Week 5, Theme 4

Prompt: You’re a reporter. Take time to talk to someone you would like to write about in the form of a brief profile. This is best done in person---so that you can incorporate a physical sense of the person you’re describing, and perhaps elements of the setting in which you talk. But it’s also possible to work from a phone interview or email. It will be useful to have a specific topic in mind in advance---how, for example, this person came to live where she does, or to do work where he does. You may cast the theme as a monologue, intersperse quotation, or use indirect discourse. This time, think back to your “Voice/s” themes.

Grant sits in a red chair at the end of the converted shuffleboard table, sipping a hot chocolate. In front of him is the Valentine’s Day issue of a local paper; the stains from his burrito streak speckled brown lines through the hearts on the page. Tall, dark-haired, and classically handsome, he sits slumped and unassuming.

“There are a few reasons why I’m writing an autobiography. First, I think that my life is more interesting than that of most other people. I mean, I’m sure that many people think this, but I really do believe it. The second reason is that I want to publish a book is so that other people think that I have profound thoughts, that I live a varied life. I don’t want people to think that I am just focused on my career and nothing else. Finally, I think that the topic of the book is something that will actually help people when they read it.

“Writing a book isn’t easy. I first tried to write this when I was ten years old, right after I had finished with the cancer thing, but I wasn’t able to go through with it. I think one of the things I learned from that was that before I could write about the experience I first needed to reject it and to relegate it to the back of my mind. Also, I now know that the interesting aspects of my disease have only revealed themselves later in life. And, obviously, as a ten year old I did not have the writing skills I needed to do this. Do I think I’ll finish it? No. But writing this isn’t just about the process, either.”

It’s time for Grant’s train to Princeton. Prompted for a summary, he thinks for a while, staring at the gray outside the panel window.

“Okay, I’ve thought of a way to describe my book in one ten-word sentence – it has a semicolon. You don’t overcome cancer; it haunts you throughout your life. Nobody thinks this now, but that’s what people need to know.”