Posted on

A Book Recommendation & Guest: Patricia Ann McNair

The Book

“Our actual Mission is to use stories to build community. It’s not just about creating good stories; it’s about employing those stories to connect people to one another.” ~ Amanda Delheimer Dimond, in Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck

Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck is a collection of stories originally told to a live audience on the 2nd story stage. While there is something quite powerful about listening to a story read out loud – about the effect of the words as they circle the air and settle into our ears, our mind, our hearts – the stories on the pages of this anthology carry as much weight as I imagine they did on stage.

As Dimond says in the quote above, stories serve to connect us. Pick up this book and find yourself in these pages: in a moment between father and daughters that doesn’t go according to plan but unfolds in perfect succession; or at a funeral when everyone knows the truth but no one speaks a word. One of my favorite stories, written by Patricia Ann McNair, speaks to the power of place, how, whether we leave a place whole or broken, memories settle deep within us and urge us to return.

The Guest

I’m honored to host Patricia here, where she writes about confined spaces and moments of reveal and the journey it takes to reach the crux of our story.

Driving the Story
by Patricia Ann McNair

On a long car trip to Montana from Chicago with a friend I barely knew, I told her about how, when I was seven or so, my mother made me return a shoplifted lipstick and a tiny plastic doll to Woolworths. The embarrassment was meant to steer me away from a life of crime, I think. I told my friend the details: my mouth so dry I squeaked I forgot to pay for these; the doll’s dress marked by my moist palms; my mother in front of the store in the car with her window down, the smoke from her cigarette lifting into the blue suburban sky.

On the same trip, my friend told me about what it was like living with her schizophrenic brother. About each of the once-loved family cats buried in the backyard by her father after their deaths of old age mostly, but sometimes of something else, some feline disease.

When I met my half-brother for the first time he was in his fifties, I was in my thirties. And we drove over the backroads of inland Maine, up and down the mountains, past freezing streams. It was autumn, 14 years after the autumn our father died. He told stories about growing up without his father; I told stories about growing up with mine. With ours.

On a car trip in Vermont in the late summer of 2000, a man from England told me about his life in London, his art, the coal miner grandfather who helped his mother raise him after his father died in a military accident when he was five. I told him about the trip I took to Cuba just months before, about my quiet life in the city with my cat, about my impending divorce. The man’s name is Philip Hartigan. We have since married.

So what is it about car trips that compel passengers to tell one another stories? Is it the closeness, perhaps? How being trapped in a small space for some time makes it near impossible not to want to fill the empty air between you? Radio stations come and go as you follow the curves of the highway; talk is better than static. There is only so much music you can agree on. With that audience so close by, how can we not want to share something, to reveal something? They have to listen. It is their only option.

It is this car-journey-story-impulse that led me to the telling of “Return Trip,” my essay in the anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck. Philip and I were on the road for hours, returning to a place that had become important to us. We’d made the trip other times, and each time we learned a bit more about one another.

I don’t want to tell too much about what is in this essay; I am hoping you will pick up the book and read it. In brief: September 11. Woods. A cabin. Students. A cat. My mother. Writing. Dunes. Fall leaves. Love. Death. Place. And the piece, finally finished to be read/told on stage before an audience, came to me like stories do when we are telling them: in bits and pieces, with tangents and sidebars and strange connections. As Philip and I drove to a cabin in the woods some years after the first time we made that drive, I couldn’t help but remember what happened here along the way. And here. And here. And when we reached our destination, I had to write it all down.

It might sound like this was an easy process, a quick one—just capture the moments on the page. Ha! Writing is rarely that easy for me, and I sometimes wonder if a piece is ever really finished. This one, “ReturnTrip,” took a few years. I wrote the first draft(s) in two weeks. That is, two weeks of daily writing, four hours at a time. I shopped it around. It got rejected. I put it away. I came back to it. Tweaked and tinkered. Put it away again. Then, when it came time for me to prepare a piece for 2nd Story, the wonderful Chicago-based live reading and storytelling series, this was the one I came back to. Why hadn’t it been successful before? What did it need? One of the really interesting things about 2nd Story stories is that nearly all of the stories told have a very visible point of discovery, some might even say an epiphany. A place in the story when the teller finally understands the purpose of what she is telling, and the audience can, too. I think, up until I was working on the essay for this particular reading, I did not really know what the story was about. I knew what I was telling, the events of the piece, the happenings. But I had yet to discover its “aboutness.”

I have a friend who tells stories that he thinks sometimes go on too long. (Hi, Ted!) I don’t agree with him; I enjoy his anecdotes greatly. But often at some time during his telling, he says: My point—and I do have one—is… Here’s the thing—“Return Trip” needed a point. My point is… After some years, I finally figured it out. My point.

I’m not gonna tell you what is here; you gotta read it. But below is a little taste of what fueled the piece.

Back in the car, with my mother. We are driving through woods turning colors, and she is asleep. It is the last driving trip we will take together and I want to tell her something. Stories. Something. I want her to tell me what I don’t yet know. My point, Mom, I would say if she were listening, and I do have one.

I do.

