I don't like guns (even though my father taught me to shoot both a shot gun and a rifle). I never allowed my children to have toy guns when they grew up and now both of them share my distaste for weapons. From an early age, my attitudes were shaped not so much by my own experiences -- I even had some pleasant experiences hunting ducks in Nebraska -- but by witnessing my dog's visceral reaction to a gun.
You see my father was determined to turn our border collie, Duke, into a hunting dog. Duke was a fierce and loyal guard dog. He was a master at herding the cows. He could even retrieve. But he was terrified of guns. Repeatedly, Duke and I would accompany my father down to the big meadow by the river that bordered our farm, us bouncing along in the back, my father behind the wheel, navigating the dirt roads hard-packed by his farm machinery. Dad would keep the gun up front with him, safely zipped inside its long, lean leather case.
When we'd reach the meadow, Duke would jump out, happy for an adventure, blissfully unaware of the training mission ahead. Dad would set up the target, a paper pattern of concentric circles glued to a thick straw back. He'd pace out 50 feet and lay down the case. Duke still galloped through the grass field, investigating the smells, and digging for treasures. But when Dad called, Duke approached with some reluctance, sidling closer but standing just outside my father's reach. I'd grab his collar and coax him over to the gun case. But the moment Dad began to unzip the case and Duke caught the first whiff of the gun oil, he'd break free with a violent terror and run as if lions were chasing him more than a quarter of a mile through the fields and orchard in a bee-line to the safety of his bed in the garage. We'd find him there trembling. My heart would just break for him, but Dad's efforts persisted. After many, many attempts at desensitizing him, Dad finally, reluctantly, and with great disappointment, abandoned the idea of ever taking Duke hunting with him.
I later that Duke's terror derived from an incident in his puppyhood, shortly before we adopted him, when careless masters had allowed him to run wild with a local pack of dogs. One night, the pack was driven off an angry farmer's property at the point of a shotgun. The vet had been been able to remove the shot from Duke's flank, but the abject terror remained deeply embedded.
And so it is when I write. I can smell the "gun" of public exposure. I don't know whether I have some deep pain lodged in my subconscious from a past humiliation. All I know is that I can happily write when I know that no one is going to read it. Sometimes I'm even willing to share what I write with my trusted inner circle. I actually crave a positive response. (Big surprise.) But for the most part, the thought of my words hung out in the open for anyone to read, like fresh laundry on the line leaves me running for my bed to cower under the covers.
All this despite the fact that in my regular work life as a marketing communications writer I am continually exposed to criticism and praise, to rewrites, editing and comments. That doesn't bother me a whit because ultimately that "product" belongs to my clients and some corporation. I am essentially a ghost writer who can remain safely in the background. And in that arena, I feel completely competent, highly experienced, and well-paid to boot.
But when it comes to expressing myself? Extremely risky! Saying what I have to say on my own behalf, or creating fiction? Entirely different story.
The fervent desire to stay hidden keeps me from creative writing. It keeps my progress at an excruciatingly slow pace, because I don't write enough, and I get so little feedback.
So The Bashful Scribbler is born. I am embarking upon a mission to do for myself what Dad could never do for Duke. That is, learn to master my angst as I slowly desensitize myself to the fear of public exposure. My hope is to forge a daily writing discipline and over time build a tiny audience.
In 2012, I'd like to discover, little by little, why I write, what I have to say, and most of all learn to involve readers in my writing.
