Flirting with the page

Weave a circle round [her] thrice
And close your eyes in holy dread
For [s]he on honeydew hath fed
And drunk the milk of paradise
- Coleridge

Dear Ben,

I have just come home from a day in a training session about writing for the web: eight hours devoted to learning how to cut out big words, simplify phrases and eliminate unnecessary 'waffle'.

I came out reeling.

I wanted to wail: "But waffling is what I do. What am I, without my waffling? Cut out big words? I need my big words."

I saw myself again, age five –

Plugging my ears while my father tried to coax me into learning a new song on the violin.

Screaming: "I don't want to learn a new song. I want to play 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!'"

Stamping my foot and going red in the face and threatening to smash my violin on the floor if he didn't let me play 'Twinkle, Twinkle' right now.

Twenty years later, and there I was again, red-faced and wanting to smash something.

But it wasn't all bad. And although our instructor succeeded in systematically shooting to pieces all my ideas about language, the purpose of writing, and what readers want, he also gave us a piece of advice that (of course - what doesn't?) made me think of you.

"Think of your audience – your readers - as one person," he said.

"Give him/her a name - an age - a job. Make him/her real. It'll make it easier to know what your aim is, if you know for whom you are writing."

Walking home - it was raining, the air was heavy, but I would not be stopped, I had to get the afternoon’s coffees out of my system and my rushing thoughts to abate - I found myself thinking about the myriad of pieces ammassed on my desktop that start with the words "Dear Ben".

For example: “I am very judgemental, Ben. The first time I met you I thought you were immensely attractive and as a consequence I assumed you must be an asshole. Then I decided that you weren't an asshole – but I was still suspicious and figured there must be a catch somewhere. I assumed you'd been popular in high school and had always had it easy. And I equated the fact that I'd been miserable in high school with my being, essentially, a better person than you.” Do you remember this? It's from one of my very first letters to you.

Or: “Dear Ben, How is it that Florence becomes more beautiful every time i see it? If I could marry a city I would already be at the altar. Of the duomo, of course. No, maybe Santa Croce […] I love Italy, I adore Florence, I love a lot of people and a lot of things. Maybe the problem is that I love too many things.” Two summers ago, this was.

It's true, what the instructor said: identifying one's reader does help one to focus one's discourse. I should know: I have been using you to focus my discourse for years. Hell, I have been focussing my discourse on you for years.

But not only that: envisioning one’s reader helps to make the fictional seem real. It facilitates the suspension of disbelief: for in inventing a realistic reader, the author makes the narrative itself more realistic.

The very existence of a specific reader immediately creates a sense of time and place, of a before and an after. It implies that there is a story that pre-dates the account at hand (the history between author and reader), that there is a reason why the author is telling the story (presumably something between author and reader needs resolving) and that there are loose ends to tie, something to be resolved… and tension in the air (why else, otherwise, would the author be bothering to speak?).

But I have noticed something else. Having invented a reader, the author changes the hues with which he or she paints his/her canvas… not to convey his/her message more clearly, as the instructor in my class implied, but simply to convey him/herself in a better light.

Because with the invention of the reader, the account turns into a personal affair: a relationship is born, and the author’s mission becomes to appeal to the reader.

Appeal both in the sense of putting forth an argument (the reader as judge and jury), and in the sense of rendering one’s self appealing – ie, luring, attracting, ingratiating (the reader as prisoner).

And so the author leaves out material - in some cases, entire pieces of their life - that jars with the idea they wish their reader to have of them. They invent. They elaborate. In the very act of rendering the fictional ‘true’ they find themselves, paradoxically, transforming the truth into a fiction. Sexing it up, so to speak.

They find themselves using words and turns of phrase that show them in the best light - the literary equivalent of choosing the most flattering skirt length or revealing the right amount of cleavage.

Witness the author, flirting with the page.

I imagine you smiling as you read this. I can see the sideways grin as it slants slightly to the left of your face while, legs crossed (your surprisingly feminine Meg Ryan legs… I still remember your bewilderment when I spotted the resemblance), hands clasped around your knee, foot swinging, you lean forward, the better to understand. Intent, as always, on garnering the full meaning – on observing, assimilating, pondering (My opposite, in every way).

I imagine you, captivated: my captive audience, my trapped judge and jury.

Laughing at the absurdity of what I am saying.

But is it so absurd? Rather, is it not inevitable? After all, to write is to perform – and a performer keeps one’s audience enthralled by attracting them more easily than by repelling them (the idea that there is a fine line between the two will have to be the subject of a future letter).

Moreover, if to write is to exhibit, bare and conceal, the writer isn’t merely flirting: they are veritably performing a strip tease.

Witness the writer, doing the dance of the seven veils.

“Think of your audience – your readers - as one person," our instructor told us.

"Give him/her a name - an age - a job. Make him/her real. It'll make it easier to know what your aim is.”

And so I have invented you, Ben: conjured a picture of you, the better to do my little dance (I doubt very much this was what our teacher had in mind).

Concocted an idea of your likes and dislikes in order to know what – and what not – to reveal.

Propped up your cardboard cut-out, life-sized paper doll figure, then switched on the table-lamp, draped it with one of my fuchsia scarves – the ones that bleed onto my other clothes in the wash and stream scarlet tears every time that, like today, I get caught in the rain – and proceeded to grind my hips.

Witness the writer, eyes closed in order to shut out the real and better embrace the ephemeral fiction she herself has created.

Fiction: in other words, lies.

I have a confession to make, Ben: I have lied throughout this letter.

The training session: it was over a month ago, not today. I didn't walk home - I went to Russell Square, to meet my parents for dinner. It wasn't raining, and I had not had so much coffee as to be buzzing. I had to invent all of that, to create a scene, to enable the suspense to mount. To draw you in.

Writers lie and manipulate even while claiming to confess - and when narrating, the distinction between mendacity and truth is far too easily blurred.

But do you know what I find fascinating? The truth that emerges from an accumulation of fibs. There are clues to be found in a fictitious account: the scene of the crime is littered with evidence, and the reader has only to look for what has not been said. To read between the lines, as it were. To envision the naked skin under the veils, and create for themselves a whole from the glimpse of an undulating hip or the hint of a nipple. To determine for themselves the 'true' version events.

After all, Ben, you didn't think I'd really strip, did you?

Truly,
hushawildviolet