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Sloppy, Sexy, Stupid, and Spontaneous Love: The Writing Process

"I never plan ahead. Everything is always spontaneous and passionate." —Ray Bradbury

There was a time in my life when I got my jollies from academic writing. I wanted nothing more than to write a paper called something like “The (re)/(de) Construction of (post)Modern(istic) Identity,” which is, as we all know, mostly bullshit. Not that there isn’t something to say about the reconstruction or deconstruction or first time original construction of identity in a modern or postmodern or postmoderinistic world, but what is the point?

Even so, I learned a lot about my writing process back then. And when I teach, I teach process. But I don’t just teach “planning, composition, and revision.” Sure, those things are really important—there is no writing without them. But when we write, it is a soul-cleansing that demands more than textbook terminology.

Oh, overweight grad school Shane.

Here is a picture of me holding one of the very first significant cocktail napkins of my life. It was the final semester of my graduate school career, and I had been working on this stupid-ambitious thesis about the creation of nomadic identity in Salman Rushdie’s fiction (see?). I had most of the paper done, but I still didn’t have the single-statement articulation of my argument. I didn't let that get me down, though. I snagged my last $20 from my teaching assistantship, my best English-major friend Nikki, and took off for Boozetown.

She didn't care at all.

My thesis chair (shout-out to Doc Thompson) was a real stickler for thesis statements being unified and concise. Getting that to happen was tough, but one night while I was fairly hammered, I sat down and put the pieces together…on a napkin. This is me explaining it to whoever would listen. I appreciate the guy in the green shirt for pretending to give a shit because that girl in the black jacket couldn’t give one if she tried.

Even though that was a very different type of writing from what I do now, I still learned something. Writing is not a linear process. One does not simply start at the beginning and write to the end and stop. 

In school, I often didn’t know what my point was until I wrote the last sentence of the first draft. Another professor once told me that my last paragraph felt like a Hail Mary pass on the last play of the game that was caught on the one yard line. Close, but I still lost the game. Sure, that means I had to rewrite (a lot), but revision is a very important life skill.

If you want to write, there are a handful of things to remember:

1. Writing at any level and in any discipline isn’t for the weak. It will be hard, and it will take a long time. And sometimes, you’ll be revising for longer than it took you to write first drafts.
2. You do not have to know where you’re going to end up. We’ve all heard that cliché about the journey being the real prize. That applies to writing. Just sit down and start. If you’re writing fiction, let your characters surprise you. If you’re writing copy, let your own genius sneak up on you.
3. Your first draft will be downright terrible. It’s just the nature of the craft. Read Anne Lamott.
4. Don’t be afraid to live. Writing is time consuming, but it shouldn’t consume your life. If you budget your time, even in school, you should be able to go out and meet people (hopefully people in your plight). Have a drink or two, climb on buildings, or make-out with someone you just met. Just always take your pen (for inspiration and phone numbers).
5. The stories that you have inside of you that want out will never ever get out if you don’t just sit down and write them.

This is not an exhaustive list at all. These are the things that have helped me, though. That, and really paying attention to the things that helped me create my ideal writing situation. Starting in grad school, my writing process began to involve coffee/ bourbon, candles (sometimes), and music at a low volume. For a while it was Marvin Gaye and Etta James and B.B. King. I used to make jokes about how I made love to the paper, but that’s really not as far off as it could be.

Go forth and make love to your stories—sloppy, sexy, stupid, spontaneous love.

 

Theories of Crazy and Falling in Love

I have drawn/written this napkin more times than I can remember. It’s usually one of the first napkins I draw when I meet someone new. It’s very important that they understand how I differentiate different types of crazy, and which types of crazy I’m very interested in and which ones I could do without.

I was in Greenville, South Carolina not so long ago. I was there for this English teacher conference, which is mostly as fun as it sounds. I presented on day one, and two rows back was this beautiful woman. She was wearing those dark-rimmed MSNBC analyst glasses, and I didn’t know much, but I knew I wanted to talk to her. She asked a question at the end of the session, and it was answered, and she disappeared. I was not satisfied with that.

Have you ever just needed something? Sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on what it is you’re craving. Do you want pork or beef? Froyo or real ice cream? Real Housewives of Atlanta or New York? (The right answers are: beef, both, neither.)

We were not up for a scavenger hunt!

But sometimes you know exactly what you crave.

The next morning, she came waltzing in to breakfast and I asked her to join me. Something like 25 seconds later I asked her to go to dinner with me that night. There was a big scavenger hunt planned for the conference that evening, but we were not very interested in being around other people, or hunting for scavenge. So we made dinner plans and I snagged her card.

It was at dinner that evening that I explained to her my “theory of crazy.” On the napkin, you can see that there is a fence in the middle of a field that divides the pastures between “Sexy Crazy” and “Scary Crazy.” A closer look will identify the more subtle distinctions of Introverted and Extroverted crazies inside of the bigger Scary and Sexy categories. 

When she laughed, she lit up the world. She promised me that she was Sexy Crazy, and just enough Scary to keep things interesting. She also spent the next couple of days proving that she was the right amount of both.

