Unbecoming a Writer, or, Exploding Cigars

Not long after graduating from college in the seventies, I headed to New York City with big dreams of leading some kind of glamorous literary life. These were the days when female English majors with a 3.9 GPA, unlike their male counterparts, had no reason to hope for an immediate writing or editorial position, so I started off as a secretary to the editor-in-chief of a well-known private publishing house. He was a good man, and he didn’t begrudge my ill-concealed desperation to be promoted into the ranks of the underpaid editorial assistants,all of whom wandered into the office sometime about noon, apparently still very sleepy, and labored until about 9 p.m., when, suddenly energized, they were sucked toward some literary New Jerusalem like the east Village. They might have been editors by trade, but we all knew what they really were: writers. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t qualify as a “writer” no matter how much I wrote or how much black I wore as long as I remained a secretary.

As it turned out, I was promoted three short weeks after my arrival, apparently some sort of record for a secretary, and for no other reason than that I could spot and fix errors in punctuation or grammar better than my boss. I remember looking over an article he’d written and spotting the sorts of errors unworthy of anyone who actually makes his or her living off the printed page. I could have just fixed his mistakes;I suppose it was my job to do so, but I didn’t. Instead I marched into his office. “Um, about punctuation, spelling, and grammar,” I said. “I’m confused. They stopped mattering in writing, when?”

He looked up from his work; then he blushed. “It’s that bad?”

“We’re talking conduct unbecoming a writer,” I told him. “If I were your boss, you’d be fired.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re not my boss,” he said.

“And it’s a disgrace I’m not in editorial.”

Now some early memories from those old editing days: it’s about nine p.m. A bunch of us editorial assistants are sitting around eating pizza and playing our favorite game: first we read aloud to one another the worst submissions we’ve received from aspiring authors in the past month, collapsing into spasms of cruel laughter. Then we tape the offending pages onto the Wall of Shame and lob missiles at them — old pizza crusts and other nasty contents from our wastebaskets, which, eventually, is exactly where the pathetic submissions end up. “Trash for the trash,” we call it. Every publishing house has its own version of the Wall of Shame.

Another memory: it’s about three p.m. It’s my second week in editorial and we get into a debate: what makes us actually like a manuscript instead of chucking wads of Bazooka at it as it hangs there, crucified, on the Wall of Shame?What makes us go to bat for a manuscript and recommend it to the folks in acquisitions? A good manuscript, Bill insists, demonstrates the sort of technical and stylistic writing skills necessary to say something – anything — well enough for others to want to keep reading it. “Like that manuscript about that creep who runs a novelty store,”Dee says.

It was before my time, but Bill goes nuts. “Exploding cigars! I mean that was the plot. People coming in and buying exploding cigars.”

“One of the best damned things I ever read,” Dee says. “Broke my heart when acquisitions passed on it.”

“Then it was more than just technique,” I suggest.

They glare at me. “It was its technique,” they say, simultaneously.

One last memory of my early editing days: it’s noon. I arrive at the office and find the owner of our company, a. K. A. The Old Man, blessing out a friend of mine. “What did you say your name was?”

My friend tells him for the second time.

“And you went to college where?”

“Amherst, sir.”

“Then you’re also a disgrace to Amherst. Just see to it you don’t ever disgrace this company or one of our clients again.” The Old Man lets drop a piece of newspaper to the floor, then stalks off.

“What’d you do?” I whisper.

Doug is ashen. “Typo in the title of the Nolan book. Went out in the ad in The Times.”

The title of the Nolan book is Dim Vision. I bend down and retrieve the ad. Dum Vision, it reads.

Doug can’t make eye contact he’s so stricken, but he also tries to joke. “Remember Dirty Harry?” Harry Matley, a retired senior editor, used to terrorize the junior editorial staff by shouting that if we failed to proofread carefully we’d have to ask ourselves one question:Did we feel lucky? Then he’d stab his index finger at whichever of us had inspired his latest tirade and yell,“’Well, do ya, punk?’” If there is one thing Doug and I know by now it’s that no writer or editor is ever, ever that lucky. (I assume that, despite my best efforts, this posting contains at least one error I’ve missed. The point is that there are two kinds of writers [and humans]: those who do their best to spot and correct their mistakes, and those who don’t care what kind of mess they’ve created.)

