I don't know what in the hell a 'writing meme' is, but I've been tagged...

The wicked flower girl thinks out loud tagged me for a writing meme. Of course I will answer the call. I'm supposed to write about my greatest strengths in writing. Damn, these greatest strengths/weakness questions are always so hard! But I will do my best.

(Incidentally, Beth, I must confess how extremely flattered I am that you tagged me as a fellow "writer." And if, for some reason, I have misunderstood this, please don't tell me any differently.)

I've long been frustrated by my writing because it seemed like the only things I could remotely make come alive were things that actually happened to me. Yes, I was pleased with my ability to recall and describe the minutiae of conversations and interactions from long ago, but "big fucking deal" was always how I looked at it. I didn't want to be so bound by those chains of reality. To break free from them, I tried to write poetry (for YEARS!), fictional short stories, song lyrics, and on and on. With the exception of one four line poem I wrote in the middle of a fitful night when I was about 14 years old (ahh...sometimes it is so boring to be so dark, compulsive, and overly expressive, but it was there from a very early age...), I've hated them all.

Interestingly, although I feel like I'm pretty good at describing actual events, I feel my greatest strength in writing does not count because it is not a personal strength at all: I'm good at using other people's writing--bits and pieces from various authors and musicians mingled together to form a different kind of whole--at expressing myself. (See my last blog entry for an example from just today.)

What the fuck kind of thing is this to be good at?

It's just that I'm hooked on words. words Words WORDS. In every form. They move me to the utmost emotion; they have the power to shape exactly what I'm feeling, thinking, and experiencing AT THAT MOMENT. Sometimes it's almost embarrassing. And occasionally a little inconvenient.

I've often bought books and cds based solely on one line that I read or heard. Sometimes I was disappointed, and sometimes I was not.

Even when I'm reading for pleasure, I have a neon-colored highlighter in my mouth to mark the words that move me or make me laugh or make me think. Like a big old dork. I would like to be the kind of person who reads without a highlighter. Who can enjoy a book for what it has to offer at that moment, and then put it down and never look back. But I am not.

I'm a collector of blank books. Many of my books have writing in them, and some do not. They all have an empty first page because there was nothing I had to say worthy of being put in such an important spot.

From the time I learned to read and write, I can remember days when my head was racing beyond my control and the best way I knew how to soothe it was to write down other people's words. Any notebook that I've ever had, including the one I'm using every day right now, shows evidence of this. In between the to-do lists and the notes from meetings are words and lyrics scrawled across pages and in margins that served the smaller purpose of amusing me for a few moments and the larger purpose of working the bugs out of me.

Not even an hour ago I wrote a long letter to a friend in which I did this. I was trying to describe something, and in the end I had to revert to providing her with a list of quotations that touched on the range of emotions I was feeling. The people who seem to understand me best are, more often than not, people who do this themselves, at least to some extent.

Sherman Alexie. Now here is someone who understands words:

"Junior dreamed of the western that starred Lynn as Lynn and Junior as himself. During the love scenes, the camera would fade out just as they fell into each other's arms. But in real life, Junior and Lynn fell onto the bed, drew circles on each other's naked bodies, and counted moles.

Junior ran through his vocabulary in his mind: make love, sex, do it, fuck. He wanted to climb out of bed and find a thesaurus. He wanted Lynn to whisper synonyms in his ear."

I'm never really sure how other people take it when I do this. I think at times it works out to be fairly cryptic--sometimes I like it that way and sometimes I just can't find a more direct way to say what I mean and this is the result.

So...yeah. Plagiarism is my biggest strength. How attractive.