I have been writing a lot about older stories found on napkins in the back of an older journal. I wanted to spend a little time tonight writing about where I am now. That weekend in Greenville was the start of something new that just keeps on going, and I wouldn’t change a thing. This blog will be jumping around on my personal timeline a lot, but this is not the last time you’ll be reading about her. Maybe one day I’ll print her name. Maybe not. You should know, though, that I would carve it out of the ocean if I could—so the astronauts could see it from space.

All of those napkins that I’ve written over the years have brought me to all of these napkins that I will be writing for the rest of as long as she’ll have me. But I promise I won’t get hung up on the sap TOO much.

I have to get some sleep now. I’m hitting the road early tomorrow morning.

Until next time,

-Shane

A Bet with a Stripper Named 'Roxy'

I can see myself fifty years from now, sitting on a porch—whittling and telling stories to the neighborhood children. Maybe I’ll already be a little bit senile at 78. I will at least pretend that I am a little senile—not so much that I’ll be committed or sent away, though.

I want to be that kind of senile that makes people say, “Oh! What a cute old man!” The emphasis there is on the word “cute” because what they really mean to say is “Wow, shit! That old dude is making me uncomfortable, and he definitely shouldn’t be telling my children these stories while he’s whittling! Where did he even get that knife?!?” But all they can say is “cute.”

This is one of those stories. In fact, I should probably save it altogether until I’m that darling age at which I am afforded certain free passes for shenanigans from my youth.

This story is about the time I made a football-related bet with a stripper named Roxy.

Image Info Here

Now, certain people from my past will remember how difficult it was to get me to go to…gentlemen’s clubs, even if they were literally across the street from my house (I’m looking at you Peaches in Valdosta).

Others will tell you of the phase I went through when I became a bit of a connoisseur of the whole scene. Interestingly enough, though, I never paid for private dances for myself. I wasn’t really interested in that part of the experience. I was much more interested in talking to the dancers. Don’t worry—I would tip them or buy them drinks just for talking to me.I get the premise of the club. You have to pay to play, even if "playing" means "talking about the NBA playoffs."

Maybe you’re worried about me now. If you had known me then, you really would have been worried about me. It may not always be true that the men in those seedy places are looking for some sort of fulfillment that they are lacking in other arenas of life, but for me it kind of was. Since my rough break with Jane (a pseudonym), I had reclaimed my apartment and moved off of Darwin’s sofa. Externally, I guess it looked like I was moving forward. But if anyone could take a microscope to me they would have seen—I was a broken man.

Here is a tangent: The first time I kissed a girl after that break-up was a monumental achievement in my brain. I had allowed myself to be convinced I was weak and childish—incapable of being a sufficient lover for any other woman. It’s dumb, but I was flailing a bit for a while.

Back to Roxy.

Photo Info Here

I’m not even sure how I found the club. It may be close to the shithole honky-tonk, but I’m not sure. I just remember the obnoxious neon sign of a horse smiling like a jackass. Also, if you don’t think the last sentence is just a little funny, you’re free to go. A HORSE smiling like a JACKASS? That’s damn clever.

Once inside, I posted up at the bar and ordered a Jack and Diet. I was watching some basketball game, feeling like I was in a regular ole sports bar when this tiny little blond came up. She struck up a conversation, told me her name was Roxy (I didn’t ask to see the birth certificate), and we split a basket of fries.

She was wearing some kind of matching bra and panty set. Maybe they were yellow. If I ever mentioned liking a song that was on, she was quick to suggest a dance, but I didn’t really want one. And she wasn’t pushy about it. Maybe she sensed that what I needed most at that moment was for a girl to sit next to me and talk about nothing. And that’s what we did. We just talked about nothing. We talked about sports and music. She told me about her old life in California and what brought her to Atlanta.

My favorite element of clubs like this one is the part where clients have conversations with the girls. I mean, how does anyone have any kind of normal conversation with someone who is so obviously almost nude, and would actually be very nude for just $10?

By the time the bet came up, Roxy and I were beyond the whole “you’re a stripper, I’m a client” thing. She knew I was there for conversation and drinks, and she had no problem with being that person. The club was slow, so why not?

The TV was showing highlights from some football game. The bet concerned the Giants and the Cowboys. If you follow football, you’ll remember a few years back when the Giants got on a roll at the end of the season, beat the Cowboys at the end of the season to go into the playoffs as division winners, and ultimately they beat the Pats for the second time.

Roxy wanted to bet some VIP time on the final standings of the NFC West. We drew up the official terms on this napkin and we signed it. We both probably knew we would never see each other again, and we didn’t, even though I won. I didn’t want Roxy in the VIP room, though. I just wanted a girl to sit next to me, and laugh at my jokes again. She did that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a place like that, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back. I think those are places where desperate men go, and the heavens know I’ve been desperate in my life—desperate for attention, for conversation, for compassion, for just a little healing. But all desperation wanes in time. All wounds will heal.

Cheers!

-Shane