Another memory:this one takes place several years later, in my apartment, where I am writing what is becoming increasingly clear to me is a stinker of a novel. I’ve managed to save enough money to write full-time for a year, but can only afford a place in Hell’s Kitchen, one of New York’s most infamous slums, at a time in the city’s history that is still considered its most decayed and violent. Prostitutes turn tricks in our stairwell and addicts sprawl in the graffiti-covered halls. Fortunately, the leader of the gang that controls our block thinks I’m an undercover cop, so no one bothers me.

In the apartment above me is Sam, an actor. He paces all day reciting lines for his first role on Broadway . Over and over he says his lines, trying them this way, inflecting them that. For whole days, whole weeks and months he does this, reciting lines until even I know them. There can’t be a mistake. When he blows it, I hear him swear and go for some object; something is always crashing on the floor above my head. In the late afternoons he heads off to the theatre for more hours and months of making sure that whatever he will eventually say or do on that stage is done and said right. (His hard work will pay off, too. Decades later, I can still turn on the television or watch a movie and see old Sam.)

Two floors above me lives an eighteen-year-old dancer, Dana. A few months earlier, she’d passed her audition for the New York City Ballet. She’s rarely home, but if you like, you can watch her through the ceiling-high second-story windows of a dance studio on the corner of Broadway and 49th Street at just about any time of day or night. Again and again she practices the basics of an art form so brutal that it leaves her toe shoes bloody. When a toe breaks, she wraps it tight as she can and resumes dancing. Her moves will not be left to chance. Sometimes when I pass the studio, I see her instructor shouting. When that happens,Dana bends over, taking deep breaths and listening intently. Then she makes a fierce nod of the head and attempts to land the move again, five times or maybe a thousand, however many times a dancer has to repeat a move before it becomes the stuff of professional ballet. During her fourth performance of a minor role in Giselle, she breaks an ankle. The company doctor tells her she’ll never dance again. All of us grieve for her. What do you say to the highly ranked equestrian who’s thrown from her mount and paralyzed from the neck down? What do you say about the professional surfer who’s knocked unconscious by his board and drowns?

I sit in my apartment,staring at some lines I’d taped to the wall a few months before. They are from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the ones where Estragon says, “I can’t go on like this,” and Vladimir says, “That’s what you think.”

I need to admit to myself that in order to become the kind of writer I think I can be, I will need to put in twenty hours of writing and rewriting every day for more years than I want to devote. This is not writer’s block because I can easily write; it’s just that I’m unwilling to sacrifice so much of my life in the pursuit of a level of writing I once thought I could attain much more easily and naturally.

Of course this is the point when writing teachers sometimes say, “Lower your standards.” But, to me, that’s disrespectful to the art of the written word. We may not all have the same standards or potential, and that’s fine; but I do believe that every writer owes it to the discipline to aim for a personal best. I also believe that when you discover that you’re no longer willing to do that, you can keep writing, by all means, but for heaven’s sake, stop calling yourself a writer. The truth is that writers surrender their lives to their writing; they know that if they don’t, they just don’t want it that much. And I had to accept that I was among the millions of so-called writers that just didn’t want it that much.

I push away from my typewriter and start rifling through my copy of the Yellow Pages until I find what I want: a list of novelty shops. Only in New York can you find three within fifteen blocks. When the guy answers, I say, “Do you carry exploding cigars?”

There’s silence. Then: “They’re illegal now.”

“Why?”

“People died. Went blind. The CIA tried to assassinate Castro with one.”

“Not weapons-grade, more like a practical joke,” I say.

“Illegal, doll.”

“This is New York. I can get anything I want.”

He muses a bit, then says, “I think I know someone.”

New memory. A bunch of us (writers, actors, one sculptor, one painter) are up on our roof. Slum that it is, that roof offers a millionaire’s view. Straight ahead and a bit to the right is an unrivaled view of the Empire State Building. Over our shoulders is the Hudson River and the world’s most spectacular sunsets, courtesy of New Jersey’s oil refineries. We’re here because I have an announcement to make that I know deserves recognition. We sit in lawn chairs and eat Thai take-out from plastic containers, listening to The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.” When it gets dark, we turn on the Christmas lights we use for year-round illumination, and I stand and call for attention. My friends are apprehensive. They know something not good is up, but they aren’t sure what.

