From the Ceiling
September 23
Heather's off having breakfast with Susan and I'm here, home, surrounded by the little externalized fragments of my life, my stuffed animals, the box of songs on the filing cabinet, my cactus, pictures people have given me. Parts and pieces and reminders and signifiers. Getting my head together.
Sometimes you just have to take some time to get your head together. Things spill out. Priorities get misfiled. It happens.
But because I didn't want to think particularly I read a story, which is silly in a way, because the good stories make you think. And quite by accident I read a good story. "The Man on the Ceiling" by Steve and Melanie Tem. I've read stories by both of them separately, and liked them well enough, for the most part, but in this story, together, they became more than the sum of their parts, they became something truly extraordinary. The story is about Steve and Melanie Tem-- they are the writers, and the characters. It is about love and loss and night terrors and writing, and it is beautiful, and true. The story reminded me-- and how is it that I forget, that I so often forget?-- that writing isn't about racking up word counts, or making sales, or getting good reviews, or even about my beloved Cool Shit, or my delight in anti-climaxes, or my affection for melodrama and Nefarious Villains. Writing is about creating the world anew. Writing is about communicating, even if you're only talking to yourself. Writing is about transformation-- even if it's only the transformation of perception. Hell, especially if it's the transformation of perception. Writing is having a conversation about what it's like to be alive, or what it could be like, or what you're afraid it's like, or what it should be like. Writing is listening to the wind for storms, writing is the finest divination.
And I think of this other book I'm reading, a not-especially-good horror novel, and I wonder: why did he bother? There's some nice invention, certainly, and there are parts of it I like enough that I might even write a review about the book, but really... it's just facile. Easy. Throw-away. I can see why people read such things; escapism is highly sought. But why would you spend months of your life writing something so easy and without real soul? I wouldn't do that, there are better things to do. And it can't be that the author wanted to make pots of money, because it's unambiguously a horror novel, and it's published by a small press, and he's not going to get rich from it. So why did he spend that time?
The Tem story is in this year's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror; read it, if you get a chance. It woke me up, as a few stories do, every once in a while. "Slow Sculpture" by Ted Sturgeon, "The Spade of Reason" by Jim Cowan, "Dori Bangs" by Bruce Sterling... this Tem story joins that pantheon for me, stories that transformed me. That affected a change in my perception.
That made me proud to be a writer, the kind of writer I am, struggling and often awkward and nearly always falling short, but trying. Just like those writers are trying, and sometimes they achieve what they're striving for, and so maybe some time I will, too.
But beyond thinking about writing... they make me think about life. My life. They give me insight. And that's the big trick, right there. That's what I'm going for.
Wish me luck, in my writing, and in my life.
