Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Monthly Archives: September 2014

White Ceramic Bowls

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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Tags

community, cozy apartment, friendship

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I have house guest this week. An old friend who will stay with me in my cozy apartment. That was the plan, until my housemates from downstairs needed someone to apartment sit for them.

It is the evening before my friend arrives and I am in my housemates’ apartment, making sure that the space is ready. I pull out sheets and towels and put away pots and dishes. In the process, I find one of my forks in the cutlery drawer, warmly welcomed  into neat piles of silverware after some past exchange of cobbler or cake. I lay the fork on the kitchen table.

The only thing left for me to put away is a trio of white ceramic bowls, outward sloping and angular in shape. They are bowls I know well and deeply associate with my housemates. These bowls have contained all manner of things: ice cream eaten in solidarity when one of my housemates was pregnant, chili consumed in ecstatic joy as we gathered for house dinner, and soup, not consumed at all because a toddler’s pacifier floated in between the chicken chunks and spinach leaves.

I carefully place the bowls in the cupboard, pick up my fork from the kitchen table, and ascend the stairs to my apartment. Like my fork, I am going home from home. I wouldn’t want to welcome a house guest into any other space. For here, we regularly share our forks, our bowls, our households, and our lives.

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Oh God. Writing Fiction Is Terrifying.

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Literature

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Tags

the creative process, writing

Next month, a short story of mine will be appearing in the inaugural issue of The Young Raven’s Literary Review. You can preview an excerpt from “A Fruitful Tale” here: http://www.youngravensliteraryreview.org/

The preview also includes an interview in which I talk about my major creative influences as well as my major crush on the character, Daniel Deronda (seriously, it was a very good day when George Eliot decided to tell Mr. Deronda’s story in 800 glorious pages. I honestly believe his existence cancels out all the whiny douchebaggery of any Charles Dickens hero).

Most of me is excited for the world to read “A Fruitful Tale” next month. It is a story that I needed to write, and, it has delighted and helped my inner circle of friends. If it has helped and delighted me and those I hold the closest to me, I’d be a short-sighted story miser to keep it from others. But, there is simultaneously a small bit of me that is currently going: “OH GOD. OH GOD. OH GOD. I’M EXPOSING BITS OF MY INNER LIFE TO STRANGERS. I FEEL SOOOO NAKED AND VULNERABLE AND THAT NAKEDNESS AND VULNERABILITY IS SUPER PUBLIC AND THAT COMBINATION IS JUST THE WORST. WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?”

I shouldn’t be surprised that this small bit of me has such a big worry. I am putting a piece of fiction into the world, and as a writer, I find writing fiction to be much more exposing than writing non-fiction. In non-fiction, I can direct my audience’s gaze, neatly hedging in their reading experience with carefully articulated facts and emotions. The pronoun “I” can be used to create intimacy, but it also can be used to control. I am letting you into my head. And I am tightly controlling your perception of my narrative.

That’s not how it is when I write fiction. There is something about a narrative which is created from abstraction that leaves me and my most inner of inner lives completely naked. I’ve been writing fiction since I was ten and this truth still surprises me. Creating a fictional story turns off the hyper self-aware part of me, leaving me to show my audience only how I feel. Fiction cannot be distracted by a sequence of exterior events—it is crafted from the ideas and joys and muddles that are always flowing through my body. Writing fiction is as interior as I can get, and with me, deep interiority is tied to inarticulate notions of privacy, intimacy, and vulnerability.

Gah, so utterly terrifying.

Yet, so utterly exhilarating.

Since fiction is such an exposing craft, it allows me to give words to that which is most private and unsayable for me. By articulating this, I get to see me and my desires and my longings better. Which, in turn, helps others to see themselves and their desires and their longings better. My willingness to tell a secret story swirling around in my subconscious will help others to be brave and start telling their own.

And knowing that my vulnerability in fiction may help others, makes all the trouble worthwhile—even though there is still that little bit of me breathlessly rambling on in all caps.

Video Games (and Attempting to Play Them)

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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Tags

learning patience, making mistakes, technology

Gosh, I’ve been busy these past two weeks. And that business has everything to do with the start of another school year here in New Haven. Days have wildly tripped by, full of meeting new students, seeing old friends, and going to lots and lots of opening receptions. All glorious and exciting and new—but, slightly taxing to my introverted side. Which is why I made sure to skulk about my apartment last Saturday night and play video games.

Well, I guess I should say play a video game. Because there is only one I ever play with a certain amount of frequency and that is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an action role-playing game that transports you to the digital continent of Tamriel, where, because of open game play, you can fight badies, steal stuff, read books, and run about the breathtaking countryside collecting mushrooms to your heart’s content. To me, Oblivion is the digital equivalent to one of George Eliot’s fine Victorian novels. All of the quests, both main and side, are fine pieces of storytelling that examine morality, human psychology, and religion. And your character’s choices (good, evil, neutral) change their personalities and your gaming experience (so George Eliot!).

So, with a cup of tea by my side, I turned on my PS3, created a new character (I’m really into Dunmers at the moment), started to play…and immediately died before reaching the first real “save point” in the dungeon quest tutorial.

I have played this game before.

I have played this game before. Many, many times.

I always get out of the dungeon without dying.

Apparently not this time.

Feeling like a right regular noob, I went back into the kitchen, fixed myself another cup of tea, and tried the level again. This time, I made it out of the dungeon and onto the next level of gameplay with ease.

Though I’m grateful that no one was in the apartment to see my first epic fail, complete with rabidly enthusiastic dog-sized rats and dark-ass dungeon tunnels, this series of events from sucktastic noobery to competent gamerness reminded me of why, on a meta level, I enjoy playing video games like Oblivion: they teach me to be patient with my learning process while encouraging me to make mistakes.

I started playing video games as a teenager because of my brother (he had to have some way to get me back for all the Jane Austen I made him read). I was horrible at them. Hand eye coordination is not a natural gift of mine. And just like the mean girls at school, who made fun of me for reading Shakespeare and wearing glasses, video games made me, a 4.0 student and a perfectionist, feel stupid and inadequate.

But, no matter how stupid and inadequate I felt playing video games with my brother, I could always go back to the main menu, and try the level I bombed again. And the second, third, or even the tenth play through would become much easier. The grace that came in the form of the save button was powerful. It gave me space in my perfectionist world to do something crazy, to take risks. It reminded me that learning something is sometimes a process that matures you through your failures, and what you do after your failures, rather than through your exquisitely executed successes.

And if that thought doesn’t give you hope in a dark-ass dungeon while large rats attempt to gnaw your character’s face off, I don’t know what will.

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