Semi;Colon

My writing comes alive when I describe the micro-scenes of my life. If the writing is read with an eye toward metaphor, occurrences can be inferred. The reader of my creative work about my mother may infer that she may have an anger problem, an obsession with buying gifts, and perhaps a lack of desire to update the interior of her cabinets. There could be an assumption that either her sense of smell is less than acute or that she doesn’t consider that the stale smell of cigarettes linger inside the cabinets.

“The kitchen of my mother’s home is the size of her fist. There are corner counters opposite of each other. The bigger one is used for stacked bills and catalogues for what could be Christmas gifts. The cabinets are wood and have a thin cushioned lining in the bottom of some. The lining has a repeated singular tulip with leaves in a grid-like pattern. The inside of the cabinet above the microwave smells like cigarette ash. It is the plate cabinet. I imagine the plates coated with a film of the dingy scent. The vitamin supplements and Advil are also housed in the cabinet above the microwave. I wonder if the microwave radiation infects the supplements. I am not worried about the Advil because I refuse to take pain relievers. I’d rather feel the pain.”

If read without an eye toward metaphor, this excerpt would seem almost emotionless. But if the reader can pick up that the kitchen explained in detail is a metaphor for the mother’s world, and therefore the daughter’s world, then a lot can be understood by the reader about the mother/daughter relationship.

My craft analysis of Lia Purpura’s “Autopsy Report” showed me the power of using precision and senses to describe a scene. Purpura wrote, “I shall touch, while no one is looking, the perfect corn rows, the jacket’s wet collar” and continues, “four or five holes like ragged stars, or a child’s cut-out snowflake” referring to the bullet wounds in the body. The description of the wounds is not emphasized by their gruesomeness, but by the snowflake-like shape on the body they create. One would not normally compare bullet wounds to something a child would make. This allows the reader to assume that Lia Purpura sees beauty in the death of a human. Purpura wrote, “A call to jettison the issue, the only issue as I understood it: the unknowable certainty of being alive, of being a body untethered from origin, untethered from end, but also so terribly here.” It may be that Purpura felt relief when seeing bodies at their end. It may also be that Purpura felt relief when seeing the body on its way back to its origin.

The reader can infer that being “here” is what’s beautiful, yet simultaneously gruesome. There is the seeing, the being seen, and the lack of words to describe that interaction or occurrence. The only way to define that feeling is to call it God, yet that is too rigid in itself, so we must call it being here. And being here can “be at once mourning and gestures of ease”. Being here can be terrible and concurrently lush. The universal message of the Purpura essay may be that there is a grossly overlooked fragility in humans, and how we stay alive with the kind of barrier that seemed so easily breakable on the autopsy of bodies.

I guess my point in writing this now is to capitalize on the concept of writing micro-scenes. Purpura wrote detailed descriptions of the body being dissected, and I’m inspired to continue to describe the scenes in which I find myself in¾my mother’s kitchen, my childhood bedroom, my current bedroom, my apartment’s kitchen. Through these detailed descriptions, deeper afflictions will emerge, as if from the core of the earth.

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Riley McFarlane is attending Columbia College Chicago with a major in creative nonfiction writing. In their work, emotion bleeds through words that have the movement of curious musings written with plain language, allowing a strikingly close relationship with the reader. She believes that there is truth where there is love. She values genuine human connection and prefers to have honest and respectful relationships with everyone, mixed with a touch of dark humor and sarcasm.

It is often frowned upon in art school to say your work is bad before you present it. They say “you are setting yourself up for disappointment and you should appreciate whatever you create.” While I agree with that statement, I also don’t.

Before I present this blog post I would like to say: I am a bad writer and this writing is bad.

I don’t like half the words I put on a page. I don’t have great grammar skills or a sophisticated vocabulary. I am writing for a blog called “Semicolon” and I don’t even know how to use the damn thing. I don’t read as often as I should. There are days where the pages in my journal are as empty as dorms during winter break. My work often lacks emotional vulnerability and contains a messy structure. Pure chaos lies between the one-inch margins of every paper. My heart twists its way into my stomach each time I have to read my words aloud. Embarrassed by my voice and by my words, I want to crawl into the double-spaced, 12pt font and die. 

I am such a bad writer that my fear of exposure prompted me to skip class the day this blog was due. I was afraid to let my classmates and my professor know that I’m a poser. I walk around with my caffeine addiction and yellow legal pads, but I’m not one of them¾I’m not a good writer. So instead of embarrassing myself, I sat in Grant Park staring at my blank word document and felt it staring back at me. The glowing white screen was blinding. Occasionally, I would type out some insecurities with my writing that didn’t make my skin crawl. But it never felt good enough. 

I closed my eyes and put my hands on the grass behind me and leaned slightly back. I tilted my head upward to stare at the sky between the tree branches above me. The sky was so blue that day and I knew Chicago winters would soon take away sunny days like this. My friend sitting next to me was writing like a machine. The words were flying out of her fingertips and I wished I had that confidence. She poured life onto the page with reckless abandon. 

I asked how she did it. I read the first couple paragraphs of this blog for her and said I was embarrassed to turn it in.  She said that I would always be my worst critic and that no one will ever hate my work as much as I do.

I loved that. It sounded like a challenge. 

As long as I hate my work the most, no one’s opinion will ever touch me. Maybe that mindset won’t be helpful long term, but it got me to start writing again. 

I procrastinate writing even though its my true passion. The writer Gaby Dunn said her therapist once reassured her during a session that “Procrastination is a part of the creative process”.  Maybe I needed to wallow in self-pity in Grant Park that day. But procrastination and doubt can only hold me back for so long before I start writing something I hate again. 

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Rachel McCumber is a student currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing with a focus in Nonfiction at Columbia College-Chicago. This will be her first published work, but she has made some really funny tweets and Instagram captions. However, she also enjoys writing personal essays that explore her ethnicity, pop-culture, and the reasons she is in counseling.