Are you? Experienced?

We're dogsitting for my Grandma for a few days, while she and her husband, the hyperconservative military veteran, go to a funeral upstate in Bumfuck, WI. While taking said mutt on her nightly walk, my mom bumped into a friend of hers. Well, I don't really know if they're friends or not, but they're awkward acquaintences from eternally sitting in waiting rooms and front lobbies waiting for their child's choir rehearsal or play auditions or soccer practice or whatever. They don't really have much to talk about except the goings-on of their children and the friends of their children.

It turns out, a girl who apparently graduated the same year I did (yet whose name I can't remember now for the life of me) is leaving today to go to Honduras for a year. She's decided to drop out of college and work on the Next Great American Novel. Since this is third-hand information, I don't know what her great novel is following, but I'm more than willing to bet its either The BellJar or whatever Oprah is shilling at the moment. Next Great American Novel, indeed.

At any rate, she decided to drop out/take a year off (my mom wasn't sure on that detail) because her short story wasn't accepted into the school literary magazine. She was told by the editor that her story wasn't mature enough, and she didn't have enough real-life experiences, and this is what popped into her head. Honduras.

Now, I've got nothing against real-life experiences. They can be fun and make for a good blog post. I love reading about real-life experiences in other people's blogs. However, I'm not entirely convinced that a 'real-life experience' is synonymous with 'no running water' or 'dysentry-ridden hell-hole.' Going to a 3rd-world country (or is Honduras 2nd world?) to volunteer and build huts or whatever is fine and dandy, but Whiteman is more historical liberal guilt than literary merit, and if it were me, I'd be sure to go to a country with vast supplies of writing utensils, paper products, and electricity for if/when the writing bug bites me. That way, I don't have to worry about other bugs biting me and infected me with diseases I can't pronounce in a country that doesn't even have running water.

I'm on dialup, and I'm too lazy to wait and see who actually said it, so I'm going to take full credit for the saying "The unexamined life is not worth living." I want to say it was Socrates, but he's dead and can't complain if I take credit. When it comes to writing that first novel, or anything, really, the inspiration comes from within. That's why there are so many bad first novels about single women struggling to find love and the perfect Prada dress, and first novels written about the former career of its author. Everyone loves a good story about coming of age, about drunk partiers and catty remarks about casual sex. A college student with patience and diligence should be able to write an interesting novel, or at the very least write a short story that doesn't get rejected from a small university in upstate Wisconsin. Bret Easton Ellis could do it, and he didn't have to go to Central America.

I don't have to travel to Honduras and forgo toilet paper and swear off hot sweaty manlove with drunk frat boys for a year to find inspiration for writing. I can do that here. I can write about hot sweaty manlove with drunk frat boys or the joys of toilet paper, though I'm willing to bet the former will be much more popular than the latter. Real-life experiences may be fun and all, but they tend to get in the way of, you know, the actual writing.

What am I saying exactly? I don't know. I'm willing to bet her blog myspace blog (shudder) is really lame, though. And she goes to a shitty state school, and if she couldn't get a story published there, she probably shouldn't be writing anyway. It's like getting a poem published in high school literary magazines; they kinda have to accept every selection, unless it swears or has 'inappropriate themes.' I hope she's good with a hammer, because all she'll be doing is making those hospitals or houses or hovels or whatever, getting sunburnt and getting food poisoning.

Yeah, it turns out writers are cutthroats. So what. There's no way in hell I'm showing up to my high-school reunion if I don't have the most copies sold of my first book. I fucking won the award given by the literary magazine for most promising talent.

Bitch.