I am running late to therapy when, in anticipation of a train, a sign lights up: No right turn, which is exactly where I’m headed. The boom shifts, the gate drops, and I put the car in park. As the freight cars roll past, the sound of metal wheels on a jointed track falls into a pace to match the rhythm of a favorite song on the radio, the lyrics like a siren: home, home, home, and I am there. Home is holding the hand of my daughter on our way to lunch after a few hard days. Home is my arm around my son as he faces away from me, a hug on the run (I’ll take it), my cheek resting on his back. Home is an honest conversation. Dinner for two in the kitchen. A walk together on a summer night. Home is boarding a plane to see family after too long an absence. Waiting for the train, breathing in what is mine, letting go what isn’t, there is more room to notice. To listen to the rhythms of a song and appreciate the road block for the moment, knowing everything around me has purpose.
“One of the most innocent and exquisite pleasures of this life is that of hearing from an absent friend.” ~ from “Introductory Remarks” inThe Useful Letter Writer
Last weekend I spent time in a favorite part of the state, found myself inside an antique store, and there discovered a new tiny treasure, a very tiny book.
Inside the Useful Letter Writer (“Compiled from the best Authorities,” 1864) is a long table of contents–all titles of letters–full of potential story:
From a Sailor in Norfolk, to his wife in New York,
From a Lady just married to her friend,
On Dueling.
Dear Betty, Dear Eliza, My very dear friend.
And this, perhaps my favorite:
Invitation to a Music Party
Dear Sir, On Tuesday we have a select musical party. We shal. feel extremely flattered if you will favour us with the powerful assistance of your brilliant talents. Do not disappoint us. Yours, etc. Friday evening.
“…say all that you have to say; but say it in as few words as possible.”
ICYMI, May is Short Story Month. To round out these 31 days of love for fiction in short form, Beth Mayer guest posts on the challenges, the risks, and the joy in the genre.
On Writing Short Stories: Deliberately Entering (and Resolving!) a New & Troubling Dream
“The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said in any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.” ~ Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories”
Working deeply with the stories in my collection (WE WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE, forthcoming, Black Lawrence Press) over many years allowed me to see why writers say the short story form is difficult. The more I write, the better I get. And? The richer my stories become, the more complex my work revising them. And I have grown to understand how, when I give myself permission, a short story determines itself.
Writing a short story is—for me—the only way to say something that “can’t be said in any other way.” First, though, I need to discover—and understand—that particular “something.”
From generation to publication, the writing process takes courage. If I stall, material accumulates. Writing is patient and much of what happens is unconscious. Though it need not be confessional or (please, no!) replace a good therapist, Tennessee Williams knew that our creative work is often “emotionally autobiographical.” I am sad and write a story called “Blue.” Struggle with perfectionism? Write “Good Enough.” Face an old addiction, yet again? A story called “Beholden.”
My
process is decidedly old-school. To begin, I draft stories in longhand. Then I type-up
what I have—making changes as I go—and hit print. With a pen that I love, I jot
brackets and notes in the margins. I make messy lists that help me gather and
contain a barrage of thoughts. With care, I label places where I plan to move
“chunks” of text around.
Writer and thinker Rollo May, in The Courage to Create, discusses the anxiety one feels when a breakthrough is near; he quotes Picasso: “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” On a summer day near our cabin, this idea manifests when my daughter spends her precious dollar at the “Five & Dime” on a rock that might be a geode. When I explain that she won’t know until she cracks it open, she tells me that it’s worth the risk. If I edit my stories too early, it is like polishing a rock until the surface shines. But I will never know what might be shimmering inside had I taken a hammer to it.
There
are times I know that a story is not working. Maybe it’s an ending that just feels
off. Or maybe there are too many changes to track. I use scissors to cut-up
sections and tape “chunks” of text together in a new way. This can permit me to
literally see where something is missing; there is a gap in the text. It might
be a missing chunk of story or something smaller, a transition of sorts. I make
a note: “bridge line(s) needed” to come back to later. When I can see the way a
story might be coming together, I create equations in the margins of the text,
like this: B + bridge line(s) + A +
MISSING CHUNK + the right last line(s).
The process of writing a short story is like deliberately entering and resolving a new and troubling dream. Finding a way in and out of so many distinct worlds is both exhilarating and disorienting. I become immersed in writing each new story, and every moment is filtered through that work in progress. Experience shows me this season is only temporary.
When writing my collection, this list called “What I Like About Writing” hangs on my office wall: 1. learning something. 2. surprising myself with thoughts. 3. drinking my coffee. 4. getting at the heart of something. 5. coming out safe on the other side. What thoughts am I willing to hold, crack-open, write down?
One story in my collection is told in first person, from the point of view of a narcissistic young man who is a hoarder. A few writer friends tell me, about an early draft: I can’t believe you wrote that. What do they mean? How could someone as nice as I seem to be think these thoughts? Yes. Because when my character deals with addiction and an inflated ego, I am required to conjure and expose some of my own personal darkness.
As a short story writer, I allow my imagination to surprise and challenge me, even if it makes me uncomfortable. The risk is worth the discovery. It is authentic work to be courageous, and my delight to imagine deep within and far beyond myself.
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BETH MAYER’S short story collection WE WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE won the 2017 Hudson Prize with Black Lawrence Press (forthcoming August 2019). Her fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun Magazine, and The Midway Review. She was a fiction finalist for The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (2016), her work recognized among “Other Distinguished Stories” by Best American Mystery Stories (2010), and her stories anthologized in both American Fiction (New Rivers) and New Stories from the Midwest (Ohio University).
Mayer was a Loft Mentor Series Winner in Fiction (2015-16) and holds an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University. She currently teaches English at Century College in Minnesota, where she lives with her family and impossibly faithful dog. Visit her online at https://bethmayer.com/
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Watch for an author Q&A with Beth Mayer on August 21st and a chance to win a copy of WE WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE!