“Friends and Loved Ones,” I say, “I have earth-shattering news, but first: cigars and chocolate!” To most of the males and two females, I pass out the finest non-explosive cigars I am able to afford; to the non-smokers, I offer Godiva chocolates. Then I stick a cigar in my mouth. I strike a match and puff really hard. I’m getting a headache I’m puffing so hard. It’s starting to dawn on me I might have been sold a lemon. One more puff, two, three, and then BLAM.

I don’t know how my friends are reacting, but I’m screaming. “Oh, my God, I’m blind!” I shout, flailing my arms. Then I realize it’s only the residual smoke, but my ears are throbbing. “I’m deaf!”

By now my friends have a hold of me. They can’t believe what they’ve seen, and they’re furious. “Who gave you that? You could have been really hurt!” I’m dragged inside our building toward the hall light where they check me out. “She’s okay. You’re okay. She’s okay,” Henry says.

“Is my face bloody?”

“No, but one of your eyebrows is gone.”

“I’m a freak!”

“Who gave you that?”

“I bought it. It was supposed to be funny.”

Everyone groans, a few swear, most roll their eyes. Then they drift back to the roof. One says, “Would you care to explain that little performance?” They’re sitting again, feeling relieved but also used.

I can hardly look at them I feel so stupid. “It was symbolic. All my plans? Up in smoke,” I say. “It’s official. I have become an un-writer.”

There’s silence. Any other group, they’d scoff, tell me I’m having a bad day or year, that it’s no big deal, we all go through this, etc., etc. But these people are pros. They know some dancers never dance again.

Sam asks quietly, “What now then?”

“You got me. Since the age of ten, writing was all I thought I’d do.”

“Writing’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Henry shrugs. “All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl, eh?” A few months prior, I’d sat with them on this roof and explained, scene by scene, how the film The Shining is not merely a tale of the supernatural; it also serves as an effective allegory of writing’s very real but, with insight and self-awareness, mostly avoidable dangers.

Jan says, “I’ve always thought you ought to go to grad school, Lizzie, teach film or literature.”

“I think the youth of America already have enough to contend with,” Sam says.

“Wouldn’t I have to get a PhD?” I ask. “Doesn’t that seem rather extreme?”

Just the notion of my rejecting extremity brings the roof down.

One final memory related to the blessings and risks of pursuing a writer’s life. I’m in Texas, tubing the Rio Grande with an old friend and her husband and a man I want them to meet. He and my friends are experiencing one trip down the river; I, another. They let the river carry them because that’s how they live life. I know there’s wisdom in that approach, but I invariably paddle off by myself to check out some little shoal or eddy or tributary. What I find there is not always good: water moccasins, broken glass, a drowned cat. When that happens, I return to the group. While I sometimes tell them what I’ve seen, most times I just keep quiet and feel grateful for their company. Then, inevitably, I wander away again because so much of what I encounter on my solitary forays is stunningly beautiful. My friends listen for my shout and look to see what I’m holding up for them to see, or gesturing toward, pointing out. They know I am not rejecting them or being anti-social.

We’ve been on the river six hours now, when large and official-looking metal signs appear telling us in no uncertain terms to GET OFF THE RIVER. What lies ahead is DANGER. My friends are not unintelligent people, so they immediately steer their tubes toward the man-made disembarkation point.

I am not unintelligent, either, but I hear the waterfall and see unattended children with battered tubes gazing down at the falls from their perch atop the high rocks on either side of it. When they see me lingering on the river instead of paddling off with my friends, the kids pump their arms and start hopping. Come on, they’re signaling, we do this all the time! They start tacking their hands in the air like celestial sailboats; they’re showing me the best approach to take. When I stray too far in either direction, they squawk like parrots, and I realize that their experience with these falls matters. If I heed their advice, I’ll up the odds of having a good ride, but if I don’t, the intensity of their response suggests that I’ll be injured. So I get serious and concentrate, taking their cues and aligning my tube until I’m swept over the flat water’s edge toward absolute if momentary glory. The kids seem as charged by my ride as I am.

And then as it invariably does, the fullness of reality dawns: I am spinning at an increasingly rapid degree deeper and deeper into that which I haven’t foreseen — being cashless and without ID in Mexico.