Feeling more than a tad foolish I tiptoed back to the snugness to await the normal alarm time of 6.30am, which, in June, still seems to be just as dark as 2.45am.
As I tried to return to slumber I was kept awake by the nagging feeling that I was a fraud. For decades in the classroom my mantra to pupils during writing lessons had been: “Do not ever end your story with, ‘I woke up. It had all been a dream.’”
This was in response to having read hundreds of implausible narratives which the writers thought they could wriggle out of by using the dream ending. The narrative itself might have involved supersonic motor cars, scaly monsters with fangs, slime, vegetarian super-heroes, nuclear explosions or David Seymour.
And, shock horror, here was I now doing that very thing; starting with an anecdote that was pure cliche. I was overcome with guilt.
So to thousands of past pupils, I hereby apologise. Meekly.
Another writing idea I tried to steer pupils away from was the first-person narrative which ended “and then I died”. After the word “died” I inevitably wrote in bold red: “Then who wrote this?”
Some offenders would even try to defend their gaffe, saying they were writing right up to their terminal moment.
Teacher: So a fanged scaly monster and David Seymour are both chasing you towards a deadly precipice and you’re still writing about it?
Pupil: Yes, I’m a really fast writer. And I use a speed biro.
Teacher: But you’ve even had time before your demise to write the words “The End”.
Pupil: It was either that or “I woke up. It had all been a dream.”
Yet another writing practice I constantly worked to eliminate was the opening full of irrelevant details.
As an example, I might use the topic “The Beach” and suggest opening with a sentence like “I dipped a cautious toe into the water.” Get straight into it was my advice.
This was to avoid something along the lines of “I woke up and the sun was shining. I decided it would be a good day for our family to go to the beach. I ran down the hall (which my father had painted cream last week) to the kitchen and prepared a cup of Milo, a bowl of cereal and two pieces of toast with Vegemite. I also microwaved some leftover macaroni cheese from the fridge. Then I packed my togs, some sunblock and a towel into my Spiderman backpack …”
These irrelevant details are then ended by the teacher’s words: “Pens down. Time is up.” Of course, the writer is still miles away from the beach and possibly hasn’t even finished chewing his toast. And he hasn’t yet got to the part where they all pile excitedly into the car, or having to stop for petrol on the way, or the bumpy final stretch of road.
So for these second and third issues I don’t feel fraudulent, don’t feel the need to offer an apology. But I would like to close by reaffirming my earlier apology about the dream ending.
Or was that apology just a dream?
