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A friend of a friend posted a writing exercise: make a list of ten things you wish you'd written (as opposed to things you've loved to read). What does it say about you as a writer? I thought I'd play along.
1. Self Help, Lorrie Moore (short stories)
2. Anagrams, Lorrie Moore (novel)
3. The Sunset Tree, The Mountain Goats (album)
4. Ariel, Sylvia Plath (poetry)
5. Mr. Punch, Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean (graphic novel)
6. Read This and Tell Me What it Says, A Manette Ansay (short stories)
7. God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (novel)
8. Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison (novel)
9. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Elliot (poem)
10. Harun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie (novel)
The original prompt required at least three movies, but I don't think I've ever thought "I wish I'd written that" in regards to a movie. A few of the things on this list are stories I can't imagine myself writing, and don't really want to try, but there is something in the writing itself that I wish were mine.
Really, what I want to write is, not Anagrams, but the book the narrator would write:
"Maybe I'd call it Split Infinitives and load it up with a lot of divorces. Then at the end I'd have it be like To the Lighthouse, where all human life is suddenly lifted up out of the book and vanished, only an old house at the end, with English weeds tapping at the glass."
Eleanor nods and smiles. "That's depressing."
"Yeah, I guess if it was too depressing I'd add a knock-knock joke."
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Also, I emailed a different friend of a friend, in a fan-letter-from-nowhere kind of way, hoping to get a conversation or something. But, no reply.
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