I was reading wrong.

For the past two years I have been trying to read novels when I should have gone back to the short stories. Sometimes I feel like I should be going back to children's literature, things like Where the Wild Things Are and The Giving Tree. Well... maybe not that far, but maybe.

The impetus that's got me thinking I've got to go back and re-read what I've read is that, as I wrote in a previous entry, I started reading an anthology of short stories. When I was in university I plowed through the short stories that were assigned and I took shortcuts to make up for the speed at which I read. I hardly ever ready the short biographies that prefaced the pieces I read. Now that I have the luxury of time, I'm going back now and reading everything. I see now that I missed some important things.

I just finished Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk about Love and in the bio/preface Carver was quoted as saying, in response to a question about the dilemmas his characters face "I think they are trying to do what matters. But trying and succeeding are two different matters. In some lives, people always succeed; and I think it's grand when that happens. In other lives, people don't always succeed at what they try to do, at the things they want most to do... I think most of my characters would like their actions to count for something. But at the same time they've reached the point—as so many people do—that they know it isn't so. It doesn't add up any longer. The things you once thought important or even worth dying for aren't worth a nickel now. Its their lives they've become uncomfortable with, lives they see breaking down. They'd like to set things right, but they can't."

This hit me. Hard. I've been teetering on the edge of giving up the dream. I thought about going back to school for com-sci, to go and grad, find a 9-5. I toyed with the idea of closing the chapter on this life of writing. But it would always be there, I could see myself writing haikus in the code, scribbling notes on post-its, or blogging.

What's got me in a funk is the book. It haunts my thoughts, creeping in like a cold hand up the back. I have been having issues with reality versus fiction, I want to stay true to the story, and that is the road block. Carver says, "A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best." And there I am, trying to write three lives verbatim. Stumbling when the imagination wants to go one way with the story while the biographer in me says "that isn't how it happened." I need to break away from the life, and pull towards the story. I need to leave my heart outside the room, pull the door shut, and ignore it when it paws at the door asking to come in. I need to close my eyes, rest my hands on the keyboard, and let go.

I don't want to become a character from a Caver story. I so badly do not want to come to the realization that what I've done with my life so far has meant nothing.