Writer’s Manifest

You will not write about the beekeeper, but if you do you will study bees obsessively, you will learn all the rules of the trade. You will know that Apis mellifera is the scientific name of the honey bee typically found in America. You will learn how the queen gets fertilized, how bees get sick and die. You will know that American foulbrood is deadly while European foulbrood is not, and that the names have nothing to do with geography. Then you will study tools that a beekeeper uses. You will live inside his brain. You’ll be prepared to use the decoy hive and anchor stray swarms when the time comes. You will not mention these things anywhere in your fiction, but if you don’t know the facts your writing will be lighthearted and it will not convince anyone.

You had good hands for masonry when you were young. An old master told you that a stone should be observed from its invisible side before it’s laid down. You turned stones in your hands for a long time looking for that invisible side. When you put them down they fit perfectly. You will not mention that you read this on page twenty seven of a book written by Mirko Kovač, the writer you admired. Although you know now that it was only a metaphor, that’s how you want to write, always observing things from their invisible side.

Other writers will not be your characters. When you walk into a bakery you want to buy bread, you don’t want to know how long the dough took to rise or how much yeast was used. You’d be disappointed if your doctor treated only other doctors, and the lady in pink blouse made coffee only for other ladies like her. Therefore, you will not contribute to the world in which writers tend to other writers. You understand that your craft is filled with doubt unlike any other, but you will fight the solitude of your profession in other ways.

While a college student, you lived in a cold, dark room, rented from an old lady. This is something you will not write about because it still gives you the shivers. You will only say that she smelled of dust, of her furniture, of her cats. She told you to beware of people in gray coats. She knows them from the previous war. After many years she saw them on Main Street in broad daylight. They didn’t hide any longer, and that worried her. You tried to find comforting words, but she wouldn’t listen.

You will not write about the war, because the things you will want to write about are not the things the reader craves. You will want to say how one morning in June your neighborhood felt broken, as when a house catches fire, nobody repairs it for a long time, the blackened windows stand as an omen of terrible things to come. But your reader will want to be dropped into a different scene, the one in a Toyota land cruiser with three characters: the woman from the Red Cross, the local communist apparatchik, and maybe you in the back seat. She will tell the guy that every muscle in her body aches because of her love for a man who isn’t her husband. She will be overseeing a food delivery, charity items discarded in countries far luckier than yours. She will wonder aloud if you’ll live another day because an enemy attack will be starting right that moment, the rumbling noise from behind the mountain. She will say things like: “What will become of us, Feride,” and “the weatherman calls it rain for tonight.”

You will not write about your mother. Above all, you will not write about your mother. You may only tell how you’ll be going to a presentation one night because the time will come for your son to pick his college. You’ll be given a brochure and a free pen. You’ll be so sleepy through the first part that the second part will barely make sense. You’ll be afraid you’ll look like a fool among Chinese parents who will look genuinely concerned about their assets. You will start feeling a kind of bad for them, for all the vacations they had skipped. Then, you’ll pay close attention to the speaker, and you’ll suddenly understand it all. She will look like a tulip. Some people look like their cats, other resemble horses or hippos, not that you yourself weren’t compared to some funny animal in the past. But this person will resembles the bright Dutch flower with such accuracy that it will sting because you will start thinking of tulips in bloom on the day your mother died. In your story you will camouflage your feelings, the character who dies will be named Catherine, and she will only be a distant friend.

You will not write about your English teacher, even though he would make a perfect character for your fiction. His wife taught science and she was the one kids were afraid of, not him. He spoke languages and was a dazzling dancer. He drank every night in the tavern next to the barber shop. He trotted heavily through his days, but at night his step was light. You will not write about your English teacher, but if you do you’ll say that he died while playing chess in front of his apartment building. You will describe how a mortar shell fell among the chess players and scattered brain tissue between Bishops and Pawns. It was the only mortar of that day, you will add. An enemy on the hill was bored, or amused, or angry. Maybe his son didn’t want to eat string beans for lunch that day. Maybe his son even said: “I hate string beans. I hate them. I hate them.” You will not write about your English teacher, because you already established the rule not to write about the war. You will have to waste this perfectly good character and look for your material elsewhere. That’s alright with you because you understand that little wars are fought every day and you are taking notes while observing things from their invisible side.

You will not write about your childhood friend who thought he lost his shadow, but if you do you will mention that his left arm was shorter than his right arm. Something terrible happened when he was little, but he never wanted to talk about it. He showed you his shadow one day and said: “See, my left arm is a bit shorter.” The following day, his shadow disappeared, except that you could still see it, only he couldn’t. You will always think of him when you hear ‘a bit’ because he used it excessively. He’d say that he wanted to read a bit or it was a bit cold or his left arm was shorter a bit. You will not tell what happened to your friend, where he lives now, and what he does – especially not what he does. His profession will forever remain a secret, locked from everybody, including your family.

You will not write about your girlfriend, but if you do you will have to reveal her real name, Alice. You will tell that the paper tissue fell out of her bag while she was showing her train pass. Later, she had to sneeze. You will want to describe how she blushed and crossed her legs, how her underskirt got briefly exposed before she covered it with her bag. You will paint this scene in colors and you will say that the red of her face screamed, that the color of her underskirt was subdued, and her bag was beige.

You will not write about your dreams, but if you do you will provide context. First, you will drive to Rangeley Lakes and back for no particular reason. You will say that Rangeley is exactly three thousand one hundred and seven miles away from the Equator and the same distance from the North Pole. After eleven hours of non-stop driving, you will fall asleep and Alice will walk in. You will admit that you don’t understand why people visit others in dreams, but you will offer your best guess. In this dream, she will tell you that she is not fat. “Can’t you see,” she will say, “I’m thinner than most of my friends.” “Yes, Alice,” you will look down at her slightly worn out shoes, “yes, you are.”

You will not write about the beekeeper, but if you do you will have to start like this: It is a warm day in June and Alice is on her way to the river. She wears the honey-colored sandals that she particularly loves, the beige shorts and a blue T-shirt. She is chewing gum. She walks by the beekeeper’s house and hesitates, then she enters his backyard and says Hi. She smiles and blows a bubble. He stands there without a word, watches as the bees come out. First there’s only one, then many. The bubble sticks to her face when she screams. He knows that bees would go for anything sweet. Of course he knows, but he stands there speechless, his arms crossed on his chest. He watches them feast on the gum, on her face. Every time you try to write about the beekeeper you will wake up in the middle of the night, in the middle of the same dream. Humming is gentle at first as only one comes out, then it becomes louder. Soon after, there’s the whole swarm in the far corner of a meadow. It’s a warm June day and you see them from distance, the little black dots buzzing and drinking from invisible flowers, while he stands there speechless, colorless.