Writing About Ugliness Writing About Ugliness (Theory Paper) The first book I ever wrote (I use the term “book” very loosely) was called The White Fairy. I was nine years old. I remember sitting with all of the eagerness of an inspired writer, tenderly typing the first sentence: “‘They have found me,’ Aurora said to herself as she heard an arrow strike a tree.” The protagonist, Aurora, is as two-dimensional and static as flat characters come. She is nothing but a victim of her pursuer, Grimloc, an evil man driven to capture her because of her unbelievable beauty and her rarity as a “white” fairy, which I am quite sure I never clarify what that exactly means. Aurora makes some friends during her escape from Grimloc’s cruel clutches: A second Aurora, who I as the author literally refer to as “Aurora2”, and a handsome prince named Aaron, who also (shockingly) falls in love with the first Aurora. In the end, all is well. Aurora and Aaron live happily ever after, and the second Aurora is a much-too-cheerful third wheel that is perfectly content with living with a newlywed couple in their castle. I end the monstrosity in a way that I thought was extremely clever, and now, looking back at it, makes me cringe: “Aaron kissed Aurora on the cheek, looked up at Emily Davis and said, ‘Thank you for a happy ending’.” I cannot begin to describe the pride that I had in this work. It was my brainchild. Truthfully, it was an upgrade from my other elementary school works. However as I grew older, my writing continued to evolve. Characters soon adopted more depth, plots became less predictable, and as my vocabulary expanded, my ability to express ideas and thoughts flourished. By the time I finished high school, I was quite proud of my three most popular works receiving enormous amounts of attention online. But two years later, looking at these works being read by thousands, I still cringe. Because through taking several college writing courses, I know now what power writing can possess. And I know what being a “writer” truly is. It is one thing to be able to string pretty words together like literary necklaces, but it is another entirely to change perspectives and speak for those that can’t speak for themselves. That is our duty as writers. We have a power that many do not possess. Why waste our time trying to impress people with things that only sound good on paper? Why would we not use our gift to do some good? Perhaps I am being ridiculously over-dramatic. Perhaps artists like RM Drake have spit out their drinks and are staring at me, stung. I must hand it to Drake; he looks really good on paper. He is the McDonald’s Big Mac of the literary world, which he can take as he will. But what about people like Eula Bliss, or Barry Hannah, or Carolyn Forché? These are people who are writing not to sound good. They do not write about white fairies, about happily-ever-afters. They write the truth. And not only do they write the truth, but they write it for somebody else. Eula Bliss in Black News writes for the African American woman whose four-day-old baby was taken away by Child Protective Services. Barry Hannah writes for soldiers with PTSD in Sick Soldier at Your Door. Even Carolyn Forché writes for someone in The Colonel. She writes for the voiceless human ears that she witnesses being poured on the floor by the colonel himself. She writes for these ears and she writes for us, urging us to stare war’s hideousness straight in the face. These are writers, not because they know how to form a punchy sentence, but because what they write about and how they write it punches the reader in the gut. That is what I want my writing to do. That is the goal. Perhaps my characters aren’t white fairies anymore, but they are not nearly as real and raw and genuine as they could be. This is what this class in particular has taught me. That our duty is to write for the world’s good, even if that means writing about the jarring, ugly truth. If my nine-year-old self could hear me now, I would probably break her heart. If RM Drake could hear me now, he would probably smirk and show me his Twitter following. Unfortunately, much like Aaron in Emily Davis’s The White Fairy, I think this world is lost in the deception that prettiness is the only quality that matters. We can see it in photography, in music, and in writing. It is not about truth. It is about aesthetic. As writers, it is our job to challenge that. And as we have seen from the pieces that we have read in this class, sometimes—in fact, usually—the truth can be unbearably hideous. In writing about it, in exposing the world’s ugliness to those who only know prettiness, we are speaking for those that the ugliness truly affects. We are writing for those victimized by the ugliness. We are writing for those who do not have the voice to express it. Ironically, that is what makes “ugly” writing so unbelievably beautiful.
