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REFLECTION
I hear
the wind approach, stalking through the branches of nearby trees, before it
lifts the hair back from my face. I watch the clouds as they pass quickly across
the sky and listen to various bird songs while contemplating my final blog
entry for this class.
It’s been a weird winter. The
unusually large amount of snow, mixed with months of freezing temperatures, created
a continuously stark landscape. It was bleak and off putting. There were places
on Bayberry I wanted to visit which were too frozen to safely access and I was
relegated to explore the same area in different ways.
When I
began this blog, or more correctly, before
I began this blog, I was hesitant. I’m a fiction writer. I don’t write about
myself, my feelings, or my thoughts. I keep a private journal, emphasis on private. I put my crazy there so I won’t accidentally
expose it to the world.
I decided to write about Bayberry because
something keeps pulling me back here no matter how many times I try to escape.
I wanted to discover what that something was and ended up discovering more of
myself. All I’ve wanted, since I moved here in 2010, is to go home to Pennsylvania.
As I discovered, painfully and at great expense, Pennsylvania and I may be
forever parted.
I grew
up in Pennsylvania. It’s beautiful there, with hills and hollows, creeks and
riverbeds, and wooded areas surrounding everything (even the house I grew up in).
Ohio, in contrast, is flat, there aren’t many creeks in the area I live in and
forget rivers or bodies of water that aren’t man-made. Mosquito Lake is about
ten minutes from Bayberry and was once “Mosquito Creek”. It was dammed in the
1940’s to provide a clean water source to the city of Warren. I considered it
as my place, but, to me, it looks artificial and this blog was to be about
nature. I couldn’t bring myself to write about the Ohioan’s fake lake (I must
admit, after taking this class, the history of the area intrigues me and I plan
on looking further into it this summer).
My
first blog described Bayberry and my feelings toward it. It was all I could
share. I cringed as I hit publish and thought this class is going to be torture. Between my first and second blog
I explored and took notes and wracked my brain about what I could write about
in my next entry. It was during one of these expeditions when I realized I
think and daydream while trudging through the snow. My second blog shared a
part of me I reserve for my best friends. I knew the second entry was better
than the first. Never wanting to do anything halfway, I resigned myself to
sharing more and holding back less.
During
this semester, much has changed and I’m not talking about the weather (though
Bayberry finally thawed and I can see grass, which is a huge improvement in my
opinion). I’ve grown as writer this semester more than any other. I wish I had
taken a non-fiction class sooner. Before this class, I was reserved as a writer
and afraid to explore my emotions. I used the excuse of writing fiction to defend
my position to not include anything I
deemed, sharing too much.
I defended my thesis this semester
and during the process, one of my readers mentioned he thought the main
character was me. I was shocked; I didn’t believe Charlie (female character)
was anything like me. I immediately called my best friends and asked them to
read my thesis and tell me if they recognized my personality in the piece. The
response from all but one was no (I assume they were looking for me in Charlie).
The one friend, who did find me, was the woman who knows me best. She asked, “Why’d
you make yourself a male? Mike is exactly like you, smartass comments and all.”
I was relieved and not comforted at all. She was right. How did I end up in my fictional work?
After
my defense, I began a major rewrite of the story to be resubmitted. I cut the
crap filler out and add some drama. I put more of me into Mike and made Charlie
less timid and more, well, like me.
My thesis is a million times stronger and when I read it now I can tell the
pieces I wrote before this semester and the ones I wrote after. I realize, I
held back putting parts of myself into my characters because every time my mom
reads one of my pieces she assumes the bad guy is her. I don’t understand this
and have gone out of my way to squash any possibility for her to believe it by
making my characters as little like me as possible. If I’m not in the story,
how can she be? Right? No.
In tandem
with my transformation as a writer, this winter saw changes in me as a person.
In the past, I’ve let people take advantage of my good nature. I’m a positive
and upbeat person. I would help anyone including strangers. I trusted everyone to
do what’s right and good, because it’s what I would do. Recently, I learned the
hard way, not everyone is good. I learned people will walk over, around and
through others to get what they want. They use people to get ahead in their own
lives. I’m not like that and I will
never be like them. However, I won’t let those people take advantage of me any
longer either. I get angry at those types much more quickly now and my
tolerance for their shit is low. I no longer assume the best. I fear I’ve
changed for the worst because I see the bad in people now as often as I see the
good. I console myself by pointing out both parts were always there, I was
simply oblivious. What does this have to do with my writing? A lot, I’ve
started letting my emotions, including anger, fear and sadness, bleed into my
work. I’m learning to include negativity, which I would have ignored in the
past.
I felt
I needed to write about my transformation as the final blog this semester for
one important reason – to encourage other fiction writers to try non-fiction.
This experience increased my comfort when expressing emotion on the page (by
making me very uncomfortable). When writing, I think comfort is bad. I don’t read
for comfort. I read for adventure and excitement. I can’t have those without
the entire spectrum of human moodiness.
As for
reading nature writing, I always did and will continue. I now have a broader list
of authors to pull from and some cool literary magazines as well. When I consider
writing non-fiction nature pieces and having them published… I’ll try it a few
times. What are they going to say? Your
non-fiction is for the birds. Well, yeah, it is.
Bayberry
Drive is active today. Neighbors are out planting and mowing their lawns. A radio
playing 80’s rock echoes through our little slice of earth. The young girls a
few houses up from mine are riding bikes and purple motorized mini Vespas. My
dog, Romy, is relaxing in the sun a few feet from me and periodically raises
her head when she hears a squirrel get close to the deck. For now, the squirrels stay away from the deck because
she’s on it with me, but they will become braver as the summer rolls on and she’s
bound to catch at least one before I can stop her. I rise from my favorite
writing spot, happy it’s not still covered with snow, and stretch. I begin
putting my writing things away for today. I’ve been at it for six hours now and
my grumbling belly tells me I could use some lunch. Romy sighs and follows me
to the door, she looks back at the yard once before trotting into the house. She
knows we’ll be back at it tomorrow.
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