Good Naked by Joni B. Cole

Author:Joni B. Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Reverse Curse

In Australian Aboriginal culture, there is a practice known as bone pointing, intended to bring sickness or death to someone, often as punishment for a crime. The ritual is conducted by a learned man assigned great spiritual power. He wears special shoes made from bird feathers, and carries a bone, typically a kangaroo femur, about nine inches long with a pointed tip and endowed with magical powers by having curses sung or muttered over it. The victim has no idea when the Bone Pointer will come for him, until this great spiritual power sneaks up and makes his presence known. He points the bone in the victim’s direction, but never touches him directly. Regardless, the condemned man knows he has been cursed and will surely die. Then he does. It may take a few weeks, maybe a month for him to waste away, but the outcome is assured. To point the bone at someone is akin to killing him with black magic.

Inside almost every writer’s head is a Bone Pointer. Some internal sorcerer, some part of ourselves we have vested with the power of killing our writing dreams. Our Bone Pointers may not require the use of anything as exotic as the femur of an unfortunate kangaroo, but their black magic is just as formidable. They have only to sneak up on our psyches, make sure we know they are standing there in their fancy birdie shoes, and curse our writing ambitions. From that point forward, fear quickly begins to lay waste to our future. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of exposure. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of finishing. Fear of letting go. Whatever form the fear takes, the outcome is the same. Once we ascribe power to the Bone Pointer and he works his psychological voodoo, our ability to finish the work we started is doomed, and this without anyone even laying a hand on our manuscripts.

As a writing teacher, I like to think that craft is the only thing that stands between you and me and the writing we want to accomplish. With craft, we can make up for any deficits in talent. In fact, talent is a concept I would just as soon ignore, given that it can do more mischief than service. Often, talent can’t be bothered to step in while the aspiring artist makes a bit of a fool of herself during the learning process, for example, by trying to emulate the style of a famous author. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a writer in possession of an imitative style must be in want of her own voice.

Maybe your talent thinks this is funny, to emerge later in life, after you have endured years of eye rolling and rejection.

“Surprise!” it shouts, as your own writing voice finally emerges and you land on material suitable to your strengths. “See there, you aren’t as creatively challenged as your sophomore English teacher would have had you believe.”

Equally vexing is when your talent reveals itself right from the get-go, but then has no real interest in working a desk job.

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