Anyone Who Doesn’t Enjoy Marmalade on Toast isn’t for Real
I’m always on the lookout for a story. The problem, as you might imagine, is that no story ever reveals itself to me as a complete manuscript. It might be as simple as an idea for a beginning. Other times an ending. But no story ever gifted itself to me as a complete entity. It always demands something else. So, when the stranger walking toward me, a mile or two into my stroll along the shore, I saw her as a beginning. Why not, right? The stranger, as she came closer, walked with a serious impediment in her stride, carrying a stick, hip dipping side to side. Even before we met, I had the idea this was how my story would begin. But then, well then, this happened: she disappeared. It was the perfect beginning, the certainty that she was right there. Then gone!
I got home, still bemused, and put the kettle on. The abrupt disappearance of the beginning of my story woman was still on my mind when I looked out the window, resting my hands on the kitchen drainer. You think I’m going to tell you she was standing there, on the shore, don’t you? No, she was not. When I turned away from the window she was sitting at the kitchen table. That would be hard enough to believe, I know. Either the beginning of the story happens on the shoreline, or it begins with a woman sitting at the kitchen table.
The fact is, when writing, everything seems kind of unreal. I like to be truthful, honestly, I do. But somehow, when writing, the truth gets away from me. I don’t mean it to, it just happens. Whichever beginning turns out to be the right one, you’re not likely to believe the woman on the shoreline and the woman sitting at the kitchen table are one and the same, Virginia Woolf.
She, too, likes a cup of tea but doesn’t enjoy spreading marmalade on her toast. Now look, you already don’t believe a word of this, I know. Why would you. That’s the problem with writing. I totally believe it. I believed, when I turned for home, that this story would begin with an old woman walking toward me on the shoreline. But then, having simply evaporated into thin air, is next experienced sitting at the kitchen table when I entered my home. She is, as I write, right here. She is intensely curious, not my fantasy, and not kind, chastising my poorly written work. I don’t care, she is Virginia Woolf. I feel important for being the object of her curiosity. Then, you know what happened next, right? She was gone. Yep, just like that. The dogs started barking. They sensed something unusual just happened.
Normally, whatever you artistically perceive that word to be, I am generally a secret of pretensions and amusements. Virginia, for all her brilliance, failed to see this in me. A year ago, this same idle discussion with another writer would have driven me into a murderous rage, but with understanding and patience, I have learned something important about myself. Virginia Woolf paid me a visit today. She might be incredibly sensitive about her own work, but she was not warm about mine. I was filed away as ‘irrelevant’ before she had time to drink her tea. “You haven’t experienced real heartache in the world,” she said. Wait! I begged, pleading to know what she meant. She didn’t wait.
There’s no point in stewing over the fact that Virginia Woolf thinks my writing stinks. I’ll go to the pub at lunchtime, have a cheese platter and a Guinness, and not think about it.
I’ve said this on several occasions that what we, each of us, gives to history cannot be judged by its value, but by what we give back. When I’m not writing, I’m less. I write. It is a painful thing to live with. A writer is a painful person to be with.
So, look, I’ll begin another story…there’s a man roaming the sand on my shoreline…who the hell is he? I’ll tell you another time.
Go to hell, Virginia Woolf. Anyone who doesn’t enjoy marmalade on their toast isn’t for real.
