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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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December 2005 / January 2006 Contest Results |
Why I'll Never
Have the Write Stuff
By Cynthia Washam
Jensen Beach, FL
I was reading The
Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes when it occurred to me that
if you want to be a great writer, you’ve got to be screwed up.
From this
amusing collection I learned that Edgar Allan Poe’s antics included
marrying his 13-year-old cousin. Eugene O’Neill once married a decidedly
better catch. She was unrelated and old enough to vote, but he had no
recollection of the wedding when he woke up beside her in a flophouse
the next morning. One of my favorite anecdotes told of a Hollywood party
where Scott and Zelda gathered and boiled all the women’s purses.
The most creative thing I’ve ever done with a purse was to attach one of
those little Poppy Day flowers. That could explain why I’m writing about
the effects of nitromusks on California mussels for a magazine with a
readership of five, and not writing the great American novel.
As if stories of incest and purse-boiling weren’t enough to convince us
all that lunacy and creativity go together like pen and ink, psychiatry
professor Arnold Ludwig spent 10 years studying great dead writers’
states of mind just to prove it.
Ludwig found that 32 percent of
businessmen and other noncreative types had some type of mental
disturbance during their lives. The rate among writers, musicians and
artists was a whopping 72 percent. Looking back on the life I’ve led,
it’s a wonder I can write an intelligible sentence.
My parents were the first to ruin my chance of achieving literary
greatness. When they could have been fostering my career with abuse and
neglect, they were raising me in the kind of nurturing, middle-class
home that inspires children to become accountants.
Imagine the brilliant
prose I could have written had I been born into a wretched life of
poverty in New York, only to be taken to a more wretched life of poverty
in Limerick, like Frank McCourt. Think of the bestsellers I could have
penned if, like J T LeRoy, I’d spent my teen years as a cross-dressing
hooker. By the way, I’ve never read anything LeRoy’s written, but
judging by his choice of dress, I’m sure his work is sublime.
I suppose I could have overcome my nurturing childhood if I’d tried
harder. After all, many writers achieved greatness in spite of happy,
healthy childhoods. They just became miserable, sick adults. Depression
seemed to work wonders for the prose of Virginia Wolfe. Unfortunately,
it would never work for me. My bouts of depression last about as long as
it takes to write a paragraph. I might have found inspiration in illicit
drugs -– Hunter Thompson certainly did -– but I’m such a chemophobe I
don’t even take aspirin unless I’m on my deathbed.
The best shot I had at escaping the bounds of uninspired normalcy was
becoming a drunk. And for a few years in my 20s, I was headed that way.
I didn’t know back then that drunkenness inspired great writing. I drank
because my friends drank. We were all single reporters with time to
spare and no idea what else to do with it. If alcohol did anything to
improve my prose, though, it wasn’t enough to catch the notice of the
Pulitzer Prize judges.
Like most people who survive their 20s, I lost interest in getting drunk
every night around the time I hit 30. I started cutting down when I took
up running, which is painful enough without the burden of a hangover.
Marriage put a bigger crimp in my habit. Suddenly I had to worry about
more than just the cat noticing I’d spent the night sleeping on the
bathroom floor. When I got pregnant 12 years ago, I quit drinking
altogether, then stayed on the wagon through a couple years of
breastfeeding. By the time I could have a drink without worrying about
blowing my son’s chances of getting into Harvard, I’d lost all interest.
I know I can become a great writer without booze or drugs. Heck, almost
a third of the writers Ludwig studied were as straight and sane as me.
Most of the drunks, junkies and lunatics of the world, on the other
hand, don’t turn out brilliant prose; they spend their days talking to
molecules.
All I really need to reach a readership of more than five is
to find subjects with broader appeal than California mussels. And I
will. But just to play it safe, I’m grabbing a couple old purses to
boil.
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