The Natural

I learned how to write from my six-year-old self today. While rifling through paperwork, I found my first story, presented here in all its typographical glory.

Feed the pup.
Dabby go Feed the pup.
No Son. I am to Bisy.
Mom Will you Go Feed the gup.
No Soh. Iam to Bisy.
Sis. Wlli you GoFeed The gut
No I’m TO Bissy
Butoh Will You Go Geed gup
No Son I’m Bisy.
Why Dot’ You!

I have attempted to recreate the Crayola palate (sky blue, blue-violet, burnt orange, forest green, salmon). What you can’t see are the wobbly letters/psychosis/dyslexia or the lined paper whose parameters I ignored. I don’t know why I made myself a boy. I believe I wanted to make sure my work would be seen as fiction. (Yes, dog feeding was a great topic of family debate).

At age six I already knew everything taught at my top MFA creative writing program:

1) Start with a person and a problem (protagonist has a hungry pup)
2) Have a second character against whom the main character will enact his change (pup)
3) The internal conflict mirrors the external conflict (pup is hungry/protagonist must move from ambivalence to action or pup will starve.)
4) The protagonist has agency (narrator goes in search of pup feeder)
5) Rule of Threes. (Actually I broke this rule by having the character ask a fourth time, but great fiction can do that.)
6) At the end the character should have changed forever. (protagonist forced to consider that instead of getting other people to do his work he should take responsibility).

What the protagonist doesn’t do: Bog down in description, tell a story to get to the story, watch others act instead doing things, or the myriad other problems I face in revision today.

Go find your earliest work. Marvel at your natural sense of story.

The "Link" Between Creativity and Mental Disorders

"Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art."


Wow. That is some groundbreaking science. It never would have occurred to me on my own. I'm glad we live in a world where there are scientists and experts to uncover these mysterious connections for us. I hope we're paying them enough to do this kind of intellectual heavy lifting: "If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what's happening to you and to the world -- people who do that are at risk for depression." (That's Paul Verhaeghen--psychologist, novelist and one hell of an articulate guy).

Now if they can only tell me what defect in my brain chemistry led to the decision to pursue poetry rather than, say, astrophysics or nursing or some other, more-conducive-to-cash-flow vocation, we'll be all set. If they can come up with a drug to combat the aforementioned defect, that's even better.