Remembering The Misfit

I was thinking yesterday about a quote I heard years ago about how good writing should make you feel like your head has been cut off. I think I heard it while in college, and at the time it resonated with the part of me that enjoys being moved, even uncomfortably so, by the written word. I was reading Flannery O'Connor back then and can remember feeling this very way when reading "A Good Man is Hard To Find." The moment I realized what was about to happen was eye-popping. I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped. Oh. My. Gosh. Filled with a desperate panic, much like the Grandmother herself, I felt like I'd been through something once I finished reading. I was affected. And I couldn't shake it.

This wasn't the first time I'd felt that way, and I can remember several other works before and since that have been, shall we say, literary game-changers. Maybe not in the classic sense of the word, but at least in terms of the way I felt while reading them. It's Jonas learning to see the color red, it's Katniss in the games, and all the other things in stories that you can't believe are happening. Because no one has ever written a situation quite like it. I suppose that's the reason I can't wrap my mind around writing fiction. I'm not sure what I could add to the party that would create this new, awe-inspiring sense of having been figuratively beheaded. Not that this means I won't ever come up with one, but for now, I'll stick to what I know. And let you keep your heads.