Things I Know I Know

I am a good writer.

I have been a good writer of well-written, thoughtful, ought-to-be-publishable stuff for at least ten years (Yes, this is my opinion. Yes, I'm sure you think my opinion is deluded--so do I most of the time, but you know what, we're wrong). But I am not much published. Friends and critiquers will tell you that I have several problems varying from story to story and culminating in a number of things that are good but not quite. But those are just problems of a particular story or essay. Really, I have only one problem--I think most of what I write could be a thousand times better and I never finish more than a tiny fraction of anything I start. Now, I realize when you look at that that it seems like two problems, but it's not. In the end it's only one problem. I don't write things down because I don’t think it’ll be good enough yet. I don't finish things because I don't think it will be good enough. But good enough or not doesn't matter. What matters is that I have all this good stuff and I never ever finish it.

Here’s something I wrote six and a half years ago that I just found underneath the couch in my spare bedroom:

The Bitch at Middle Age

Riley, the seven and a half year old Rottweiler, stands in the middle of the living room and stares at me. She wants to go out. Or she wants a drink of water. Or she just wants me to acknowledge that she's there. If I continue to ignore her and she's not really desperate for whatever it is that she wants, she'll eventually lie down with a sigh that tells me that she’s not happy, but she'll settle for waiting a little longer.

For some people, the word Rottweiler conjures up an emotional image. Rottweilers eat children, attack for no reason, will latch onto your arm and never let go. But what I want you to see when you read Riley's name is how massive she is, how solid. I want you to picture her moving across the lawn at a ground-eating trot with an ease that belies her bulk. Or see her when she's tracking and she finds the scent and leans into the harness with confidence and determination. I want you to imagine her leaping from the car to greet a friend of mine who she hasn't see in a year. She recognizes him the minute he gets out of his car. She stands in the back of my station wagon and whines and the stump of her tail wags so fast that her rear end shivers. And when I open the back door and she jumps out and runs to him, she bends herself into a U-shape and leans against his leg so that if he wants to he can pet her head and her rear end at the same time.

When I decided to buy a dog I was thirty-four years old. I'd lived along nearly my entire adult life, no people, no pets.

...and that’s it. That’s all I wrote. Could have been good. Might have been bad. But who the hell knows since I never finished it.

It'd be a simple thing to say, 'I vow to change my ways and finish everything I start. Boy, don't I feel better now.' But if it were simple, I could have done it a long time ago. The work I do, the life I have, the way my mind and emotions conspire with one another make this a very very hard thing for me. Well, obviously, since 'finish things and send them out' is nearly the one critical thing to a successful writing career and if it were easy, it would have been the first thing I ever changed about my writing.

A good friend of mine tells me that I spend too much time looking for information and not enough time doing anything with the knowledge that information brings. I love finding out new things and I do believe that if I just knew enough, everything else would fall into place. That's not going to happen. I will never know enough. So this is what I'm shooting for right now. To write more. To finish...something. And to analyze the process here rather than simply sitting in a corner wishing I were someone else.