Patricia Ann McNair is the author of The Temple of Air, her own collection of short stories that has received much recognition, including the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Awardee in Prose, Finalist Awardee for Midland Society of Authors, and Finalist for Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. She’s received four Illinois Arts Council Awards and was nominated for the Carnegie Foundation US Professor of the Year. McNair teaches in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing Department. For more about McNair and her writing, visit her blog.

Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck releases from Elephant Rock Books on November 12th. Watch the book trailer here.

Posted on

Bread, Books, and Coffee

Fall has a way of throwing me off balance. The weather turns cool, the rain drizzles, and my laptop doesn’t look half as cozy as the comforter on my bed. Hibernate first, write later.

That’s how I felt all last week, and very little writing got done. My mind wasn’t completely on sleep mode, though. I was busy feeding my creative self with other projects. And, sometimes, I was just busy.

Bread

In an effort to warm up and watch something develop (especially with my writing at a standstill), I dove back into the world of baking with yeast. Yeast and I are old enemies, in a kind and loving way. Yeast teases me, hints at some level of greatness, then leaves me with some concoction that weighs on the heavy side. The loaf of bread I pulled out of the oven last week, dense as it was, lacked substance, if you know what I mean.

It smelled good. It even looked good. But, all that kneading and watching and hoping yielded a rock-solid lump of grain that took a strong arm to cut into slices. If there was a circle of bakers similar to my writing critique group, I’d had marched that sucker straight to the table and begged them to show me no mercy. What is the secret to raising a perfect loaf of bread? And, can that translate into a good story? Or, at least a good sandwich?

Books

Remember that comforter I mentioned? I wasn’t kidding when I said I went into hiding. Come 9pm most nights, I crawled into bed with a good book. I started and finished reading Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke, a story about what happens when religion and politics mix too closely and women’s rights are thrown to the wayside. If you like Margaret Atwood, you’ll love this book. If you swing to the right, you might not like it so much. I don’t want to push politics here, but, while Jordan’s book is futuristic, much of the story hits way too close to home.

On a lighter note, and to balance my reading experience, I’ve also been sifting through stories of the past. My daughter and I are knee-deep into the Little House on the Prairie series, currently reading The Long Winter (no wonder I’m in hibernation mode). My son and I are halfway through Blackwater Ben, a YA fiction about a boy working with his father in the cookhouse at a lumber camp. Both books are set around the 1800’s, around the same time as that novel I’m finishing up. So, while I’ve been reading with the kids, my brain has been absorbing nuances of the 19th century life and studying the techniques of writing historical fiction.

Coffee

I’ve been drinking decaf for months now, maybe even a year. I can’t exactly remember, which is perhaps a side effect of cutting the caffeine. At any rate, I poured myself a cup of half decaf half regular last Saturday, and um, wow.

I finally sat down to do some writing and was typing 100 words per minute. No, I didn’t count the words, but who can count when you’re zipping through a draft of something that reads really well on a caffeine high. I even managed to rake several piles of leaves from the back yard all the way down the driveway to the curb like there was no tomorrow and somebody get me a refill on that coffee, would you?

Lordy.

What’s your story? Hibernation, or heavy on the coffee?

Posted on

Q&A with Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine

“This is the story of an astronaut who was lost in space, and the wife he left behind. . . . This is the story of the human race, who pushed one crazy little splinter of metal and a few pulsing cells up into the vast dark reaches of the universe, in the hope that the splinter would hit something and stick, and that the little pulsing cells could somehow survive.” ~ from Shine Shine Shine

Sometimes, it is in moments of distress that everything becomes clear. We see the truth in ourselves and in those around us. We risk showing that truth to others, and we find strange peace.

In Lydia Netzer’s debut novel, Shine Shine Shine, Maxon Mann is a scientist with Asberger’s, sitting on a rocket en route to the moon. His wife, Sunny, is a woman with alopecia, who hides herself behind several different wigs. When a meteor strikes Maxon’s rocket and threatens to send him and his fellow astronauts careening through space, Maxon and Sunny both search their pasts for bits and pieces that will save them. Maxon uncovers the core of his humanity; Sunny discovers that leaving her wigs behind relieves her of more than the physical weight of her long, blonde, fake hair. Throughout the novel, it is the simplicity of love between complicated individuals that yields the most power in the story. Here’s what Liesl Schillinger says about Shine Shine Shine:

[Netzer] slowly assembles a multitude of pinpoint insights that converge to form a glimmering constellation: the singularity of the miraculous machinery of the human organism.

I’m honored to host Lydia Netzer today, and thrilled to be giving away a copy of her novel. Leave your name in the comments (it’s that easy) to enter the giveaway. Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, October 16th, at noon.

And now, welcome Lydia!

CC: One scene in your novel that I particularly love is when Maxon realizes, moments before he proposes to Sunny, how deeply he has grown to know her and love her: “her movements, yes, and her physical shape. He recognized the tone of her voice and he noted persistent mannerisms and favorite vocabulary. . . . But what he realized, looking at her there splashing in the water, making a star with her body and then contracting down to do a somersault, was that he really recognized her, down inside. He knew that, if the planet was spun like a top, and stopped suddenly, and he was asked to point her out, that he could do it.” To drop in a quote here may not give the scene justice, but I couldn’t resist. I read that part several times over. Are you partial to a specific scene or chapter, one that stuck with you long after you finished the book?

