Writer’s Bane: Alan Nelson’s “Lafayette”

A 1948 science-fiction story by Alan Nelson is called “Narapoia.” (And no, smarty — whoever you are — I did not read it when it originally came out.)

It’s an entertaining enough premise: a man visits a psychotherapist, showing signs of an unusual disorder:

“I don’t know exactly how to explain it to you, Doctor,” the young man began. He smoothed back his slick black hair that shone like a phonograph record and blinked his baby-blue eyes. “It seems to be the opposite of a persecution complex.”

Dr. Manly J. Departure was a short severe man who made a point of never exhibiting surprise. “The opposite of a persecution complex?” he said, permitting one eyebrow to elevate. “How do you mean — the opposite of a persecution complex, Mr. McFarlane?”

“Well, for one thing, I keep thinking that I’m following someone.” McFarlane sat placidly in the big easy chair, hands folded, pink cheeks glowing, the picture of health and tranquility. Dr. Departure stirred uneasily.

“You mean you think someone is following, you, don’t you?” the doctor corrected.

“No. No, I don’t! I mean that while I’m walking along the street, suddenly I have this feeling there is somebody just ahead of me. Somebody I’m after. Someone I’m following. Sometimes I even begin to run to catch up with him! Of course –there’s no one there. It’s inconvenient. Damned inconvenient. And I hate to run.”

After a couple of visits, the patient confesses to another symptom: non-hallucinations, you might call them — hallucinations which turn out not to be hallucinations at all:

“I’m afraid I’m beginning to be troubled with hallucinations, Doctor,” McFarlane finally volunteered.

Dr. Departure mentally rubbed his hands. He was back on old familiar territory now. He felt more comfortable.

“Ah, hallucinations!”

“Rather, they’re not really hallucinations, Doctor. You might say they were the opposite of hallucinations.”

Dr. Departure rested his eyes a moment. The smile disappeared from his face. McFarlane continued:

“Last night, for instance, Doctor, I had a nightmare. Dreamed there was a big ugly bird perched on my short-wave set waiting for me to wake up. It was a hideous thing — a fat bulbous body and a huge beak that turned upward like a sickle. Blood-shot eyes with pouches under them. And ears, Doctor. Ears! Did you ever hear of a bird with ears? Little tiny, floppy ears, something like a cocker spaniel’s. Well, I woke up, my heart pounding, and what do you think? There actually was an ugly fat bird with ears sitting on the short-wave set.”

Dr. Departure perked up again. A very simple case of confusing the real with the unreal. Traditional. Almost classical.

“A real bird on the short-wave set?” he asked gently. “With blood-shot eyes?”

“Yes,” McFarlane replied. “I know it sounds silly. I know it’s hard to believe.”

“Oh, not at all. Not at all. That type of visual aberration is a common enough phenomenon.” The doctor smiled soothingly. “Nothing to…”

McFarlane interrupted him by reaching down and hoisting the carton onto the desk. “You don’t understand, Doctor,” he said. “Go ahead. Open it.”

The doctor looked at McFarlane a moment, then at the brown box which was punctured with air holes and tied with heavy twine. Disconcertedly, the doctor cut the string and folded back the top flaps. He leaned over and peered in — then sucked in his breath. Pouchy, blood-shot eyes leered up at him. Floppy ears. The up-side-down beak. An obscene-looking bird.

“His name is Lafayette,” McFarlane said, tossing a few bread crumbs into the carton which were quickly devoured with a noisy, repulsive gulp. “He rather grows on you after awhile, don’t you think?”

(You can find more information — including the complete story — easily enough on the Web, if you’d like to follow up.)

By now you may wondering what this might have to do with writing, per this post’s title. Glad you asked…

Last month, I described a weekend seminar I attended, given by the writer David Gerrold. I mentioned in that post one of the main lessons which David imparted — the idea that you can build a story or a complete book from the ground up, simply by “asking the next question.”

It wasn’t the only thing I took away from the course, though. The other big thing was a simple idea, really, and certainly one I’d heard spoken of before. Rather, it was the expression of the idea which stuck with me: the sh!tbird on your shoulder.

Writers call it other things — they’re word people, of course (like The Internal Editor, which leads to Writer’s Block), and can’t help fooling with the way something’s already worded.

No, they can’t help fooling with words. Which is kind of the point. Here’s the picture:

You, a writer, are sitting at your desk. You’ve already written or keyed in some fresh verbiage, so you’re not confronting a blank sheet of paper or an empty screen. You’ve actually got a period at the end of a sentence, or you’ve got a blank line denoting the end of one paragraph, the start of another. Involuntarily — you’re fighting it, but unsuccessfully — your eyes stray back over what you’ve just written. And that’s when you hear the voice. The pinched, nagging voice with the jagged rhythms and intonations. The voice of the sh!tbird:

You can’t write. Who told you you can write, anyhow? Look at the way you worded that. You call that writing? For God’s sake, you spelled “your” like “you’re”! And oh for chrissake, look there — passive, passive, passive! Better fix that right away — but no, goddammit, no, not that way, look, you just made it worse…!

And so on.

The sh!tbird never gives up. He — it’s a “he” for me, anyhow — he never shuts up. Give him a milli-second of your time and he’ll take an hour. He’s always there, pecking at your attention and your confidence, flapping his wings if you let your guard down.

To my knowledge, there’s no way of banishing him permanently. You can’t sprinkle rat poison in the birdseed. The only way to shut him up is to train yourself to keep him glutted: dump out the words as fast as you can. Don’t stop. Keep writing. Don’t look back. This confuses the heck out of sh!tbird (after all, he’s a wordivore like you). You have one advantage he can’t overcome: the act of putting words on paper or screen takes a lot less time than the act of analyzing, let alone critiquing the words.

Eventually, engorged and exhausted, he’ll give up.

Oh nonono, he won’t go away. When you sit down with the express purpose of revising what you’ve written, smelling blood in the air he’ll come cawing to you, with his fat bulbous body and a huge beak turned upward like a sickle, his blood-shot eyes with pouches under them. And ears — ears! He’ll be back again. Hungry again. All set to dig in.

But that’s okay. Then, you’ll need him desperately — not because you can’t write (you just wrote the damn thing, remember?), but because you need a voice of eager criticism. Because ultimately — after the act of creation — there’s not just non-writing and writing; there’s non-writing, unpolished writing, and fine writing. Getting from Step B to Step C is where you really need a sh!tbird.

(This post inspired by numerous writerly lamentations — extended and brief — which I’ve encountered in recent weeks, among them this, this, this, and of course this.)

P.S. When I first heard David describing the sh!tbird, I thought at once of Alan Nelson’s story, and when I thought of that story — without having it before me to check the exact description — I thought of the sh!tbird as a malignant version of the “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” bird. Hence the graphic which tops this post.