to write because I was sick? Or was I sick because the book was too difficult to write? I didn’t know.
So I made an appointment to see a gastroenterologist at the university hospital. He had black hair and the part on the left side of his head resembled a white candlestick. His glasses made him look slightly adolescent, giving me the impression that he’d gone directly from high school to performing surgeries. As instructed, I removed my sweater, flannel shirt, and thermal undershirt—it was now winter—and lay on his examination table. Then his dry, chubby fingertips pressed my stomach in various locations, so deeply at times that they seemed to touch my spine. He asked me to sit up, told me I was likely fine, but suggested having a peek at my intestines with an endoscope just to be sure. The morning of the procedure, I was not allowed to eat or drink. At the hospital, I wore an open-backed gown and lay sideways on a gurney, facing a television monitor that allowed me to see the progress of the scope. I declined a sedative because I didn’t want to be groggy for the rest of the day. The gastroenterologist patted my shoulder with one latex-gloved hand and said, “Try to relax.” Then he shoved a scope the length of a fishing rod down my throat. I gagged, and while a nurse held my head in place, I made sounds like air and water being sucked down a drain. An instant later, I saw the scope crawling through my stomach like a worm. Its glass eye illuminated the channels of my intestines and produced a grainy black-and-white image on the monitor. “I’m seeing nothing,” he said, “No Barrett’s esophagus, no ulcers, no abdominal perforation.” He twisted the rod’s handle clockwise, hummed a little ditty, turned the rod counterclockwise, and then, with magician-like quickness, retracted the scope. I closed my mouth and stopped choking as I was wheeled into a recovery room. Twenty minutes later, he appeared and said, “You’re fine.” I found the news disappointing. Since he’d discovered nothing, the pain had to be psychological, existential, or, quite possibly, literary.
Nevertheless, I forced myself to write. But the book’s plotlines lost their rigidity and began to overlap. After I’d written twenty new pages I was completely lost. To find the novel’s direction, I went back over the pages using three Magic Markers—black, green, and red. I drew boxes around sentences, sometimes as many as ten sequential sentences, sometimes around only one. Once I’d separated each section by color, I retyped and polished it, clarifying motives and events. Then I linked the sections to one another like the boxcars of a train, and the book began to move forward again. I continued to work, feeling ill and isolated. I’d requested a spot in Frank’s spring workshop, but I’d been assigned to a workshop taught by a visiting writer. When I appeared in Frank’s office bearing my notice, he laughed before I said a word.
“I can’t be in your workshop?” I spoke without hesitation, my anxiety about our fondness for each other long since passed.
“I wanted you in another class,” he said. “It’s a pretty small group. You’ll raise the level of discourse.”
I collapsed into my armchair, and Frank smiled. He liked knowing that I needed him, but he also displayed an affection that surpassed his hopes for my novel. I’d become more than Frank’s student, and more than his friend, although neither of us mentioned what our relationship ultimately might become.
Grudgingly, I attended the new workshop, in which I knew virtually no one and had little confidence in the instructor, although I liked him personally. Our classroom faced north, and by the time class began the sun had nearly set behind the horizon line of bare trees. The buzzing fluorescent lights overhead did nothing to dispel the gloom, which was magnified by the smallness of our group. Rather than the normal fourteen, there were
So I made an appointment to see a gastroenterologist at the university hospital. He had black hair and the part on the left side of his head resembled a white candlestick. His glasses made him look slightly adolescent, giving me the impression that he’d gone directly from high school to performing surgeries. As instructed, I removed my sweater, flannel shirt, and thermal undershirt—it was now winter—and lay on his examination table. Then his dry, chubby fingertips pressed my stomach in various locations, so deeply at times that they seemed to touch my spine. He asked me to sit up, told me I was likely fine, but suggested having a peek at my intestines with an endoscope just to be sure. The morning of the procedure, I was not allowed to eat or drink. At the hospital, I wore an open-backed gown and lay sideways on a gurney, facing a television monitor that allowed me to see the progress of the scope. I declined a sedative because I didn’t want to be groggy for the rest of the day. The gastroenterologist patted my shoulder with one latex-gloved hand and said, “Try to relax.” Then he shoved a scope the length of a fishing rod down my throat. I gagged, and while a nurse held my head in place, I made sounds like air and water being sucked down a drain. An instant later, I saw the scope crawling through my stomach like a worm. Its glass eye illuminated the channels of my intestines and produced a grainy black-and-white image on the monitor. “I’m seeing nothing,” he said, “No Barrett’s esophagus, no ulcers, no abdominal perforation.” He twisted the rod’s handle clockwise, hummed a little ditty, turned the rod counterclockwise, and then, with magician-like quickness, retracted the scope. I closed my mouth and stopped choking as I was wheeled into a recovery room. Twenty minutes later, he appeared and said, “You’re fine.” I found the news disappointing. Since he’d discovered nothing, the pain had to be psychological, existential, or, quite possibly, literary.
Nevertheless, I forced myself to write. But the book’s plotlines lost their rigidity and began to overlap. After I’d written twenty new pages I was completely lost. To find the novel’s direction, I went back over the pages using three Magic Markers—black, green, and red. I drew boxes around sentences, sometimes as many as ten sequential sentences, sometimes around only one. Once I’d separated each section by color, I retyped and polished it, clarifying motives and events. Then I linked the sections to one another like the boxcars of a train, and the book began to move forward again. I continued to work, feeling ill and isolated. I’d requested a spot in Frank’s spring workshop, but I’d been assigned to a workshop taught by a visiting writer. When I appeared in Frank’s office bearing my notice, he laughed before I said a word.
“I can’t be in your workshop?” I spoke without hesitation, my anxiety about our fondness for each other long since passed.
“I wanted you in another class,” he said. “It’s a pretty small group. You’ll raise the level of discourse.”
I collapsed into my armchair, and Frank smiled. He liked knowing that I needed him, but he also displayed an affection that surpassed his hopes for my novel. I’d become more than Frank’s student, and more than his friend, although neither of us mentioned what our relationship ultimately might become.
Grudgingly, I attended the new workshop, in which I knew virtually no one and had little confidence in the instructor, although I liked him personally. Our classroom faced north, and by the time class began the sun had nearly set behind the horizon line of bare trees. The buzzing fluorescent lights overhead did nothing to dispel the gloom, which was magnified by the smallness of our group. Rather than the normal fourteen, there were
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