by Sheldon Lee Compton
He
was referring to the different voices I used from a first draft to a second
draft of a story in workshop. Meant as a compliment, I think, it’s the first
thing I thought of when Gay Degani mentioned me doing a piece for her Journey
to Planet Write series. I’ve been a basket case in this way for nearly as long
as I can remember and, although numerous other events led to me nurturing a
talent for writing, it was this idea of splitting into other personalities that
seemed most influential in my development.
Before
the real splits began, I lived inside a three-foot by three-foot space under my
covers every night until morning when I first started making things up. That
was 1982 and I was six years old. Under the covers, I held my hands up and made
them talk, sort of like sock puppets without the socks. The three of us talked
for hours about the kinds of things a six-year-old talks about, I guess. It
made me less afraid of my stepfather, that much I remember well.
My
stepfather was a lifelong alcoholic and would stumble in late nearly every
night of during that year and sit on the side of my bed and slobber onto the
sheets and apologize for drinking and for arguing and for things I also can’t
remember and am glad I can’t remember.
 |
| Sheldon, lower left. |
About
everything I’ve tried to do with fiction since has been an attempt to
rediscover that otherworldliness, to revisit those two old friends who came to
life through an array of different characters and tiny narratives. I’ve been on
a search for what I created hour after hour doing nothing more than talking to
myself to calm down or become tired enough to sleep. In short, I’ve been
nourishing my inner schizophrenic and calling it literature ever since.
I’ve
talked before in lectures and interviews about the years following that summer,
how I read dozens and dozens of childhood biographies until finally graduating
to Stephen King, how the year I discovered King I asked for a Brother GX-6750
typewriter for Christmas and used my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine as a
desk. All of this was an extension of that summer. It still is.
To
this day, I can tell within two or three paragraphs of anything I’m writing
whether or not that otherworldliness I discovered in 1982 is present. Sometimes
I plow ahead even if it’s not present and finish only because I started, and
all the stories and novels written in that way are now resting peacefully on
various flash drives and boxes somewhere in dark corners of my house. On the
other hand, when a story sort of appears
on the page, one word after another, sentence after sentence, and is completed
with a kind of natural energy, it’s always because, above everything else, I’m
writing in a kind of trance inside a world that exists only to me, three feet
by three feet of headspace draped with a wedding ring quilt without a sock in
sight.
Yes,
Kirby only scratched the surface. I’ve got boxes full of crazy. I’m all full
up. And I’m fine with that. I’ll take it and make something from it. I’ll tell
a story or put a handful of words together in just the right way or transform the world as I have known it into a
newly imagined reality. I’ll do this because my journey to becoming a writer
has been less a journey and more an escape, a way out and a means of survival
for all my unique voices.
Mating Ritual
by Sheldon Lee Compton
We tore them to make rings. We found if you shook them
more than three times to get them drunk they would die.
Once when I was old enough to buy from a bootlegger without much problem, I smeared the ass end of one across my teeth and smiled in the darkness.
They were kept in jars. They could not be seen during the day. Even then they only had about fifteen years left to live.
Artificial light was the problem, the thing that kept the male from finding the female, a lighthouse of bug love overwhelmed by a lamp post.
I told her this, watching for a smile. I looked for light between her lips and counted days.
(Originally published at Dogzplot)
____________________________________
Sheldon Lee Compton
is the author of three
books, most recently the novel Brown Bottle
(Bottom Dog
Press, 2016). His stories can be found in WhiskeyPaper,
New World Writing, PANK, decomP, Monkeybicycle, DOGZPLOT, and elsewhere. He
was a finalist for Best Small Fictions
2015 and Best Small Fictions 2016.
Sheldon Lee Compton
is the author of three
books, most recently the novel Brown Bottle
(Bottom Dog
Press, 2016). His stories can be found in WhiskeyPaper,
New World Writing, PANK, decomP, Monkeybicycle, DOGZPLOT, and elsewhere. He
was a finalist for Best Small Fictions
2015 and Best Small Fictions 2016.
