A Chicken Bone in My Gullet

As we drove through southern Utah for our road trip to Colorado last week, I hunkered down with a book I had ordered from Amazon specifically for the purpose of breaking the monotony of the scenery. After riding for one hundred miles, I glanced out the window. Grey sagebrush. Sparse clumps of muted green pinion pine. Brittle and yellowed cheatgrass. Barren brown dirt for miles on end. I went back to my reading.

One hundred more miles. I looked up again. More. Of. The. Same. Scenery. I resumed reading.

My book was If You Want to Write. It had garnered good reviews and I was eager to read it. I had great expectations that it would help me improve my writing skills and become a famous author of a plethora of magazine articles and numerous New York Times best selling books. And, I looked forward to recommending it to my writing friends and family members.

As in getting gifts at Christmas time, the anticipation is more the thing than the actual ownership.

When our youngest son was in kindergarten, he wanted a micro machine track. (Micro machines were mini Matchbox cars.) Our finances were precarious at best and usually non-existent on a regular basis. But he so desperately wanted that track for Christmas.

He wished. He hoped. He dreamed. That dream came true when he woke up Christmas morning and found that Santa left the track under the Christmas tree for him. After playing with the set for a few days, the track made its way underneath his bed where it remained for a long time collecting dust bunnies.

I had eagerly anticipated ordering my book from Amazon. Every day, I checked the mailbox with high hopes that this would be the day the book was delivered. I despaired that it wouldn’t arrive before we left. I wished. I hoped. I dreamed. It came before we left. Ah, Christmas in September.

I know that my writing is like eating barbecued chicken. The barbecue sauce of sticky, yucky similes and metaphors dribble down my writing chin. Adverbs stick in my gullet like a chicken bone accidentally swallowed. I try to scrub away adjectives with the white paper napkin of my delete key only to have them leave a sticky residue on my writing fingers. I expected If You Want To Write to be my toothpick that I used to worry out all of the stray pieces of bad writing still clinging to my teeth.

However, If You Want to Write is my micro machine track. Did it give good writing advice? Nay. Was it motivational and inspirational? Not in the least. Has my writing improved because I read it? Nary an improvement. I shan’t return over and over to it nor browse through it for inspiration or motivation. Its fate will be the collector of dust bunnies on my bookshelf.

A moment of silence as a tear of disappointment slides down my cheek.

I also ordered the book Spunk and Bite. Now THAT’S a different story! My micro machine experience has been traded in for the delicious ride of a full sized Lamborghini! I feel the power as I scorch the tarmac at break neck speeds in a squealing, smoking override of the all-wheel-drive system around the curves of great advice ! The 5.2-liter V-10 engine of inspiration roars from 0-to-62-mph time of 4.0 seconds. I caress and luxuriate in the leather seats of great writing examples! Who cares that the Lamborghinis of today originated from a tractor manufacturer of yesteryear?

I feel like celebrating this great book by dancing on the tabletops until dawn and swigging Geritol with wild abandonment.

I think that my writing will soon be rising out of my La Brea tar pit of bad writing.