[Paul Madonna, the well-known San Francisco artist who beautifully illustrated my book A Writer’s San Francisco, was recently seriously injured in a car accident. I am wishing him a very speedy recovery and wanted to share with you a few pieces from that book that he enriched so much.]
The fastidious, overbooked eye surgeon came down the hill from the University of California Medical Center on the heights of Parnassus to the Canvas Café on Ninth Avenue for our coaching session.
I’d gotten there early to walk in Golden Gate Park, directly across the street from the café, and to survey the art for sale on the café walls, art a full magnitude better than that found in most cafés. The Canvas Café has made a deserved name for itself as a real gallery. I carried my coffee cup around, enjoying the ladies’ slips firmed up and turned into sculptures and the brilliant red abstractions. Finally, I sat down and did a little writing.
My client arrived late, offered a perfunctory apology, and launched into his story. As an eye surgeon, he knew what he was doing. As a novice writer, working on his first novel, he had no idea what he was doing. Not knowing how to proceed with his novel, he hadn’t. I noticed that he was very neat—trim, pressed, careful with his words, a napkin at the ready to take care of crumbs and spills—and made a mental note of the obvious problem. Neatness and novel-writing are mortal enemies. If Bob wanted to write his novel, he was first going to have to kill off the napkin-carrying part of his being.
I smiled and listened. I knew what he would say before he said it, but I allowed him to say it anyway. He told me some eye surgeon war stories that would have made a torturer squeamish, stories about roaming eyeballs and micro-incisions, and complained that he needed novel-writing to be more like eye surgery.
“But they are different things,” I said.
“I know they’re different things.”
“No, you don’t. You think they are the same thing, only different. But they aren’t the same thing, only different. They’re different things.”
That caused him to pause. “Explain that,” he said.
“Let’s say that I set up my medical school to slightly differ from the ordinary medical school. In my medical school, I would send you, a proto-doctor with no scalpel experience whatsoever, scores of patients and their eyeballs. I would say to you, ‘Cut, have fun, see what you can learn. If you blind a few people, no problem. If you blind them all, no problem. The main thing is that you learn by doing, without a teacher, without any instruction at all. Enjoy!’”
He thought about what I was saying.
“Why the no teacher, no instruction’ injunction?” he wondered. “Why not take a workshop, study with someone, get some grounding?”
“Because of the basic difference. In surgery, you do not invite messes. You study so as to not make a mess. In novel-writing, you allow yourself to trip over your feet. Surgery is about not making a big mess, and writing is about tripping along and taking some pratfalls. Instruction helps you not make a big mess. It is therefore the wrong approach to novel-writing.”
“You’re being ironic.”
“Am I?”
“You’re being something.”
“Let me get us a refill.”
I noticed that he followed me up to the counter. I got us refills. He got us more napkins.
“Let me put it another way,” I said when we were seated again. “There’s a medical license. And then there’s creative license. Do they sound like the same thing to you?”
Bob shook his head and laughed. “They really do not.” He glanced at me. “So, what am I supposed to do?”
“Something that you are not supposed to with the eyeballs of your patients. Something that you are clearly not comfortable doing anywhere. You have to forego neatness. If you want lines to come out pressed and sweet-smelling, as if you had just picked them up from a fancy dry cleaner, you are killing your soul before you get started.”
“Then there’s this other thing,” he murmured. “The novel has a lot of gay sex. Some masochism. Some sadism. Some bondage. Nothing that I’m embarrassed about, but it does get graphic. . .”
“And?”
“And—I don’t know.” He shook his head and smiled wanly. “I’m a respected eye surgeon.”
“Yes. Who doesn’t dare reveal the messy parts of his psyche and his reality?”
“Is that it?”
“Why else are you whispering?”
He shot a glance around.
“Say it out loud, if you like,” I offered. “‘I have sex, and sometimes it’s really messy!’ Or, ‘My hands are clean when I cut your eyes but not in the middle of night, not by a damned sight!’ Shout it out, if you like. It would help. And it certainly wouldn’t disturb anybody here, not in a café in San Francisco!”
But he couldn’t.
“So, your mother will read your novel,” I continued, “and your brother, and your co-workers, and they will think exactly what you fear they will think, that Bob is really messy inside, despite his clean-cut appearance. The process is messy, and what you are revealing is messy. Two messes for the price of one! That’s my diagnosis.”
“And the treatment?”
“Make those messes.”
Bob sighed. “Well, thanks anyway. I’ve got to get back.” He paused. “At least you haven’t used Freudian jargon on me.”
“You mean, I haven’t called you anal?”
“Indeed.”
“Your patients need you to wash your hands. There’s no joking about that. But your novel needs you to get down and dirty.”
Bob nodded. Then he was gone.
I took a last tour of the café paintings, left the Canvas, and crossed over to Golden Gate Park. On the field, a serious game of baseball was in progress, so serious that the players wore uniforms. The pitcher pitched, the batter swung, and the ball shot at the first baseman. A hard shot but an easy chance: still, the first baseman missed the ball. Error! What a word. Error. The very sound of it makes you not want to play the game.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock