Nostalgia trip

Recently I picked up On Writing by Stephen King, expecting it to help me with a larger project I’m working on.  It more than met that expectation.  The book—part memoir and part how-to—imparts practice points that will lead to substantial improvement if I’m disciplined enough to implement them.  

I also hoped it would inspire a new piece or two.  The clumps of ideas that skulk around the edges of my brain need a bit of motivation to get out on the floor and dance sometimes.  On the inspiration front, unfortunately, On Writing let me and my mental wallflowers down pretty hard.

The problem(s)?  The memoir is dauntingly well-written.  King proves that his storytelling skills aren’t genre-specific as he chronicles the journey from elementary school scrivener to best-selling author.  Even more humbling is the fact that he piled up rejection slips like paper snowdrifts for years before getting an agent’s attention.  If Stephen King struggled that hard, the prospects for amateurs like me seems grim. 

On Writing did, however, prompt me to reflect on my evolution as a writer.  I haven’t spent whole life trying to get something published, but I did get an early taste of rejection when my elementary school literary magazine, The Orange Hunt Owlet Gazette, declined to feature my work.  

I’m able to pinpoint this moment because I happened to find the Gazette in a box today.  I read through the whole thing.  It made me sad not to see my name in print, and to know that my sixth grade prose couldn’t cut the mustard but the following piece did:

The Clumsy Man

SMASH, BAM, BOOM, BANG, BUMP!
A man fell down with a THUMP!

The door went KNOCK, KNOCK!
The man slipped on his sock!
POW! He fell back on his rump!

Looking past the author’s glaring klutz sexism, this sounds like an average day in my house, not to mention a Batman strip.  You don't often see SMASH, BAM, BOOM, BANG, BUMP! in the works of T.S. Eliot.  

To my credit, I didn’t give up when the Owlet Gazette said “thanks, but no thanks.”  I took my lumps and set about honing my craft (by adding exclamation marks and onomatopoeia, one assumes).  

A couple years after that first rejection, I submitted a poem to the county-wide literary magazine.  Go large or go home, I figured.  Not only did they publish it, they even held a ceremony to honor Fairfax County’s pimpled poet laureates. 

I’m trying to find my poem and I’ll post it here as soon as I do.  “The Garbage Disposal” attained heights of literary sophistication "The Clumsy Man" only dreamed about.