Son of Mr. Green Jeans

After 2 weeks hanging with my dear friend, the gorgeous and talented Figg and the procrastination that comes far too naturally for me, I finally got around to writing my paper on - GASP - the day it was DUE! Now, this really is a first for me. No guff. Sometimes I'll wait until the weekend, or perhaps even the night before, but never on the day I'm supposed to hand it in, spell-checked, revised, edited, with sources and a clever title.

Struggling with last nights wine remnants and a fuzzy head, I trashed what I'd already written about Brad K. Youngkin's short story The Speed of Memory (of which my memory speed had slowed to a snails pace) and while in the most refreshing shower of my life I had the epiphany moment. Forget what I'd already written. It was only three sentences of crap anyway. Start fresh. Shower fresh.

I thought about structure, white space, demarcation. I thought about finding a hook, a gimmick. I thought about how I'm too emotionally close to Youngkin's story to do it justice. I mean, this story is fucking incredible. It's often too hard to write about the things you love. So, write about what you like, I guess.

And I really like Dinty W. Moore's Son of Mr. Green Jeans. His structure is unique. Alphabetical entries on fathers, fatherhood, being a son, perceptions of the perfect father, parents, animals, humans, traits, xenogenesis. Small bites, sections that all speak to an abstract notion of "father." Self-reflective, but not entirely memoir. Sometimes reads like journalism or like entries in a dictionary or encylopedia. Looks kind of like that too. So, I stole his structure. Made my own headers using the same ALL CAPS style. Same page breaks, demarcation and white space. Nonlinear. Threaded and woven. Analytical and of course, chock full of the anti-academic rhetorical wit I am wildly famous for.

And tonight I turned it in! I'm hoping it wins as much praise for its succinct use of style and prose as my first paper for the class, though I do feel it might be a little analytically thin. No matter, I rocked it out in about 4 hours with 2 hours to spare before class and I feel great about it.

Now...if I could just have these breaks in terms of writing my dissertation, editing my documentary, finding the love of my life...etc.

But this will all come to me when I move to Pittsburgh. Next month!