I Consider Writing Something

‘Now,’ said Bradley, ‘that you are going to have lots of time, why don’t you write something?’

Those were my husband’s first words after we had partially recovered from the shock of the doctor’s order that I must rest, mostly in bed, for several months. I gave him all the reasons I could, on the spur of the moment, invent. Just because I happened to have plenty of tune and writing material, it did not automatically follow that the two would combine with some sort of chemical combustion and result in a pleasant literary product. Besides, the words I write scare me. Spoken words have a comforting way of floating off into oblivion, while written ones remain to stare me out of countenance!

This is what happens when I try to write. I lie in the stilly darkness and think many thoughts, or I read a brief newspaper item that sets imagination or memory winging. Finally the impulse grows irresistible; I seize pad and pen, and ’lo!' — as the crossword puzzles say —what happens? All the brisk thoughts, all the fantasies and imageries, flitter away like tiny minnows from a net laid for large salmon. There remain only the commonplace empty shells and river-bottom litter of reminiscence, and who cares for those? It is easier to catch reminiscences than ideas, just as it is easier to draw up weeds than fish.

At last I find myself recalling the admonitions of a certain clever person whom I had the amazing good fortune to draw from an assortment of college instructors of English. She would add zest to our dry daily diet of themes by occasionally and anonymously slipping one of her own into the pile with ours, to have it discussed and criticized, though instantly identified. Imagine the courage, humility, and good sportsmanship of a teacher who would do that! Recognizing the same sketch later spread upon the pages of the Atlantic itself always brought a thrill to us and our increased respect to her.

Her advice? It was this: Always be sure you have something to write about (an admirable check on aimless wordiness) ; make sure of your beginning and your conclusion, then fill in the rest with the subject nearest to you. That is the real stumblingblock — the simple little matter of writing about the subject nearest to you. That is the thing that takes initiative and daring, the thing I am too cowardly to do, for I fear dire consequences. I have often wondered how a writer manages to keep his friends. What woman would dare be other than self-conscious in Booth Tarkington’s presence?

‘ Know the people you write about so well that you can tell instinctively what they would eat for breakfast,’ she would say, this person with the gift of planting her words deeply. My nearest subject is my husband and, needless to say, I know what he eats for breakfast. Furthermore he has many times offered himself to be used as a voluntary sacrifice; but, though I realize how amply and fruitfully he would serve the purpose, I refuse to revert to the methods of the ancient Hebrews.

I wonder if all husbands are obsessed with the idea that their wives are embryonic authoresses. In spite of five years of the most undeniable evidence to the contrary, mine still insists, and when I try to remove the obsession by threats of exposure he declines to have it removed and simply adjusts his willing-to-be martyr’s crown more firmly to his head.

Secretly, however, I am almost tempted, for it would be great fun to romanticize a bit about an engineer who designs and executes great sewer systems for the relief of overcrowded cities instead of building bridges across great open spaces, and who deals with problems concerning pipe diameters and activated sludge instead of I-beams and rivets. We grow so accustomed, through our patronage of the movies, to thinking of an engineer as a lean, immaculately groomed individual, putteed and tailored according to the latest decrees of ‘what the young engineer should wear,’ standing behind a transit high up on some perilous mountain crag, that it is hard to recognize him, garbed in hip boots and an old slicker, prowling through dark, clammy, subterranean passages that have the mystery of an Alice-in-Wonderland setting grown sinister.

Here is a bit of a tale. There once was a medium-sized town where a few well-established industries enabled the citizens to live mildly and comfortably and where the Chamber of Commerce convened mainly for sociability’s sake. A small river meandered through the town, furnishing drinking water as it entered and carrying off all the waste as it departed — an obliging stream, to say the least.

Then one day someone discovered that beneath the town lay untold quantities of oil. What happened next was so inevitable that I need not describe it. Within the briefest possible space of time the town became a city.

But there were two especially noticeable results. A great change came over the Chamber of Commerce and the river. The former suddenly came into its own, but the latter became so desecrated that no one guessed that it ever had been called anything but ‘Hog Creek.’ It was no longer an obliging public utility, but a downright nuisance, and soon, as its burden of waste grew and grew, it became a real menace to life.

Of course nothing was done until the revengeful stream had fulfilled its threat. Then the Chamber of Commerce took steps. Thus it happened that engineers came and labored and finally evolved a plan for carrying all the dangerous wastes, flat though the country was, to a huge disposal plant, never to be seen, smelled, or heard of again.

Now the river has a beautiful name and pleasant green banks; it is clear and health-giving. The Chamber of Commerce lists it among the city’s chief assets.

It is a flippant tale, but it is true, and it has been true so many times that it might be a fable. Be that as it may, it is romance — or perhaps it is something even greater than that!

So it may be that one day I shall ‘write something,’ and on that same day perhaps my husband will be surprised to find himself packing that martyr’s crown neatly in camphor balls and storing it away on a very high shelf.