Entry 8 - Reflection

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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.