When the Story Isn't So Sweet
Maybe it begins with people asking How are you? in a way that makes it clear there’s one option for an answer. Or those casual conversations where people confess a problem and there’s a beat after the compassionate murmur, a silence that seems to call for the feel-good twist or lesson, the silver lining. I’ve done that, smiling way too soon. Sometimes it’s appropriate, but often it feels like a slap to the speaker. And may be the place where a writer is born, as we look for time and silence and paper to write our hard and complicated truths.
Even if we’re writing something about mothers and children more perfect than real, or more of a romance than a real relationship, writing can be tough. But when the story doesn’t swing toward a happy ending, there’s one more reason for doubt to sprawl across our shoulders. Sometimes I can’t quite shrug her off, but on better days I manage to call up a girl whose face I can’t remember but who sat by the professor in a college writing workshop. She was well dressed and never stumbled over words. I didn’t really know her, but somehow I imagined her coming from a together family and being in a supportive relationship that would slip right towards marriage and well-adjusted children. At any rate, she didn’t seem anything like me. But once I submitted for critique a story based on my messy life, and I remember her pronouncing it good and honest and saying, “The character seems just like me.” And the professor, who was decades older than us and male, nodded, too.
Was it possible other people carried around secrets, flaws, unhealthy obsessions, and memories of disasters? Of course it was. I’d never recognize this girl today, even if she hadn’t aged. But when doubt crawls to my corner, it’s the single faces I try to call into the room. This young woman at college, or the sole girl in a hall filled with writers with more and higher stacks of books on their tables. This girl chose Aani and the Tree Huggers as her one book to buy because Aani looked a little like her sister. As we locked eyes, the lines toward other more popular authors blurred into the background. That’s the state I imagine myself back to.
These one-to-one moments aren’t going to pay the bills or lead to another book getting published. But they’re where my strength comes from: one person heard and it seemed to matter. So I try again to write the way some people speak in front of an audience, catching one pair of eyes. It’s me to you or you to me and always word by word.
Even if we’re writing something about mothers and children more perfect than real, or more of a romance than a real relationship, writing can be tough. But when the story doesn’t swing toward a happy ending, there’s one more reason for doubt to sprawl across our shoulders. Sometimes I can’t quite shrug her off, but on better days I manage to call up a girl whose face I can’t remember but who sat by the professor in a college writing workshop. She was well dressed and never stumbled over words. I didn’t really know her, but somehow I imagined her coming from a together family and being in a supportive relationship that would slip right towards marriage and well-adjusted children. At any rate, she didn’t seem anything like me. But once I submitted for critique a story based on my messy life, and I remember her pronouncing it good and honest and saying, “The character seems just like me.” And the professor, who was decades older than us and male, nodded, too.
Was it possible other people carried around secrets, flaws, unhealthy obsessions, and memories of disasters? Of course it was. I’d never recognize this girl today, even if she hadn’t aged. But when doubt crawls to my corner, it’s the single faces I try to call into the room. This young woman at college, or the sole girl in a hall filled with writers with more and higher stacks of books on their tables. This girl chose Aani and the Tree Huggers as her one book to buy because Aani looked a little like her sister. As we locked eyes, the lines toward other more popular authors blurred into the background. That’s the state I imagine myself back to.
These one-to-one moments aren’t going to pay the bills or lead to another book getting published. But they’re where my strength comes from: one person heard and it seemed to matter. So I try again to write the way some people speak in front of an audience, catching one pair of eyes. It’s me to you or you to me and always word by word.
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