Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction offered so much to my own craft that I had to
split up my review into two sections. If you haven't read part one, you can find it here.
The second essay that really captured my attention was Elizabeth Gilbert's, titled "The Lousy Rider." It was just quirky enough to erase the memory of some of the more whimsical essays within the collection.
The essay begins with an anecdote about how Gilbert moved out West because she wanted to become a “professional cowgirl…a tough character." Learning that she was a “lousy rider…but a…goddamn good writer,” eventually lead to Gilbert moving back East where she “began writing again." It is this move back to a life she already had that is so beautiful to me. Her statement, “we are, after all, what we are. And sometimes, when we are trying to find a calling, it is helpful to confirm that we are not really very good at anything else." I absolutely love this. I remember a time not so long ago when I thought I wanted to be an interior designer. I spent half a semester in art school discovering that the profession I’d planned for years was actually something I despised. But I loved writing and it seemed words loved me too. They got me through the things that when I read about high school now in YA books I think back and still remember how traumatizing all of it was. Elizabeth Gilbert’s realization is similar to one I had. Finishing my last submission of the semester, realizing I’m halfway through my MFA program with a story I really believe in, I know I couldn’t do anything else. Maybe not because I’m not good at anything else, but more because I wouldn’t want to be doing anything other than writing. These last few months have been a tad crazy, trying to flesh out a new story. But the reassurance that I’m supposed to be writing makes me see that all of the stress and character sketches were worth it. Holding the next set of thirty pages proves I’m supposed to be a writer.
Gilbert moves on from her story of the "wild" West and flashes back to a time when writing in her diary was all the writing she did. She explains “I remember writing that sentence. I remember sitting back and reading it over…I remember my revelation, too, which went something like this: Hey, that’s not bad at all." This made me think of the first line of my new thesis because it was the first sentence that really got me excited about the story. I just got to thinking about survival and how such a thing could be strong enough to permeate an entire city, an entire world. I remember thinking, like Gilbert, that it really wasn’t a bad first line at all. Seeing that moment for her and comparing it to my own felt like a real bonding moment. I know that might sound strange. But for those of us who live in books, words and imaginary people really are not that strange. There are times characters feel more real than even the realest of people I know. So right then, Gilbert felt like a friend I was swapping stories with. And we both smiled and laughed, remembering some of the more ludicrous lines we’d ever written. It was then that I knew that her essay was one I not only wanted to discuss here, but rather, one I needed to write about. The quirky conversation between her and her cowboy made me laugh and hum the tune to Paula Cole’s song “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” which is weird and yet, so completely normal because it felt like something Gilbert would approve of. Toward the end of the essay, she explains that “to me, the ending felt so correct and so appropriate that it seemed to bend over backward to kiss the beginning." That’s how I felt about writing and Elizabeth Gilbert and Paula Cole. I felt like ending with thoughts about John Wayne and prairie songs and happy endings was a perfect way to conclude my thoughts about “The Lousy Rider.” It felt like a kiss involving complicated gymnastics. It felt perfect.
Are any of you invisible readers out there writers too? If so, I suggest picking up this book. Maybe the essays that spoke to me won't appeal to you in the same way. But I can guarantee that there will be at least one writer that calls out to you and helps you see the importance of writing and what's more, the reason why some of us write in the first place.
xoxo
K.K.