the world.

Carol Zall
College: Princeton University

The Essay. It is supposed to make me come alive as a person. Expressing my goals, values, and personal development would be helpful. In fact, the pamphlet I have just read on writing college essays gives me any easy tip: “Try for essays that provide insights into all these areas: 1) your intellectual and creative interests; 2) your personal strengths; 3) how well you write; 4) what’s special about you.” Sure. Right-o.

It is not that I find writing difficult. In fact, writing is one of my greatest pleasures, and has been ever since my poetic debut in the third grade with “O Frog.” “Where do you get your croak?” I lamented. “Or your black-spotted cloak? Or black beady eyes? Or toenails that look like twisted bow ties?” Masterful, yes. But the point is, if I am provided with a subject, I will happily set pen to paper. However, assessing one’s life can be rather tough.

Then there is the question of what to focus on. I could wax philosophical and give my views on the morality of war. But, I did that this summer in a letter to a friend and nearly killed the relationship. (I started casually enough: “Dear Bob, how are you? The weather here is just fine.” Then I threw him the curve. “Just a few thoughts that were going through my mind—Is War Moral?” This was followed by a four-page dissertation on the subject.) Fine, forget the intellectualism. How about discussing the meaningful aspects of my experiences—the satisfaction that comes from tutoring, the new and different people whom I met while working at a “fast food joint” and the insight I gained from the experience (how to fill a straw holder, how much ice to put in the cup, how much a Whopper-without-the-meat costs), even the way I like to think while I ride my bicycle. But—no, it is all too mundane, the same meaningless “meaningful essay” which everyone will write.

Maybe the fact is that I think too much. My mind is constantly working, churning up ideas on an endless number of subjects. One day I can become artistic and take out my paints. Another, I ponder the implications of nuclear war and call a citizens’ group to find out what I can do. There are so many things that interest me, so much in which I can find meaning, that it is impossible to choose one event and let that represent me. It is not that I lack direction—I do know my main area of interest—but rather that my outlook embraces all of life. To me, everything seems interconnected, bound together in one overwhelming network. There are no isolated disciplines, all knowledge is inextricably interwoven. And so, even if I think about physics one moment, and the meaning of life the next, and third-grade poems after that, they are all tied together by the common thread; they are all part of my exploration of life.

Nearing the end, I am wondering if the essay is not a little too unconventional. However, I like what it represents: a willingness to take risks, a regard for both humor and serious thought, an interest in life, and a certain confidence that living is always an adventure. Sounds like me.

COMMENT:

This essay falls into the trap of telling the reader what the writer wants him/her to conclude. “My mind is constantly working, churning up ideas on an endless number of subjects.” “However, I like what it [the essay] represents: a willingness to take risks, a regard for both humor and serious thought, an interest in life, and a certain confidence…” The truly outstanding essays present such a compelling picture of the writer that there is no need to prompt the reader toward the desired conclusions to be drawn. (AST)