I studied under George Singleton for a summer. I was in a small class of just-became-teenagers who were gathered from all corners of South Carolina and not one girl left without a maddening crush on him. He was funny. Smoked a lot. Liked junky garage sales. Wore the same black leather jacket just about every day. Gave a reading in front of a crowd of distinguished guests and said “camel toe” and then chuckled at himself under all the shocked stares. And he had these piercing blue eyes that said “I think in long sentences that are coherent and more intelligent than anything you will ever write.” Ugh. And UNG.

It was the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities before it became an actual school. At age 15 I qualified for the then-summer program because I wrote a short story about how a boy who lived in the plains got into trouble because he let the wind into the house. Made a big mess, he did. Sand everywhere. Anyway, I don’t know why George thought I belonged in the program. Maybe he actually got the extended metaphor I was weaving with the whole wind thing. Or maybe I just made that up when he asked me about the story. Neither one of us knew that at the time. I still don’t know. Can’t find the original copy.

So I went for about a month and a half (the duration). Wrote some good stuff. Wrote some awful stuff. The stuff that George called awful wasn’t too unlike the plot line of Grindhouse or Transformers, though. Maybe I was ahead of my time? Didn’t matter. Those blue eyes and that stubbly chin reduced me to tears on more than one occasion. In the end, I walked away from George Singleton a disillusioned pencil hater with an armful of short story books written by guest authors. For years I didn’t write a single thing besides messages in ICQ and a haiku on the first iteration of Zeldman.com. Anyone remember the martini haiku contest? I’d love to know.

Today I still don’t write like I did 13 years ago. Sure, I do blog stuff and try to be witty on Twitter, but that’s different stuff, much in the way a sonnet is different from a limerick. I got to thinking about George because I was itching to close the laptop, and I happen to still have all of those books I mentioned before. So I re-read These People Are Us one afternoon. And it got me to thinking about what a waste of time that summer was. I was an unfertilized plant, so to speak. Nothing to build a good story upon when you’re from a tiny southern town, and your only friends were people who feared eternal damnation for going to a party where there might be beer. I was a green, stiff, slightly dry little twig. Couldn’t do a thing with me, so he snapped me in half.

So how to get juicy and colorful and perhaps aromatic? Hell if I know. I’m out of practice. But here’s my guess v1.0 (for all you 15 year old aspiring writers out there): Be reckless. Fail miserably. Let people into your heart and allow them to ransack the place. Triumph. Travel. Forgive. Maybe be slightly mentally ill. Think in long sentences. Note I didn’t say “think in long sentences and use big words”–Big words are intimidating and impressive but they don’t do shit for telling a good story. And the best stories are short ones, in my opinion. We live life in episodes of varying lengths and each has its own theme. Divide into chunks, analyze, add to the mixture or toss in the compost bin so they can become something else. It’s really tough to make a point with just a few pages of text. George Singleton can, and he’s amazing at it.

Ah, George. This is how it works, eh? In my overly dramatic teenage mind you were stabbing me to death with a butter knife. Now I want that knife for my bread.

I wonder what he’d think of my blog?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.