Thursday, October 25: Femme Fatale
A LITTLE BIT PREGNANT
by Deborah Elliott-Upton
“Every time I agree with myself, I write an essay. When I disagree with myself, I know I’m pregnant with a short story.” — Amos Oz
I’m a little bit pregnant today. My husband isn’t surprised and neither am I, but we don’t have to worry about bassinets or bottles. Instead of being with child, I am about to give birth to a new short story. Especially at this time of year when the weather forces me more indoors, I seem to be more fertile. (And yes, our children are both Scorpios.)
Today the wind is howling outside my windows. I think of banshees or the Great Dust Bowl or perhaps tornadoes spinning across the Texas plains plucking up one house by its plumbing roots while leaving its neighbor untouched.
It’s late October and the pumpkins are ripe and ready to be turned into Jack O’ Lanterns. My characters need a bit of carving, too. They need an edge to make them stand out from the rest. Like pumpkins, characters come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Shall they be scary? Simple or sophisticated? It is the artisan’s skill who transforms them into works of art and makes them either memorable or forgettable. While the sculptor removes what he does not see in his mind’s eye, the writer cloaks his art to disguise its true self until the appropriate time.
I’m thinking of cooler months and blizzards, a log cabin surrounded by weary Indian trappers wanting nothing more than shelter from the cold, the homeless scrounging for scraps in alleyways behind a New York City restaurant.
A soldier sweats inside his helmet in Iraq, but knows it is suicide to remove the protective covering. A woman weeps for her dying father knowing he will not see another sunrise. A friend betrays another to secure an election.
The time is right to write, yet I wait. There is a pregnant pause that must be calculated to birth the story at the precise time. Don’t forget the labor pains. That’s the rewriting, the critique from peers and alas, more rewriting.
At last the time has come. The delivery has taken place, the child named and sent out into the world for approval. The baby must be thrust out into the world of publishing, awaiting public opinion. Do they adore this creation? No matter. It’s time to start anew.
Getting pregnant is only the beginning of a new adventure.
I love that quote, but can you be a little bit pregnant?
Isn’t that like being a little bit dead.
And either you are a writer, actively putting ink to paper, or you’re not.
I know lots of people who say, One day I’m going to write a book. Those folks are not writers, they are dreamers.
Bumming and gestating look a lot alike. – Daniel Pinkwater.
I knew someone would ask that pregnant question, Travis. As far as the little bit dead, I am reminded in “The Princess Bride,” our hero was said to be mostly dead. When I use the phrase a little bit pregnant here, I mean that my mind is busy mulling these story ideas into fact. They have not yet come to a point where they are ready to be birthed onto the printed page. BTW, the actual labor pains for me seem to be the rewriting and happen on (the computer) screen.
Travis, you need to watch soaps! Actually that is why I don’t watch them. You’d be surprised how many of them are a little bit preggers andor a little bit dead!
For the record, “I” am a dreamer and a writer. I can’t imagine one without the other.
Deborah, loved the column. For some reason my visualization resorted to Prissy in Gone with the Wind.
🙂
(1) I usually end the whole stories-as-offspring metaphor by calling them my brainchildren. To go further invites such please-let’s-not-go-there similes as morning sickness, birth control, miscarriage, delivery by Caesarian, and perhaps most frightening of all, stirrups. Being male, I am naturally a member of the weaker sex and must be forgiven for feeling faint while simply contemplating these horrors.
(2) Getting into my manly Diction City Police Uniform, I am issuing Deb a ticket for incorrectly using birth as a verb in her slapdown of Travis (otherwise, you go girl!). Although it is technically correct to use the word as shorthand for “give birth to” in a transitive sense, e.g., “Deborah birthed a daughter” vice “Deborah gave birth to a daughter”, it is wrong intransitively: children are not birthed, they are born.
Now that my machismo has been reaffirmed, I feel much better.
Great column once again! You do have a way with the turn of a phrase…A little pregnant cracked me up!
The “little bit” does apply to other things. Like I’m a little bit Crazy, or a little bit tainted, etc. I notice that a little bit preggers generally only applies to women. But I have to confess, there are times I feel a “Little Bit Preggers” myself. But feeling and being are quite two different things. So as long as I’m feeling, I’m good with that. And for this column, it feels and is good. Way to go “Sugar”.
Dear Deborah: Congrats! When’s the belated baby shower: (read: Let us know where/wnen we can read the story!)