How Can I Keep from Singing?

Recently, one of my co-workers and I were chatting. He's in a band and I was asking about what he did in it, did he sing? And eventually it came up that I used to sing. Quite true, I did. I used to sing a lot in fact. My family has always encouraged it, especially on my mother's side, and I was in choir in middle school, through high school and college. After starting in our basic level as a freshman in high school, I quickly moved to our audition-only madrigal and jazz choir, as well as our larger SATB group. I got my first solo as a sophomore, joined our sweet adeline quartet, sang a lead in our bi-annual musical. I eventually lead the jazz octet I co-founded at one of the state's most prestigious competitions at which we took fourth place; the only student-lead group competing. I won an award when I graduated for all I'd done in the department. I sang all eight semesters in a women's choir in the conservatory at Oberlin and sang in the symphonic choir both there and at Sonoma State University. I felt like a liar the entire time.

Watchmen and Me

Some of you may recall that, in a long-ago era known as 2009, the movie Watchmen was released in theaters. At the time, I was a senior in college, hellbent on expressing my passion for adaptation, cinema and comics in an academically-fruitful manner. I still remember the first time I saw the trailer, with its wrenchingly atmospheric visuals and haunting Smashing Pumpkins whine, and I had just read the graphic novel for the first time the summer before (and probably at least twice in the interim). Something exquisitely anticipatory happened in my chest when I gorged on those few perfect minutes, like a giggle trying to escape through my tightly-closed lips and humiliate me in my desire like an erection in skinny jeans. But I didn't see the film when it was in theaters. I didn't see it until last week, in fact. Why not, what I saw when I watched it and what happened when I did are not a mere review, but tell a story that is as much a part of my life and personality as film, comics and this comic in particular are the influences on my creative work.

The Male POV

I used to worry a lot about writing things that I hadn't experienced. The "agony of release" that is the male orgasm, for example. That is until I received some mind-changing perspective on the matter (of writing, not orgasm): No one feels anything the exact same way. If a story/description/idea resonates with one person, it may not with another, no matter if I crib the whole thing word for word from life. This wisdom freed me to rethink the way I gauge my own inspiration, and I do a lot more work with my full conviction.

My fiction is my domain. If it resonates because I've managed to reveal and portray some sliver of genuine human experience, then it doesn't matter if I have a cock or not.

The Merest

Today I wrote the phrase "the merest bite" in a piece of short [fan]fiction. Word underlined it in green as an "uncommonly used word, consider revising." I think I broke my index finger, I stabbed "ignore" so hard. Harrumph, is all I can say to those quashers of old, weird wording. Harrumph!

Credo

When the weather changes, sometimes it's time for a little "poetry." Poetry without the caveat is how I started writing, after all. True fact.

It's going to rain again
Get grey
Monday's the new Friday, but Tuesday's always next
It's raining again
Don't think too much about it
Gut punch, fever-pitch
Swallow back the snot
I must not stop.

The Clever Club

It's all over modern narrative: The practice of writing a long-form piece and making every single loose end tie in by the end, causing seemingly throwaway characters/plot lines to balloon into what-a-tweest surprises and/or forcing casual readers to flip back hundreds of pages to remind themselves of insignificant details which are now inflated with meaning. It's so endemic in a certain author's work, I call it Gaiman-ing. This is bad writing, for a number of reasons, but it's alluring as hell. In the process of creating my world for Soil, Ocean, Air, I found myself skirting this approach. Time to "Stop, breeeathe, think," as my mother (and Blue's Clues, I believe) would encourage.

I started grouping together the reasons why I crave such neat wrap-ups, but it turned out that they were all facets of one thing: Pay-off.

I get a little endorphin rush when I solve a puzzle. Doing so in a story with the fewest pieces possible feels economical and smart. Then I feel smart and I want to show it off.  "Wow," the throngs will cheer, "I totally see what you did there. That is so smart. I am in the Clever Club with you, Wirtz! What a great book!" Then they will do the thing I want most--more than reading my work once, they will read it again, now a little smugger because they are in the know. And then they will tell the people they know to read my book because they, like their dear author, will want their friends to join in the satisfaction with them. Gold!

Or is it?