I hate writing about romance.
Last week, in a creative writing course, I wrote a romance(ish) story. Somewhere between the sticky bar top and the auburn five o’clock shadow, I unlocked something within myself. Alright, the assignment was literally one page, but I’m proud of it! I’m proud not just because it was a good piece, but because it scared me.
A very wise and beloved coworker recently introduced me to a line from “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare:
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Now, if you knew how frequently my sweet, dear mother told me that I talk a lot, you would understand why that quote feels like a threat. Don’t fret, she means it with love. Best friends are honest with each other!
Since the moment I learned to speak, my brain and my mouth have been in a committed relationship. I love the power of language. I love the opportunity for excess. I love a sentence that stretches its legs across the page.
Back to my point, I’ve never been known to speak briefly. So when this micro-fiction assignment came around, I was alarmed. As a loquacious writer, the constraint of a 300-word limit incites more fear than a 10-page paper. I’ve tried the ‘write more and trim later’ method, but I feel like I’m murdering my offspring when I delete portions of a story (and yes, I know I can make another draft, but it’s just not the same…). Oh, and maybe the deadline being approximately twelve hours away had something to do with the panic.
All of this to say, I struggle to control my frivolously detailed language (duh), so I decided to focus on something I knew how to do. In recent classes, I’ve learned the utility of short sentences. Sometimes, less forces more.
Leading with that, I was heavily inspired by Isabelle Correa’s poem “We Catch Up Over Beers After Your Divorce,” but that came with its own complications.
I am not someone who instinctively consumes or creates romantic media — and absolutely nothing against those who do! I’ve just appreciated romance genres as a guilty pleasure. Romance is the bag of extra-sharp shredded cheese eaten ravenously under blue-tinted fluorescent fridge lighting at 2:47 A.M. on a sweat-ridden July night. Intimate. Indulgent. Only a tiny bit shameful.
I don’t know exactly why, but I can’t handle the tragedy of love stories on a regular basis. But tragedy alone?
I am addicted to those unassuming instances of almosts and silent dinners, to the heartbreak disguised as your average poem typed in Arial font. I can’t handle the intimacy of love, but I can take the sorrow of a tragedy — before you think too much about it, I’ve already put a pin in this to analyze later.
With this assignment, I wrote with heartbreak at the forefront and left the door cracked for love to enter.
She (the protagonist) came easily. Her feet hang off a barstool. She’s engulfed by the tacky remnants of the last patron’s drink. Her body is nervous, but her mind is eager. I’ve seen her, I know her, a part of me wants to say I am her.
Then, he comes back from the restroom. He’s direct, just teetering on violence, but quick to apologize. I know her, and I know him, but I didn’t know what was next. Somehow, I kept typing.
My fingers ran across the keyboard like children when they heard Dad come home from work. Forty-five minutes later, it was finished.
The story had a beginning, middle, and end. The characters were breathing. The setting felt real. It was romantically focused. Several sentences consisted of only three words. The tension was earned. And I finished it all with a whopping ten and a half hours to spare.
Forcing myself to be brief, I realized that the emotion was not diluted. It was concentrated. Brevity did not snuff out the spark. It sharpened everything.
Reading it back, it’s not necessarily a love story. But love radiates between each letter. I feel it when her right foot bounces on the stool. I see it in the brief but sincere eye contact between them.
Even now, I have yet to close the tab where I wrote it. I forgot how good it feels to be proud of your words; to be proud of yourself. It feels lovely to look at something you wrote and smile, not because it is a perfect piece, but because it is yours.
I’ve boiled this small success down to two main ingredients: the privilege of trying something new and the willingness to let it change you. Since coming to college, I’ve attributed most of my success to my knack for writing. But growth doesn’t happen exclusively in the shallow end. If you doggy-paddle forever, how will you learn to swim?
Sometimes you have to let your feet dangle off the barstool. Put your hand on the sticky counter. Eat that bag of shredded cheese. This time, sit at the table.
Write what you hate. Stay long enough to love it.