Writing Without the Me #2

Exercise 3: Room with a View

As I mentioned in the post explaining this whole project, I realized I can’t just barrel through the book, doing the exercises in order, because some of them aren’t the writing prompts I’d assume they’d all be. Exercise 2, “Freewriting,” was one such non-prompt, so I skipped to number 3.

In “Room with a View” the point was to create “a detailed sketch of the scene”

Like this, but with words.

My gut reaction was  “fucking yikes, this is so not me.” Not a good sign. Beth Baruch Joselow tells the reader (me) to “use all five senses.” I fixated on this bit of instruction more than the others. It bugged me. I didn’t plan on tasting anything. Plus there are more than five senses, and I was more prepared to engage my sense of balance than taste. Or temperature. Maybe even some proprioception?

More than anything I sensed an antagonistic relationship with Joselow growing faster than I would have guessed. I guess I like to push against something and break the rules. Never mind that the rules are not rules but suggestions and that it’s all self-imposed. The author is like a self surrogate I can rail against. 

So I spent too much time dwelling on how much I didn’t like the exercise, but I did give it a go, and here’s what I came up with:

The quiet in the house felt like an island of silence. An occasional ridiculously loud engine pierced the calm Saturday afternoon. A car alarm goes off in the distance and I wondered if we hear them less because they’re working better or because they’re working worse. 

The familiarity killed me. Joselow said it could be a familiar location but upon further thought, maybe she didn’t mean the place I spend hours and hours of every day. I should have made put more thought into where I did this, but my instinct is to avoid traps of indecisiveness by avoiding thinking.

If I’d opened my eyes to the familiar instead of looking past it, I could perhaps be telling you now about the size of the windows, the strange curve of the wall, or the art upon it. But no. I already noted that I predicted I wasn’t going to taste anything and I wasn’t disappointed. The smell of the house is far too familiar for me to dig into it. I was in a rolling chair and yet did not roll anywhere so I assume my sense of balance was on point. The air feels like nothing. Or the something it does feel like is too familiar and mundane. The air was cool but not too dry. Not too wet either. Fascinating.

I was in the Big Room of our home. We call it the Big Room because it’s half kitchen and half living room with no clear demarcation between the two. It’s also the place where we keep the Big Computer but that’s just a coincidence. I sat in an unusual place, centered in the center of the room. Perched thusly simply because I could. The house was to myself as I was all alone. Even the (doggone) dog was gone. (Such a repetitious post, replete with repetitiousness.)

I felt my pen in my hand, my hand resting on the notebook, the notebook on my lap. My feet were on the couch (it’s a futon but I like to be loose with categories), burrowed into a nest of pillows. My arms rested at my side and at their sides I could feel the armrests of my old office chair. Thin enough for that still. The chair is worn down to comfort, to say it with grandmotherly kindness. 

The confidence people have in themselves as they walk with a well-trained dog. It’s enviable. The control they have over their animal is emblematic of their will. It was hard to observe and not daydream or just drift off into my thoughts. Are those the same things?

It’s funny how much effort we put into how we look but from four stories up the way people walk and move distinguishes them just as much. Some people don’t have balance, for instance. Or taste. 

I could have sat there and looked out the window all day. Fifteen minutes turned into over a half-hour. And I mostly just people watched because that was easier than writing. 

It feels like this was a bit of a dud. I spent too much time dwelling on how much I didn’t like the exercise. 

 I did it but, well, see here’s where my self-awareness gets stuck looking in the mirror. Is the exercise truly a dud? Or is it just not for me? Or am I just simply not up to the task? In other words, is it her or is it me, and if it’s me, is it okay or do I need to try harder? And then it’s like, well, in a way, when you work out the permutations, the answer is it doesn’t matter what the answer is, I should just work harder.

So no, I didn’t really like doing this one and I railed against it, in my way, but mostly because, I think that, deep down, I know I wasn’t up to the task. If and when I’m a good writer, it’s not when I’m setting a scene. 

So in other words: I can’t wait to give this another go later this year