Encounters With a Writer

How to Calm and Keep Them

Despite the natural abundance of writing persons and general journalists around university campuses and coffee shops everywhere, a legitimate creative writer is often very hard to spot. The creative writer is exceedingly prone to both timidity and sensitivity, thus is easily startled and often bolts upon approach, leaving before any lines of communications are opened or bonds developed. Should you manage to locate a writer and wish to initiate a conversation, or even friendship, try to keep the following things in mind:

1. Should you unexpectedly enter into conversation with someone who you discover to be a creative writer, make sure to respond immediately (as any moments of bewildered silence can cause nervousness), developing a sense of familiarity by relaying some personal connection to the fine arts. While saying that you once read a book may not be quite specific enough, explaining your high school struggle as an aspiring breakdancer should do the trick.
2. Once you have identified the writer, it is imperative that you avoid asking how, exactly, he or she intends to succeed. The creative writer is highly sensitive in regards to this area, and simply stating the question can often remind them that their chances of a legitimate career are dubious at most.
3. Be sure to take a marginal interest in the writer’s work, engaging their ego enough to make them feel satisfactorily artsy, while avoiding over questioning the actual writing involved. The writer needs to be assured of their creative intrigue and mystique, so while asking where he or she will be cashing the cheques is encouraged, it is best to avoid enquiring as to the specific story lines or projects he or she is working on. They are very vague in nature and trying to get a valid explanation from them will only result in grumbling, tangled sentences, and muttered allusions to “no one understanding art”.

Armed with the above tips, your encounter should go smoothly, allowing you the full enchantment of a creative writer’s artistic ego, despite their natural skittishness. Remember, be appreciative and you may find yourself the confidant of many more authorial frustrations and insights than you could have imagined.

Notebooking Nothing

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to lose my notebook. Not an everyday notebook full of class notes, phone numbers or the mundane notions of everyday people, but my own personal notebook. The one with all of my essential memos, the daily “To Do” lists that never get done and the scribbles of erratic ideas that strike me throughout the day. In essence; my soul.

The odd thing about losing my soul, though, was that I didn’t even notice for the first couple of hours; there was no spontaneous combustion, bleeding from the ears, or even loss of consciousness- all of which would have made for a much better story. Instead, I simply went on with my trip, passing by entertaining advertisements whose slogans escape me and giggling at old ladies whose mannerisms I can no longer recall. Boring as the reality of my loss may seem though, it’s the escape of the creative inspiration that could have otherwise marked the remaining pages of my tattered book that strikes me as the deepest tragedy. What if the one story that would have rocketed me to fame and changed the face of humanity as we know it was just beginning to bud in a notebook that I will never see again? There, on the ferry, I had simply abandoned my hopes at renown.

It wasn’t until after I had left the ship and had begun to actively eavesdrop on a couple of entertainingly drunk men riding the bus that it hit me; I had nowhere to scrawl ideas and idiotic quotations. Nowhere to jot down the exact words of their discussion pertaining to diaphragms and whether they were drawn best in pencil or pen and nowhere to make note of a friend’s proclamation that she had put her cat on antidepressants. Where was I supposed to get my inspiration now? After all, a childhood of television had long since disfigured my imagination, so coming up with my own ideas was out of the question.

In desperation, I even called BC ferry’s lost and found to beg the lady on the other end to look for a small, ragged journal that contained my life. From the way she said “Your life then, eh?” I could tell she had lost her eyebrows in her hairline and was wondering how two-dimensional my existence was that it could be restricted to a notebook. How on earth was I supposed to describe the sort of chicken scratch that was so vital to my survival? I almost pity the ordinary person that must have found my notebook full of scribbles, in which the only comprehensible statements were those about “reproductive abilities” or my developed dislike of dryhumping in between mangled Spanish notes about calling my mom. Or that I’m in need of alfalfa. Who the fuck needs alfalfa and what does that even say about me?

Needless to say, it was left to the operator to tell me that no, my soul had not been recovered and, despite her kind words about a call back, the implication that I must be a lonely being to put that much of myself into bound scraps of paper still stung. There I was, left with a ten by twelve void in my heart, and I would have to get over it. I would need to abandon my hopes of ever remembering the kooky words of the bus passenger on acid that evening, or the observations I would make the next day on accents and the scent of piss by East Hastings. So, now a simple shell of my former self, I picked up a little green book I had lying around and began to muse the commencement of a life without the memories of old ideas, ignoring the butch chick reading over my shoulder to make sense of scribbles about “never again seen souls” and “piss perfumed breezes.”

Cosmopolitan Traditions

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