Most of us come into contact with creepers. The man on the bus who fondles his grocery bags as he stares past your eyes. The grizzled woman who follows you around at Walmart and puts the exact same things in her shopping cart. The person you met once at a party but who now visits your Facebook profile daily.
What defines a creeper, exactly? Someone who is more weird than “socially awkward” yet less threatening than a “pervert.” Someone who stares too long, who lurks by himself, who doesn’t take the social cue to mind his own business.
Here’s the problem. I think I might be one of them.
And, furthermore, that it’s necessary to be a good writer.
In order to gain story fodder, I let my eyes and ears linger longer than appropriate. If I’m next to you on the train, I will write down what I see in your grocery bags. If I’m sitting behind you at the Cub’s game, I won’t look away when you lick your girlfriend’s neck. If I overhear you say that you still wear day of the week panties, I’ll turn around to see your face. I don’t even wear sunglasses to hide what I’m doing anymore.
This brings up a question: is creeperness limited to those with perverse intentions, or can creeperness be used for a good cause (such as writing a killer story)? Can I eavesdrop for telling character traits and dialogue snippets without mothers telling their children to stay away from the looney, or is this a necessary fate?
For now, I think it’s worth it. See you on the train.
Besides burying your winter coat six feet underground and training your dog to complement how young your skin looks, what are your plans for the weekend?
The Chicago Lit Fest is definitely worth squeezing in: from readings to seminars to music, the festival promises to be an enriching and entertaining experience. This Saturday and Sunday throughout the day and evening, visit Printer’s Row for a bevy of offerings.
That is, after the parka is in a trench and Fido can say “dewy.”
Last night, a friend took me on a midnight bike ride through the Loop. “The skyscrapers reflect the moon,” he said. “No bankers crowd the streets. You have to see it.”
The air was warm and my bike creaked as we rode down Wells. The feeling of emptiness was pervasive: the only signs of movement were a few cabs, some drunk Cubs fans, and a ninety year old woman outside Panera with her arms crossed across her chest.
The image gave me pause. Why is a woman her age up past midnight, let alone by herself, in the middle of downtown, outside a deserted sandwich shop?
Like any writer, I can only pen my way to an answer.
Maybe she is waiting for the first Cuban Chicken Panini of the morning.
Maybe she wants a cop to pass so she can ask for help to collapse a broken ironing board.
Maybe she is a new generation of Hipster Grandma, stepping out from an Indie show to smoke a cigarette and look for trouble.
Or maybe I should take Fiction I, so I can really write myself closer to her truth.
I was one of those babies who would only let my mother hold me. Sorry Dad, sorry Grandma, sorry Sensitive Family Friend, I will whimper and upchuck until passed back to maternal arms. While some called it colic, I called it shyness.
My introversion continued while growing up. I preferred playing with Madame Alexander dolls and attempting to kidnap neighborhood cats than spending time with friends. Having an outgoing twin brother only fed my soft spoken nature—why speak up when he could represent the both of us?
One evening in high school I stopped being happy in the background. At the dinner table I watched my father regale friends with travel stories—the stomach “issues” that forced him off a bus and into the Iranian countryside, the taxi driver who purposefully dropped him at a harlem instead of a hostel. Guests sat back in their seats and rolled with laughter. At that moment I craved to shed my shyness so I could be as effortlessly funny as my father.
Although I’m no longer shy, I still have a persistent itch to impress people with humor. While trying to be funny is a sure way to not be funny, how else can I accomplish this goal? For this reason, I’ve been eying the Comic Essay Class. If funny has rules, if funny takes practice, if funny has a guru, please sign me up. I promise not to upchuck on anyone’s shoulder.
Although I’ve been salivating over StoryStudio courses since I moved to Chicago nine months ago, I only recently got to sit in a classroom.
Since graduating in creative writing from Oberlin College, I’ve thought a lot about writing. Wouldn’t my trip to El Salvador during a heated election season make a great investigative piece? Although I’m not enjoying watching this girl lick her boyfriend’s neck on the bus, wouldn’t that work well in a short story? Couldn’t there be a poem about that man who’s carrying a fighting chicken on his Honda Wave?
Although I’ve had plenty of ideas, none of them have made it to the page. I’ve made plenty of excuses: having a full time job is tiring, it’s a crime to put clean silverware into a dirty drawer, friends will forget my name unless I update my Facebook status. How better to fix this problem than the public humiliation of showing up to a workshop without a piece in hand? Enter StoryStudio.
On Monday night I arrived eager to start the Writing the Personal Essay class with Ellen Blum Barish. Although I was most excited to be held accountable for producing work, I also looked forward to being in a community of writers again. I missed hanging out with people who make jokes about semi colons and know what it means to spend 13 hours in a empty bathtub with a bag of marshmallows while hammering out a revision.
Opening introductions revealed that the class held a diversity of voices: from first-timers to bloggers to grad school applicants, we all had different reasons for being there. After discussing the nature of personal essays, we looked at a piece on sighing. During my first read I was skeptical: so what that we all sigh? Is this worth a whole page of pontification? However, as the group discussed the piece, I realized that I had missed the use of second person, the purposeful withhold of information, and the tone of longing. I remembered what it felt like to read with detail and attentiveness; something I hadn’t been practicing while scanning RSS feeds and tweets.
Next we worked on an in-class exercise: we had ten minutes to write in detail about how we woke up that morning, and then share our entries out loud. I started censoring my writing for reading: would people care that I spilled scrambled eggs on the counter and changed my skirt three times?After a few minutes I realized the exercise wasn’t about what people thought; but rather, about getting in the habit of remembering and recording details. And when my classmates read their pieces, these mundane small details (coriander tea, an alarm clock that said ‘thank you for arriving this morning’) were what resonated most.
As the class continues, I look forward to stretching my out-of-practice literary muscles. And, eventually, writing about a chicken on a motorcycle.
