The Writing Advice That Changed Everything For Me
It involves…snakes. Stick with me.
I’m not one to take inspiration from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure but go with me on this one. There’s a scene in the movie where Pee-wee suddenly encounters a fire in a pet store. He races in, releases the animals, one by one, from their cages. The chimpanzee, the dogs, and even the birds and fish tanks find their way out.
Each time he returns he recoils from the snakes. Bypassing them to see what else could be salvaged. Best to leave the snakes for last, he thinks. Finally, when there are no more animals left to save, he rushes out of the burning shop, hands full of snakes, and collapses.
When I was a teenager, my mother sent me down to the corner Optimo to buy smokes. I sifted through the racks of all the magazines I couldn’t afford to buy when a man walked in with a snake wound around his neck. The issue of Big Bopper I was reading fell to the floor. I inched backward. So far back I was up against the porno magazines they used to wrap in brown paper. I’d never seen a snake before.
