Sep. 4th, 2007 @ 06:17 pm Non Fic
I'm branching out into the world of Creative Non-Fiction, and thought I might as well post some of it here. This was my first assignment. The professor gave us some questions to answer for our (stage voice) "Writing Autobiography". I tried for hours to do the "When I was a little girl, I loved to tell stories...blah de blah de blah. Hated it. Wrote this in the three hours before I had to turn it in. Cut because it's still basically tripe and I don't want to make you look. Feel free to just click on past.



A blank piece of paper does something to me; especially if it’s not alone. Pristine notepads – college-ruled, top-bound, white with thin, blue lines like veins beneath the skin – are my special weakness. There is so much promise in them.

I suppose, in some very diluted way, they’re a bit like new-born children – full of so many possibilities. Fresh, tender and unstained, you can look at babies and imagine each one as a president, or a soap opera star or a nuclear physicist; and in that moment, such dreams have the taste of reality. It could happen.

This, of course, is before you entirely forget that you are not going to raise the kid like your parents raised you, or God forbid, just like you raised the first one -- because sweet weeping Jesus, look how he turned out; or, in other words, before you totally screw the kid up, damning it to a life as a claims adjuster or a statistician or some other sad minion of Hell.

Just so with the virginal notebook. The pulse quickens at the sight of the perfect, unstained pages – I’m not exaggerating; my heart-rate really does accelerate in the paper aisle of Office Max – and the thought of What Might Be: poems in blue ink, so perfect the Muses might have dropped them straight into your pen; character studies for the next great literary anti-hero; the story about the trip to Crater Lake – the one where you nearly lost your step-father to a camera mishap -- the one you’ve been promising your mother you’d write down for years because it makes her laugh and go “Ah, if only….”.

Just as with children, such high-flown dreams are nearly always doomed to disappointment. Two perfect pages of pure gold for the short story you swear you will finish this year are followed by shopping lists, ragged half-pages where you wrote down the lawn guy’s phone number before tearing it out, ten pages of utter drivel cataloging all possible explanations for why your boyfriend stopped calling you two weeks ago, a failed writing exercise involving the words “pulsing” and “lavender” and a reminder to get another bag of cat food.

I know these things for truth – well, the part about the notebooks, at least. I have all the maternal instinct of a door knob, so I’m totally guessing about the kids.

I know that I will take each crisp, new, virginal notebook, admire it, stroke the satiny pages, inhale its fresh-paper scent – eyebrows down, please; I’m not the only writer out there with a paper fetish and well you know it – and then proceed to make an utter hash of it. I know I will do this to each and every new notebook, because it’s what I’ve done for over 30 years and I just can’t seem to stop.

Strangely enough, it doesn’t change things. I still feel that silly little rush of pleasure at the sight of a new notebook with its orderly ranks of blank pages. I am resigned to the fact that I will fill the pages with dross and drivel and fruitless, urgent commands like “Write something, damn it! Put your pen on the page, and write!”

It doesn’t change things, because I’ve found that no matter how I’ve wrecked the poor things, there’s usually something usable, even good in those scrawled-in, filled up notebooks. I’ve found them before. Poems that didn’t look like poems when I first wrote them, but six months later, there they are. Lines of dialogue that make me laugh before I remember I wrote them. Enough good scraps to make a quilt or a stew of words.

It comes down to this: a piece of blank paper is a promise; and even after all the broken ones, it’s a promise I’ll always believe.
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From:[info]jillypooh
Date: September 4th, 2007 - 11:28 pm
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I'm not the only one who gets excited in the "school supply" aisle! I feel vindicated! I have notebooks and notepads and post-its... You get the idea. And then there's the ink pens, and the occasional pencil. If the notebook has tinted paper then the ink has to match. *sighs* You're making me want to go to Office Max.
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 5th, 2007 - 12:08 am
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Yeah, this was supposed to be a short piece, so I just didn't even go into the whole ink-kink. ;-)

See, I *knew* I wasn't the only one....
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From:[info]ships_harry
Date: September 5th, 2007 - 12:19 am
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Awesome, Neha - your voice is really engaging.

Heh. I see pure, clean, slightly textured and off-white paper, and can think of nothing more than covering it with scratchy black ink. Whether that's my animated-spider-corpse handwriting, or scribbling pictures... yeah, I totally get the paper-love. I used to buy more writing pads than I'd need at the start of the school year, just to *have them*.
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:20 am
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Oh yes, the lust to horde them. I think it's the same with artists as it is with writers.
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From:[info]themostepotente
Date: September 5th, 2007 - 12:51 am
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It comes down to this: a piece of blank paper is a promise; and even after all the broken ones, it’s a promise I’ll always believe.

That is truly a lovely line, Neha.

How's school going for you, dear?
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:22 am
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Thanks, sweetie! School is far busier than I ever thought it would be. Apparently, when you actually DO the homework and reading, it's like a full-time job. Only without the Evil Boss.
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From:[info]ajatshatru
Date: September 5th, 2007 - 04:16 am
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I love those small square notebooks, lined and margined Ooo !
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:22 am
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Ohh, square notebooks? Those sound cool!
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From:[info]nwhiker
Date: September 5th, 2007 - 06:50 am
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Paper! and pens! and more paper! and...

I loved this. I so understand what you wrote, and you say it so beautifully!
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:23 am
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Thank you! And I'm so glad to know I was right. :-D
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From:[info]ejab62
Date: September 5th, 2007 - 10:34 am
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Glad to know I'm not the only 'weirdo' who smells paper and pens and is thrilled by the promise they represent! *g*

Very well written. Could totally understand the passion involved!
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:25 am
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Nope, apparently we are legion. And thanks!
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From:[info]westernredcedar
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:04 am
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O, darling, I really love this. In particular, the hopeful paragraph just before the end really got me, and your sense of humor and your skill with metaphor is wonderful here.
I'm just passing out our writer's notebooks to my kids in class tomorrow, and I wish they were a little older so I could ask you if I could read a bit of this to them- they won't get this yet. I do, though, and it has me all excited to get to writing with them. :)
I hope school is going well for you.
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 6th, 2007 - 02:19 am
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That sounds so cool! Getting kids writing and seeing how much fun it can be is wonderful. If I ever write anything suitable for children (might have a long wait there), you're welcome to use it. ;-)

Oh, and thank you! (It's kinda weird getting comment on non-fic writing, you know? I feel like "There's no sex in this, why would people be commenting?" :-D
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From:[info]ratherbrightred
Date: September 7th, 2007 - 07:57 pm
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ah yes the writing autobio! I give this to my students. It's a requirement of the course. Theirs aren't as good as yours though...looks like you had fun with it! How's it going being back at school? I start again in a little less than 2 weeks, beginning my second advanced degree...what am I thinking??
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From:[info]nehalenia
Date: September 7th, 2007 - 10:22 pm
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You're thinking you want to collect the whole set, maybe? ;-) Thanks mucho, and good luck on your degree.