LN: The scene that I feel the most happy about and also sad about is probably the scene where Sunny and Maxon are showing their signs to each other, when Maxon is in space and Sunny is watching him on a monitor at NASA. I wanted to give them a way to communicate that made sense to both of them, and would bring them closure, and resolve their discord. Probably if I tried to describe the scene to someone who hadn’t read the book, and said “They were looking at each other in web cams, and then they wrote notes to each other, and stuck them on their bodies,” it would sound a little bizarre… and like something that couldn’t be that emotional. It’s my hope that in opening them up throughout the book in different ways, I have brought you to a point, by the time that scene comes in, that you can understand what they’re saying to each other from the inside of their relationship.

The worst scene to write was when she takes her mother off life support.

The easiest to write was the scene at the neighborhood craft party, when Les Weathers makes an appearance.

CC: I do love that scene with the signs, and I think it’s perfect the way it unfolds.

Throughout the story, Maxon writes algorithms or explanations in computer speak that help him translate how he should interact with others and what he should say in certain circumstances. All those IF THEN statements and ending tags and brackets, I love it! We could all use such scripted lessons at times, and so much of Maxon’s character is revealed in this way. What inspired this idea, to give the reader that kind of visual insight in the workings of Maxon’s mind?

LN: Since I became a parent myself, I’ve become so aware of how many of our interactions are rituals — learned responses to a very small set of situations that occur in daily life. How are you? I am fine. How was your weekend? It was great. We might as *well* be robots, wheeling around, bumping into each other and powering up the appropriate green light so it can flash an answering sequence to the other robots’ green lights.

Teaching a child manners, learning the ins and outs of a new job, surviving a first date, going to church, working out, we respond to input with well-defined outputs, and in training a human to cope with these situations, you find it’s not that much different from programming a robot. The amount of time we spend actually generating some heartfelt interaction with new ways of saying things that we’re inventing on the spot? Probably close to zero percent, given the span of our lives.

It’s very hard for an autistic person to interpret intentions, to understand inflections. And it’s hard for autistic people to mimic nuanced language, and facial expressions. However, it’s possible for a high functioning autistic person, or someone with Asperger’s Syndrome or Hyperlexia, to learn enough “cheat codes” that they can pass in most situations. It’s not always necessary to understand someone, if you appear to understand them. It’s not always necessary to love someone, if you can appear to love them. Thinking about these questions really led me to evaluate how children are socialized, how adults behave, and what is the real difference between a human brain and sophisticated AI?

CC: In this Q&A on Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s blog, Writerhead, you say, “When I pack for a writing retreat, I need certain smells: Crabtree & Evelyn ‘West Indian Lime,’ Viktor & Rolf ‘Flowerbomb,’ Thierry Mugler ‘Angel.’ Also Vick’s Vapor Rub, grapefruit shampoo, and rosemary. When I was writing Shine, Shine, Shine, the smell of…bergamot helped me think about Sunny and Maxon’s burgeoning love affair.” Do scents still play a part in your writing ritual?

LN: Absolutely. I’m currently writing a story in which one of the mother characters uses lavender scent to mask the smell of alcohol, so that her whole house and everything connected to her is constantly reeking of lavender. Her daughter, in contrast, is lemons.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LN: Right now I’m reading Gods without Men by Hari Kunzru, Zombie by J.R. Angelella, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg. I’m reading Flatscreen by Adam Wilson and Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman to prepare for our panel at Nashville’s Southern Festival of the Book. And I’m reading a couple more things: Patriots by David Frum and Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore. I like to have as many books going at once as I can. I’m too hungry a reader to only have one thing on my plate.

CC: What advice can you offer writers on the rise?

LN: Never give up and never quit. Find the story that’s most important in the world for you to tell, and then grab onto it and don’t give up on it ever. When it seems like telling it has gotten too hard, know that you’re doing it right. It’s worth it.

Don’t push your difficult material away by putting your best scenes in summary, in flashbacks, in distant characters’ lives, or locked inside the brains of dead people or children. Don’t smooth over ugliness, don’t skirt around violence or close the curtains on sex. Your difficult material is your best material. Stuff that’s easy to read and write doesn’t matter much. Tear off as many layers as you can between your reader and what really matters, give them all the information you can give them as honestly as you can give it to them, and as soon.

Push every button on the control panel. Don’t hold back. If there’s a way to do it harder, do it. If there’s a choice that’s going to push it farther, make it. This means uncomfortable, personal, honest introspection and a willingness to reach into your own brain, or heart, or soul if you have one, and pull out your secrets.

~

I’m Lydia Netzer, and my first novel, Shine Shine Shine, is a People Magazine “People Pick,” an IndieBound Next Pick, the Amazon Spotlight Book for July, and is available now! I’m a nerd, a mom, an electric guitar player, and I want to make you lunch.

~

For more on Lydia Netzer or her book, watch the book trailer, check out her website here, follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to her page on Facebook.

Don’t forget to leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Shine Shine Shine.