Writing Diarrhea

The most annoying thing about writing I always find is that it’s true. Once one gets going, one is apt to discover that one has acquired an acute case of diarrhea of the fingers, as it were. I mean, I say this with the utmost respect to Ms. Morrison, but not everyone is her. Not everyone is in their twenties when they have children, feeling frustrated and paled in the way of one’s ego, by the vicissitudes, hell, demands of motherhood, and then still feel fresh and healthy enough to stay up into the wee hours of the night cribbing out in longhand all these crazy feelings into a cohesive, if not coherent, singular narrative. 

I mean, I don’t know about other people, but if I stay up much past eleven, I fall spontaneously asleep. I’m liable to fall on my cute little pert nose—I’ve got one of those because, like most American-Chinese, I’ve not got a high bridged nose—in an episode of spontaneous snoring. I don’t snore, certainly not, but I think you get my drift. 

In fact, I am overly fond of sleep, not the least of which reason is I actually get so little of it, what with a toddler sharing my room and all. And a husband who, when tired, snores. I wear ear plugs, but after all, those only cancel out so much noise.

So I’m constantly tired. I mean the kind of tired that could be, and indeed has been, diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue and that sort of thing. In other words, I’m clinical. No, don’t go there. I’m trying to be clever with my words now. 

Of course, this is why writers get together with other writers. To essentially buck each other up, copy each other’s styles—yes they do, think of Mr. Narnia and his crew, Ginsberg and that whole murder mystery in real life, and Woolf and her gang—writers like doing that sort of thing. Mostly. And we all know that each one of those bastards would go home, smoke a ciggie and think, “What shit so-and-so wrote!” which would spur them on and make them feel eminently better about their own drivel.

It’s what writers do.

Except this one. I’m not a joiner. Not in the least. I’ve got a writer. I live with him. Have done for years. When we first began dating, his attempts at being my “writer group” failed so miserably, not the least of which reason is I hate criticism. I hate it. I don’t care. Thin skin. It’s because of racism. Yes, yes, you simply must hear this. 

Racism is something no white person in this country will ever understand. Not unless they go, at a young age, to some country where they look down on white people. So, like Japan. Not China, Japan. They think you’re amusing, will adore you to your face but never let you in. It’s not like sexist discrimination. Not like gay-bashing. Not like fat-bashing. It’s like nothing any white person will ever experience. Why not? Because at the end of a very long day of some kind of bashing, they can still go home and know that you know what? Their people subjugated, exploited, raped and pillaged countries and rebuilt the borders of whole African nations. That for hundreds of years, their ancestors did this. It’s embedded in global history. No other discrimination has done this. None. And because racism is embedded in this country of the United States, you fear for your life from the moment, the moment, you step into social life when you are the victim of racism. Not so with any other kind of discrimination. 

So having grown up with racism, you get a really thin skin. Oh, you learn to deal with the fear for your life, from when you are conscious, you learn to smile, take it. But you have a thin skin. Because you know suffering. You know pain. And if you’re like me, being cursed with empathy and insight from that same time, your skin is even thinner. 

So I hate criticism. Like the racism, I deal with it. But I hate it. and I certainly don’t like it when I disagree with it.

So I crib on my own. Deal with my own writing. Edit. Critique. Do the worst. And I’m smart enough to be able to mimic a lot of different styles. If I read a book of Bill Bryson’s, I can do his style after. I can do Dava Sobel, though less well. I can do E.M. Delafield and that writer of Jeeves and Wooster, Wodehouse. I can even do a bit of Maureen Howard, that mercurial writing that seems so deep, you’ve got to read it five times and you still don’t get it. I can’t do Pat Barker, but then I don’t want to. You see where I’m going? I’m smart enough to absorb the style and I’ve got the insight to do it. 

It’s just that I’ve got this pain. This pain they don’t have. As white people in white countries, they haven’t got it. My husband said it best, “I can never know it. I can sympathize. But I can’t empathize. Because I have privilege that I know I don’t even know I’m enjoying most of the time. Until you point it out.”

And that’s what it’s about. The hyper-vigilance. That is something Euro-Americans don’t and will never have. They aren’t born into circumstances that make them need it. They’re privileged. And they don’t even know it.