Read chapter 1.
Read chapter 2.
3 Purple Moths • Don’t Be Idealistic
The basement is dark and musty. This is no surprise, as basements go. I transfer white clothes from the dryer to a broken plastic laundry basket, extricate the brights from the washing machine, dump too many darks into the freed-up space and notice that the garbage needs to be taken out.
How will I write?
I know how books are supposed to be structured. When I publish other authors I’m careful to help them know what books should look like. Readers like a “do-able” book of about twelve to fifteen chapters. The chapters should all run about the same length. Readers like symmetry.
Today the piano teacher canceled our lesson. She is sick. Tomorrow, at our home-education co-op, we will need to substitute for a child who was supposed to be presenting about Outer Space. This weekend I had plans to write, but my younger daughter promised to help out at a Benefit Picnic. I made a super-spicy chili bean salad and it all got eaten.
Sometimes life has no symmetry.
I drag the slate blue garbage bin out to the curb. This bin was not my idea. It is too big for me to handle. I try to forget that. It’s just garbage, after all. My eye catches sight of something blue in the driveway. A small shell, only half. Must have been a robin’s egg. There is no bird, so I can’t prove this was a hatching. I pick up the shell and bring it into the house to show the girls.
“It’s a beautiful shell,” says Sonia. “So tiny,” says my older daughter Sara.
“Want to hear my story?” says Sonia cheerfully. She is already moving on to her own agenda.
“Sure,” I say.
The story is about a girl who is drawing a purple moth as large as a dragon. The moth has teeth and is holding something like spears. The girl is not paying attention in class, so she misses the lesson about the Space Race. But she has a purple moth to show for it.
Maybe the reason I have not been able to write in any sustained way is just this: I’ve been too stuck on what ought to be. I know what books look like, and the one I can write just now is more like a purple moth, half of a blue shell in the driveway, an afternoon needing to be rescheduled.
I consider my options. I can forget about writing another book. Nobody is going to fault me for not writing. Or I can make a chili bean salad of sorts, for a weekend that isn’t going my way.
All of my favorite writing books have their quirks. Why can’t mine have its quirks too? I suddenly remember Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. It is structurally asymmetrical. The chapters are all different sizes. There are bunches of them, some as short as one or two pages. Some focus on philosophy, some on practice. If there is any symmetry at all, it is the symmetry of Natalie. She is in every chapter.
I ponder Natalie’s success. To heck with structural symmetry, I think. I am going to write this book. There will be a purple moth in every chapter. I am not sure whether it will have teeth, especially on cranky days. But it might drink ice water, infused with mint and rose petals from the garden.
As always,
L.L.
"All of my favorite writing books have their quirks." Fun point! Let's embrace our (personal and) literary quirks. :) Maybe they're part of our voice. We certainly do what we can to help out the reader, but not every book needs to have exactly the same structure.
In general, I am magnetized by shortish chapters, but don't mind at all if they vary in lengths.
Today, I'm reading two fabulous books that have such creative structures. I feel like the variety keeps me intrigued.