Hero

I have a codependent relationship with writing manuals.  Oh, they look innocent with their bright, glossy covers promising the world:  Write a Novel in a Weekend!  The Keys to Writing the Next Great American Novel!  Write a Damn Good, No Great, New York Times, Award Winning Best Seller!

 I have ‘em all. I also  have my therapist on speed dial.  My many books sit there- smug and sure- on my shelf whispering “open me, if you dare.”  And I dare.  Oh, every day I dare.  And like a bad romance, Push Me, Pull Me is the name of the game.  Last Thursday I had a breakthrough.  Friday I had a breakdown.

On Monday, mostly recovered, I opened to page 22:  Give yourself permission to write shitty first drafts. 

Oh! Sweet Baby Sunshine!  I could do that.  I banged away for hours at the keyboard only to dump 3000 words into my electronic waste bin.  I had succeeded at sucking.  Hooray for me!  The problem was I was still without a viable chapter five and my deadline was a scant month away. 

On Tuesday I opened to page 60: Join a writer’s group, critique and be critiqued.  Hold yourself accountable. 

What the hell?  You just told me to be shitty.  Now you want me to produce something I want to show someone?  Make up my mind, damn it!   Besides, group = people.  I don't do People.  Tuesday was a disaster.  My character remained where I had left her Friday last, obsessing over a strange piece of jewelry and a new fear of the dark.  I had a new fear too- failure and humiliation.

Wednesday, dear Wednesday, she was two small days from Friday.  I hoped she would be my friend and help me with page 102: Do you have a personal hero?

Of course I have a hero!  Who doesn’t?  It’s…um…well.  Crap.  I had one here somewhere.  I read on.

What is a hero?  Asked page 102. 

I knew that one!  A hero is a guy, or a girl (this is the 21^st century) who goes out, overcomes great adversity and returns better for it, usually.  So who was my hero?  Aw, common.  I couldn’t be that pathetic and jaded.  I had to have a hero. Right? 

Page 102 mocked me.  Don’t have one, do ‘ya?  How can you write about something you don’t know anything about?

“Shut up,” I said, giving the book a punishing shove onto the floor.  After a solid ten minutes of pouting and cursing the universe for killing my soul I retrieved the book and opened it to page 103.  Maybe there was a hint.  I took a deep bracing breath and read. 

What are the aspects of these heroes you find admirable? 

Aspects, huh?  Little pieces of personality I could admire?  Bite size chunks of heroic valor?   I could do bite size.   

Well, I liked my aunt’s patience.  I admired my grandparents for their ingenuity and perseverance through the depression and WWII.  A writer friend pushed through five years of writing drought to explode into a new market, taking it by storm.  My husband’s sister left behind a life of broken dreams and promises in Manhattan and rebuilt a beautiful life for herself in Maine. At age 12, my husband survived a deadly car wreck. The doctors told him he would be lucky to walk again. Within a year he was playing baseball. My kids emulate grace under pressure while learning how to be a friend, do multiplication, execute a cartwheel or catch a ball. 

All of these individuals have parts inside them that I want to have inside of me.  That is what a hero is to me then- someone, or some aspect of someone that makes a person want to be better in some way, to try harder, to keep going. 

Hercules had his labors, Jason his Argonauts and Luke Skywalker had his Force and a complicated family life.  I have my novel to write and way too many voices inside my head telling me how to go about it.  

Monday made me careless.  Tuesday made me cry.  Wednesday (and that snarky book) made me think.  Maybe that’s what a hero is:  Someone or something that makes you think, makes you question yourself and the world around you.  Maybe a hero is a mirror, a way to try on faces like masks, personalities like cloths and see how they look. 

Can I learn to walk again?  Can I be patient and persistent and brave? Can I be that writer who rises like a phoenix from the ashes of self-doubt? 

On Thursday I will find a lovely box, just the right size for all my writing books.  I will put them someplace safe and dark and far, far away.  On Friday I will tell my therapist I am cured, at least until Monday comes around again.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.  -May Sarton, Poet