A Writer's Underwear, or What Things Look Like Underneath

Sometime roughly two years ago, I became addicted to a podcast called "The Moth."  The basic premise is this:  people get on stage and tell true stories from their lives without the use of notes.  In other words, this is like a spoken-word creative nonfiction slam.

I have often wondered what I would say if I ever took the stage at one of these events.  Most of the time nothing comes to mind--at least nothing that I would want to put out there for the public to know.  The irony, however, is that when I teach, I use more than a few personal anecdotes to convey my points.  So lately I have been wondering how it is that I can come up with 101 stories for my students, but can't come up with one single story when faced with the idea of performing at a Moth Slam.

I suspect the answer lies with how I see myself as an artist.  As a teacher, I see anecdotes as merely part of my pedagogy, but when it comes to creative art, well, I see a different kind of bar that I must reach.  I find myself suddenly self-conscious about my stories.  Are they funny?  Are they boring?  Are they too serious?  Do I know where to start it or where to stop it?  And ultimately I wind up psyching myself out.

Or maybe I just feel too vulnerable talking about my own life.  But isn't fiction intimate?  Doesn't the reader learn something about the psyche of a writer through what he or she writes?  Clearly, to write something, a person must be able to visualize it in some detail.  Yet I can write fiction all day long and still dread the thought of ever writing an autobiography or even a mild memoir.

I suspect in the end, as a writer, I should be able to step out from under this shadow of self-consciousness and just "do the damn thing."  After all, a writer with inhibitions is like a Buddhist monk with a jheri curl.  Well, actually he is probably more like a bald Buddhist monk.  We all have inhibitions, but at the end of the day, we have to muscle past them.  The trick I figure is to do it without getting activator juice on the collar of your robe.

Who knows?  I just may do an open mic one day and surprise myself, because in the end, being a writer is not a title that you aspire to.  It is simply who and what you are.

Randy Bandit