Hiroshi Writes A Story

Want a laugh? I did, desperately, and so I turned to the 8th grade English text I am supposed to review for my Literacy class. I was flipping through the book and found a unit called "How to Write a Story." Goodie, I thought. Let's see what I'm doing wrong.

I give you the Houghton Mifflin version of the creative process:

Lesson Objective: Students will list and select story ideas
Focus: Ask students to consider how creative people develop their ideas. (A sculptor might sketch an idea on paper before sculpting it.) Ask students why this process is valuable. (Many ideas turn out to be too difficult, too time-consuming, or flawed in other ways. Thinking ahead can prevent wasted effort.) Tell students that writers use this process of planning to develop story ideas.

Next the students are supposed to brainstorm story ideas. Houghton Mifflin gives fictional Hiroshi the task of illustrating this process. Hiroshi's story:

Hiroshi had been keeping a notebook of story ideas. He chose three ideas and made some notes on each one.

• A school's top runner loses a race and learns that you can't always win. [This would be quite a serious story, and Hiroshi decided he would rather write something lighter.]
• A space traveler goes to Earth to locate his only living relative. [He had a great plot in mind for this idea, and he could already imagine the setting and the characters.]
• A scientist visits an active volcano. He returns with startling news. [This would require too much research, and Hiroshi was unsure about how to end it.]

Hiroshi circled the space story idea on his paper.

***

Is it any wonder that our middle school kids are bored to tears? Is this any way to describe the writing process? Why don't we tell them the truth?

***

Hiroshi's first draft:

A spaceship was heading toward a space station. Steven Ozlo, a pilot-in-training, felt as though he had been cooped up forever. Commander Wilson was explaining something to him, but Steven wasn't paying attention. He asked to be dismissed, saying he didn't feel well. It wasn't a lie. Steven has never felt well since the day the terrible news came.

Lord, lord, it gets worse. Next, I'm supposed to conduct an activity with them where I have them pantomime subjects such as brave man, scared puppy, and willow tree. This is going to help them understand how much more effective it is to show, rather than tell. They should add interesting details to their writing to describe a scene (I should note that for my concurrent grad lit class I am wading through Hemingway, and how would I explain him?!?).

Hiroshi's revision:

As the spaceship made its long journey toward Molenium V at light speed, Steven Ozlo, a pilot-in-training, listened to the engine's endless humming. "If only it would stop for just five minutes," he thought. Commander Wilson was explaining something about the wall of screens and dials, but Steven wasn't paying attention. "May I be dismissed, sir?" he said. "I don't feel well." It wasn't a lie. Steven hadn't felt well since the day the terrible news came.

Starship Troopers this ain't.

I think Hiroshi should be guided toward some other, more noble profession. Writing isn't this neat and orderly. It's crawling on your belly through shit and mud (and in Cindy's case, the distinct possibility of Cheez-wiz). You don't get three story ideas at once. Usually you get none, and you pull your hair out and promise your muse you'll open a vein and bleed on the keyboard if she'll help you just one more time. When the ideas come, they come fast and furious at three in the morning and you have to haul your warm body out of bed to your writing table and pray that you'll remember that word or image long enough to write it down. In the morning, you'll look at your notebook and realize that your pen was out of ink (which is no problem, since you've scrawled so hard that you've made a legible imprint). You'll realize that the image makes no sense, that the word is not pronounceable, that the idea has been done a thousand times over... but you can't leave it alone. You turn it over and over in your mind, the way kids play with a pebble or a piece of bottle glass... over and over and over. Your body moves through the day, but your mind isn't with it. People talk to you. They're underwater and miles away. You're only half in this world, but that excuse doesn't sway your boss, your spouse, your landlord. You lose things: car keys, checkbook. Children.

But you gain things too. Like weight. Perspective. The Click. And the click is so damn powerful that it becomes a craving, then an addiction, and then you're staying up until two or three in the morning doing research to find more clicks. This click-hunting is enough to make your spouse say, "Maybe you should stop, honey." But you can't. You're not ready. You know you're not good enough. You'll never have enough information, time, skill to tell the story, to write the book. You know it, but you still can't leave it alone.

And that's the truth about writing.

I'm going to take a stand here: Hiroshi, you suck. I'm not telling my eighth graders about you. I'm going to tell them the truth. Writing is hell. It's a drug, a demon, a yoke on your back, a wall between you and everyone else, a source of irritation, a fountain of wonder, a chore, a delight, an itch you can't scratch, a need you can't fill, a song from the stars, an ache in your soul. You will never write the story you dreamed. Sometimes you'll write it better, which is cruelty enough to keep you grasping again and again. You will wish you were a plumber or a sales rep. You will never want to do anything else. You'll be glad you see things as no one else seems to. You'll be different. You'll be lonely. And so many times you'll want to stop writing. "Give this story to someone else," you'll say as your fingers bleed. "I can't do it. Let Hiroshi have it. I'm done." And your muse will laugh at you, because she's a bitch and she knows you'll come back. You'll always come back, begging like a masochist for the release you need. She knows the truth about you.

You can't leave it alone.

And what's really funny is that I know all this, but I haven't had a single line of work printed yet -- other than those poems from college (which will, with any amount of luck, go completely unnoticed when I do become successful). Maybe Houghton Mifflin is right. Maybe Hiroshi, with his clean, sterile process, is the proper thing to teach. I certainly can't tell them Hemingway's process, now, can I? (Drink, write a little, yell at your fourth wife, go fishing, drink some more...)

Wait till I get to Faulkner!