I know why some actors don’t like to watch themselves on
television or in films. When I read something I’ve written, something serious,
I’m embarrassed. I feel sick; violently, and directly proportional to the time
that’s passed since I wrote it. I’m a simple peasant who struggles with
self-expression, loathe to bear a tortured soul for fear of ridicule. I’m first
in the queue to beat myself up about something and I spend plenty of time on
self-flagellation, so I don’t need anyone else to join in.
Earlier this week, I wrote (the first draft of) a poem for
someone (that makes me sound like a pretentious prat, doesn’t it?). It reminded
me of two poems I’d written years ago for people who had just turned forty. I
could find one of them, but not the other. However, it came back to me this
morning. My original web site, ‘The Wonderful World of Karen’, had a poetry
section: funny ones, serious ones and readers’ submissions. The funny ones are
still funny, if I say so myself. The readers’ entries consisted of a number of
small ditties from a lone contributor who stumbled upon the page and felt sorry
for it. Reading the serious section revealed something about me that I am
hardly unaware of: I’ve been a talentless, suicidal, miserable excuse for a
human being for most of my life: fifteen to fifty. Nothing changes. Life’s
shit, and so is my writing.
The reason I’m on this subject isn’t the poem, but a (short)
short story I wrote for a 12-week Open University module entitled ‘Start
Writing Fiction’. I got the marked version back today and, being shallow, I was
only interested in the score. I did OK. The tutor seemed to like (most of) it.
Of course, I made plenty of elementary mistakes, and I’d say that many of them
would be down to my inability to read books, and the rest from problems with
Creative Writing clichés like ‘show, don’t tell’ and ‘write what you know’. I
can’t get my head round the former, but practice may make something approaching
perfect one day. The latter, however, will always cause me consternation. What do I
know? What have I ever done in my life that I could turn into a story, a story
that someone would read and enjoy? Bugger all, obviously, and I’m not clever
enough to write Science Fiction. I remember a teacher at primary school saying
I had a good imagination. I’d need to. Anyway, that minor triumph and a
surprising success in another module, this time on Shakespeare, may just
inspire me to sign up for more literature and creative writing courses, or
maybe not. I suppose it depends on my mood at the time.
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