The Anns

I will get no writing done for the next week thanks to the Anns. Ann Packer and Ann Patchett.

Even their twin first names, without the adornment of the final "e", are a reproach.

I'm reading each of their new books. Patchett's "State of Wonder" in hard cover from the library and Packer's "Swim Back To Me" as the first thing I purchased for my new Kindle.

I was stunned when I first read Patchett's "Bel Canto." I was just starting to think about writing again and had an idea that I wanted to write about music and dance and thus face the challenge of translating the power and pain of multi-dimensional arts into plain serifed words. My children were still fairly young and I stayed up late in my poorly lit home office to read "Bel Canto." I ran right into a frank assessment of my limitations. Because Patchett had written "Bel Canto," what was the point of even trying my own?

A few years later I read Packer's "The Dive From Clausen's Pier." Not long after I met her mother, Nancy Packer, long-time backbone of the writing program at Stanford. I learned that George Packer, one of my favorite writers at the New Yorker, was her brother.

I then read her next book, "Songs Without Words," not as powerful as the other but still very good. So, exactly when I was moving from the idea of writing about the arts and taking up a small canvas, suburban morality tale, I saw how Packer had already done that. Exceedingly well. Again, what was the point?

Then I saw a photo of Packer's writing studio - sort of a glorified garden shed - which looked like it was located in my brother's neighborhood on the San Francisco peninsula. I didn't understand my reaction, but the photo made me want to do a complete and thorough erasure of my computer just to put an efficient and certain end to my ambitions. It clearly isn't the straightforward writing studio that brought on that reaction. There must be much more elaborate writing spaces for me to envy (thankfully, a Google search for "Danielle Steele writing desk" did not produce any useful results).

The thing that gets to me about these two writers is that their styles, their methods of putting together a story, a character, a scene, their word choices, their ways of capturing dialogue, are all the ways I do it in my dreams. I read their work and I see a weak, hazy image of myself in the margins of the pages. It sort of makes me sick to my stomach.

I heard Patchett interviewed about the current book and she talked a little about the old adage that there are only a handful of plots in the world and this book is just her try at the search story. Yes, I get that. And yes, I've heard many people say to just keep on trying because no matter how many times a story seems to have been told, no one else can tell your story like you can, and you should just plug along.

Yes, yes, I know. And I will keep on trying. But probably not this week.