Title Here

“You will all have the next two days to write a short story. And please, no vampires,” said Mr. Mason. “I encourage you to draw from personal experience, but also to use your imagination. This will be due promptly at the beginning of class on Monday.” My classmates and I sighed in unison. The bell rang over the intercom system and we filed out of class, tired and thankful that it was Friday.

That evening, I made a cup of hot tea, tucked myself into the largest chair in our living room, and settled my laptop onto a wooden folding table in front of me. I checked the time - six o’clock. I vowed to devote myself to the blindingly white pages of Microsoft Word before liberating myself from it’s snowy grasp at eight o’clock. Two hours of writing would give me a decent start on this short story project, and I intended to use each of those one hundred and twenty minutes wisely. I flipped open my laptop, opened a new document, and began to write.

I had always loved writing. When kids grunted and groaned over assigned essays, poems, or journals, I would quietly thank my teacher for the opportunity to write. I liked the idea of thoughts becoming sentences and paragraphs, setting each word down in a personalized sequence. I liked the neutrality of writing, never having to worry about being right or wrong, but rather about being loyal to my conscience. Producing words onto paper had never been much of a struggle, until now.

What did Mr. Mason say the other day? Let yourself vomit words onto the page. The best kind of vomit is word vomit. Although vomiting words out onto the page in front of me seemed like a useless cliche, I decided to try it anyway. I positioned my fingers over the keys and hovered, waiting for words to be regurgitated from my subconscious and then projected all over my blank document. I felt a surge of anticipation as I sensed the story growing inside of me, just seconds from being released onto the inviting, almost mocking page. The words travelled up my arms and were suspended in my fingertips. My body rushed with adrenaline as my first words were born though the interaction of my fingers with the keys. I looked up at the screen to read what kind of genius I had produced. Title here, it read. I stared blankly, not understanding my lack of word vomit. What had I done wrong?

It was then that I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I had no topic to work with, or rather, to vomit with.

“Dad!” I yelled. I hoped he would hear me so I would not have to move from my place on the chair. Gratefully, I heard his heavy footsteps ascending the basement stairs.

“What is it, Gareth?” he said.

“I’m stumped.” I explained the assignment to him as while pointing at the blank page filling my screen. Title Here.

My father folded his long body into the chair next to me and put his chin in his hands, something he did when he was thinking deeply. “Don’t think too hard about this one,” he said. “Don’t try to be serious, or clever, or funny. Just write about something you know.”

“I don’t know anything. I tried to word vomit and I choked,” I said. My dad looked at me sideways and shook his head.

“But you do know things, Gareth. You’ve been alive for eighteen years. It doesn’t matter if it’s something from last week, or last year. Write about what you know, and your honesty will carry you.”

“Got it, thanks dad” I said. His advice was terribly unhelpful. I sank back into my chair, more defeated than I had been ten minutes ago. I’m a horrible writer, I thought to myself. I may as well just become a mathematician. Slouched into my chair, I saw our front door open, and watched as my older brother Michael entered, shaking the snow from his boots. He looked up at me and nodded as he hung his coat on a wiry hanger.

“What are you up to, Gareth?” he said.

“I have to write this short story for school and I’m more stumped than the tree Uncle Sam hacked down in our yard.” I said. Michael was my only family member who tolerated, even enjoyed my wit.

He smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. “A short story? About what?” he said.

“Anything, anything at all.”

“I see. Look, Gareth, I know you’re going to ask me for advice, but before you do, just don’t. You know I’m not the creative type.” This was true. Michael loathed anything that required even a slightly creative mind. Poetry confused him, art baffled him, and music was a language that he never wanted to learn. He was currently studying microbiology in university, clearly striving to think practically.

“I know,” I said. “But you’ve had this assignment before, right? Can’t you think of anything?” Michael had nearly failed English with Mr. Mason.

“I don’t know, Gareth. How long have you been sitting there anyway?”

“Too long,” I sighed.

“Long enough to make it worth writing about? Turn this assignment on its head. Crank something out about how you can’t write about anything. I know I could relate to that,” he laughed.

“Do you mean to say that because I am stuck, that I should produce a story about a boy who writes a story about a guy who’s also stuck?” I began to regret my ambitious attempt in asking Michael for help.

“That is exactly what I’m saying.” He flipped down the cover of my laptop jokingly as he made his way toward the kitchen. Great, I thought. Not only am I useless at writing, but I am also surrounded by people who are useless at it too.

“Just try it, Gareth,” said my brother from the kitchen, his voice thick and full of whatever he was eating. I slid my hands along the arms of the chair and squeezed its leather in frustration. I had been sitting here for far too long, and at this rate it seemed as though I would never move from this spot, trapped in the merciless grasp of writer’s block. I had been contemplating this assignment for so long that I knew more about what not to write about than what I could actually produce. It was at this moment that I came to realize that maybe both my dad and Michael were right. In order to write a story honestly, I must write about what is true to my experiences and encounters with the world around me. And if that meant writing about my struggle to simply write, then perhaps my sincerity would be portrayed in way that would leave Mr. Mason with no option but to give me an A.

I flipped up the screen of my laptop and began to punch the keys with my fingertips, looking up occasionally to watch the black ink flow into straight lines across the white canvas. Words came more easily to me now. Although my fingers hiccuped and stumbled as I created and concluded sentences, my second attempt at writing a short story progressed gently. I cleared my mind and focused on pulling out my previous frustration and lying it down in rows of ink in front of me. Michael had been right. The smoothest way to write a short story was to work with a significant memory of a place, a sound, a smell, or in my case, an emotion. I knew that my fresh draft would not exactly exemplify Mr. Mason’s idea of word vomit, but I also knew that after stressing over various topics earlier, writing about my inability to simply make something up would be easy.

That was thirty years ago. It was thirty years ago that I wrote my first short story about not knowing how to write short story, and sure enough, I got an A. My story was simple, almost lacking completely in plot, but because I was writing about my personal situation and frustration, I wrote with authenticity, sincerity, and passion. I did not know it at the time, but what Michael and my dad had said that day provided me with a philosophy on writing that I would use throughout my writing career. I would teach their words in classrooms and boardrooms, and to my own children, who I have frequently watched fight and lose countless battles with the keyboard.?
That day, I learned that there was more to writing than essays and journals. Writing was also stories and plays and poetry and diaries and newspapers and letters and thank-you cards from your Russian aunt. Writing became a way for me to express myself through my imagination, while including aspects of my personal life. Waking up each morning, sitting down with my cup of tea, and pouring my stories onto the pages became therapy for me. I began to look at the tragedies that occurred throughout my lifetime to be story ideas, the people I have been hurt by to be antagonists in my novels, and my beautiful hometown of Prince Edward Island to be the principle setting for some of my most celebrated work. Because of my family’s vague advice about my homework that evening, I have gained the perspective that writing is a shovel with which to dig ourselves out. This hypothetical hole in an individual’s body can never be filled completely, because once our troubles and fears mount near its surface, it empties itself through a pen, a pencil, or our fingertips. The contents of this hole build up regularly as we go through life, always asking to be emptied. Writing is the shovel that gradually empties us of our pain, at least temporarily.

I still keep that first short story I wrote on the bulletin board above my writing desk. Its title still reads, “Title Here,” in bold, Times New Roman font across the top of the page. I am thankful for Michael’s words thirty years ago, because I have never stopped digging those words out of myself rather than piercing frozen ground with a dull shovel.