Homework Assignment One: Getting Started

So in yesterday’s book review, I let you know that I was embarking on a series of writing exercises inspired by The Fiction Class by Susan Breen.  Well, it’s time for the first – aptly titled, “Getting Started.”  I will set up each of the homework assignments in a similar fashion so they are easily identifiable and understandable.  I hope you enjoy them, and I look forward to seeing what I can learn from doing them and from your feedback (which I most heartily encourage)!

Getting Started: Make a list of your 5 obsessions.  Now write a few paragraphs about one of them.

1. Buying/Amassing Books
2. Reading
3. Words
4. Relaxing/Time Management
5. Being Right/Smart/Superior of Intellect (teehee)

(What a random-ass mixture of obsessions, eh?  Incidentally, I had a surprisingly difficult time compiling this list.  Does this mean I am so boring that I don’t have obsessions??  Or that I’m obsessed with appearances and so had a hard time figuring what to say/how to say it?  Ugh – I guess I now know my sixth obsession – Appearances!)

I’ve written about buying/collecting books, reading, and words on here before.  So I guess I will write about something new – my obsession with being right.  (teehee indeed)

I admit it.  I am completely and totally and obnoxiously obsessed with being right.  And by “right” I mean smart and correct in the abstract and independent senses as well as in the comparative sense – yes, I am That Girl…  My favorite thing they taught us in law school, which I repeat ad nauseam: “You don’t have to be right, you just have to be sure.”  Except that, for me, being right and being sure tend to overlap A LOT such that they often, to my mind, end up being the same thing.

I like to collect information because I need to know (or at least reasonably and realistically feel like I know) that I know more than the next guy (or girl).  This is one reason why I enjoy non-fiction, why I liked school (even law school), why I like dictionaries and esoteric words.  And yes, I fully realize how obnoxious this makes me.  I can’t help it.  As Popeye said, I Yam What I Yam…  (teehee)  To that end, another favorite quote, courtesy of the movie “Broadcast News”, springs to mind:

Boss to Holly Hunter (in an utterly condescending and sarcastic voice of wry aggravation): “It must be wonderful knowing you are always the smartest person in the room.”

Holly Hunter (in a completely serious and deadpan voice of agonized superiority): “Oh no, it’s awful…”

I don’t know why exactly I need to feel superior – smarter, more informed, better educated.  Or why, even when I’m wrong, I need to find a way to justify my wrongness and somehow make it right through a twisting of circumstance, perspective, or context.  It’s odd – I don’t know if it’s Oldest Child Syndrome, Salutatorian Inadequacy (why oh why did I come in second?!), Self-Employed Girl Justification Disease, Recovering Attorney Addiction, or what.  I’ve been like this for a long time though – and as I write more and more, I have noticed that this characteristic surfaces as a quality in the characters in many of my bits o’ fiction.  Fortunately in that context it is not so much a liability as a wonderful opportunity for snarky ridiculousness and much sarcastic character-baiting, which tends to lead (I think) to some funny reading.  So I guess that’s something…  😉