an example of something that isn't exactly laziness

I’m a writer above all but if you really pin me down, I’m a novelist. I like novels more than short stories or poems, partly because I see the world as one very complex novel and partly because, as much as I am awed by a great poem or short story, I think a good novel can contain all that and more. Still, sometimes something just sneaks up and grabs you.

I was going through the bookshelves tonight, trying to actually get some kind of list of what I have and what I want to keep, what I want to get rid of, etc. And I found a book of short stories that I’ve read some stories out of, but not all. This is true of a lot of collections I own, actually.

Only because I was bored I happened to open to the last story, which is called “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had” by Pam Houston, and I read it and it was one of those stories that just makes you remember why you want to write. It’s easy for me to think about short stories and remember the absolute misery of workshops and how little fun I had achieving a degree, even in a field that I love passionately. But then I read a story like this and wonder why anyone ever bothers trying to write a novel.

Actually, the story is nothing spectacular or life altering. It’s just one of those GOOD stories. I found myself underlining sentences and putting exclamation points next to paragraphs and loving and hating the author, which is always a sign of a good story. Take this paragraph, describing San Francisco:

“I got drunk on the city at first, the way some people do on vodka, the way it lays itself out as if in a nest of madronas and eucalyptus, the way it sparkles brighter even than the sparkling water that surrounds it, the way the Golden Gate reaches out of it, like fingers, toward the wild wide ocean that lies beyond.”

And I thought: Wow! What a great paragraph because it is so true. That is San Francisco, it just takes you there, makes you forget entirely where you are, and what a feat to be able to write a paragraph that is just plainly true. And then I admired the writer, because I have been trying to write this paragraph in a story I wrote a draft of several months back. And then I started to hate the writer, because she has stolen this paragraph from the cosmos, and I wanted it and I want it, but now it can’t be mine and I have to find another way.

Envy is the most sincere form of flattery, and I found here a story I envy, which is good because it is envy that has always made me want to be a writer. Except here I’m writing a blog entry instead of a stirring passage for my novel, the next submission for which is due in two days. Damn.