Draft of Reflective Essay for Portfolio

Reflective Essay

I write to ease the pain. When I awake at 3:00 a.m. in a cold sweat, writing for an hour helps me get back to sleep. Sometimes I write about politics or social issues, but mostly I write about my life to remind me how good it has been—how interesting. Sometimes, at 3:00 a.m. I lose my way—writing helps me believe that I am not a worthless piece of slime.

Somewhere along the line I realized that writing is almost as good as doing whatever it is that I am writing about. Of course, this frightens me in a Matrixy kind of way—you know, “What is reality? What does it mean to be a human being with real human interactions?” I worry about my perverse narcissism—a love-hate relationship with myself. My sister calls my writing “self-indulgent.” Whose isn’t? In an early draft of The Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes is referred to as “Hem.”

I am finding that Creative Nonfiction is a tricky business. Take the story I am writing now, “Regrets.” The character “Robin” is a real person, who as far as I know is alive and well in California. I wanted to disguise her name, but could find no other suitable bird name, and the bird image is too important to lose. How would she feel about the story? I write nothing bad about her, but she might be creeped-out knowing that her friend lusted after her—actually, not true because she did know—but creeped-out that the whole world potentially knows. I sent the story to some friends who know both of us. Are they now worried that I might write about some intimacy we shared? I remember reading somewhere that Hemingway felt there were stories he could not write until those involved had died—and he was writing fiction!

* * * *

My ego always required success—not real success, but its appearance. It made no difference to me whether I helped society, so long as I appeared to help society. I have no morals, although I cannot deny that I have occasionally indulged in selfless acts of goodness. I did so because it made me feel good, and this troubles me. Should real altruism hurt? If so, I have never been altruistic. I have never done anything good that I did not want to do.

Everything I write is true. But I cannot escape the nagging fear that I have made myself better than I really am, not by avoiding the truth—although there is plenty of bad I have not yet tackled—but by little shadings that make me seem wonderful. One critic—I so want critics—to be read and hated is so much better than not to be read—has pointed out that in at least one story, “The Case of the Dog That Barked,” I am not quite as good a person as I seem to think.

Speaking of critics, one issue that keeps popping up is whether my stories have a point. What I try and do is say, “Here it is—here is what happened; I find it an interesting slice of life. Do you?” I am comforted by the existential view that there is no ultimate point to life—a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing—and that the mundane is as interesting as life gets. I’d be lying if I did not cop to wanting others to love my stories. It would be enough that I love them—and I do—but my narcissistic side wants me to be wealthy too.

For I have always hoped that writing would be a ticket to limos, and jazz clubs, and summers on the Riviera. I have no other hope.