writing novels = bat-catching
July 9, 2010 Yes!
This is from an essay called "A Rejected Submission to NPR's 'This I Believe:"
Which is why I believe the phrase "the writing life" should not exist. I don't know who came up with this treacly trope, so redolent of cats on the lap and tea steaming in the mug. So evocative of gazing out the window thinking writerly thoughts, such as "What is the meaning of life?" or "Now that Inspector Bunchybottoms has discovered the meat cleaver behind the potted palm, whatever shall she do next?" or "My butt is sore. I want a sandwich." Writing, however, is not life. It's not even very much fun. It's like standing in a dark cave with an entire colony of Mexican fruit bats and trying to catch them with a butterfly net. They're zooming here and swooping there; they're smacking you with their wings. They're getting tangled in your hair, they probably have rabies, and they want to suck your blood, but you just keep swinging the net over and over and over, and yet the net remains empty. If, wonder of wonders, you do catch a bat, you will bask blissfully in the knowledge that you have netted the most perfect specimen of Chiroptera ever known. You'll bask for exactly five minutes. Then you'll start worrying that you'll have no one to admire your bat, your perfect, perfect bat. Or, if you do, that people will think it's a sucky bat, or that it should have been bigger, or furrier. Or that Jonathan Franzen's bat was better, even though you know your bat was every bit as squeaky and fuzzy and crinkly-nosed as any other bat. So then you realize that world just isn't fair. But then you realize your bat does, in fact, suck. Then you realize your bat is actually a fine, fine bat but the problem is that the world doesn't actually need any more bats, so maybe you should just put down the net and take up needlepoint. Of course, if there's anything worse than a writer preening about writing, it's a writer bitching about writing, which is why I believe writers really just shouldn't talk at all.
Now go read the rest of this essay in McSweeny's. You know you want to.
Reader Comments (1)
aha ! Very good ! I enjoyed the comparison
Delphine