Tag Archives: Narrative

Story As Story

March 7, 2020 By in Process, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

We went to Petra but did not see the monastery. When you go, Marcia said, you have to see the monastery. She followed a Jordanian guide at night, to see the sky, but rain came, the rock was slick, and the sky hid. We walked to Petra in the bright morning, leaving a street of restaurants and souvenir shops to wind through ancient, quiet caverns. Claire was two and half and surprised us by walking all the way to the Treasury, racing ahead and turning back, cheeks pinked by the early heat. Grant was six months and I carried him, belly to belly, dipping my face to blow air on his neck, lifting him to nurse in the dark mouth of a cave carved from red stone, soot on its ceiling, a scent of cat piss. We ate mid afternoon lunch with a crowd of tourists. We talked about what to see next. The monastery, I said, thinking of Marcia telling me that even in the rain, it was beautiful. Claire was tired and Grant was heavy and the monastery was up a steep hill of uneven steps. We could ride a skinny mule led by a skinny boy. We wandered dusty ruins, walked past impossible columns, stood in the amphitheater. And I knew we wouldn’t trek up to the monastery. We could. We could but we were tired. That year after my son was born was a yield to motherhood, and that afternoon in Petra a stone to mark: let go, let go.

I remember the late afternoon sun turning my children’s hair to gold. We walked out of Petra and I thought I probably would not see the monastery, ever, and that was heavy and light.

Now I am wondering what to do with this story.

Now I am thinking of story as story, only.

When my daughter was born, I labored several hours alone before I called my husband to come home, it is time. I was alone when the baby shifted and my right leg went numb. I sat wide to ease the pressure on my hips and the baby dropped. In my body it was like an audible pfff-wok, two distinct, startling movements setting my daughter in place to be born. I looked down at my swollen belly and said to her, You’re ready. She and I were about to be new, together.

These two experiences are more than the words here.

I am writing a collection of stories about living abroad. A year ago I wondered if I could write a multigenre collection, tucking essay alongside fiction. A year ago I thought I might write a memoir about summers home, that odd way of knowing family, friends and country six weeks at a time.

Since January I have played with a different idea, to write a collection of stories without distinguishing my lived experience from the work of my imagination.

I lived it
if I put it on the page
I was there
when it happened

These are first thoughts. But I am finding a way to tell it all.

As I Draft: Choosing One Story (but Writing Two)

February 21, 2020 By in Process Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

In Kuwait I got massage from a Filipino woman named ­Charo. (Her name is not Charo). In our time together she told me stories about arriving to Kuwait, working for an abusive family, finding placement in salons, learning massage, supporting her family back home. For a few years I thought about how to make a story of that story. I was naked. She was clothed. Something about that dynamic – the physical reversal of constructed authority (me, a white woman in the hands of brown woman in a country where racism was daily apparent) and Charo’s interruption of the usual relationship between masseuse and client, her filling all the silence with her story so that I had to listen – something about that dynamic is powerful.

I began to draft the story and yesterday I thought there should be something else happening to the narrator too. Like Charo’s story is a contrast or complement to another narrative. Many of my stories are like this: two or three lines to trace through. One of the stories I submitted to winter workshop is about a woman looking for the hottest water at a public bath in Budapest. But inside that story is another, of the trauma she carries around. Because that is how it works to be a person: we walk through good and terrible days carrying a bunch of good and terrible things.

And events or emotions entangle. I appreciate and examine the complication. There was a year when I wanted to have an affair. That same year a friend’s infant died. When I think of one, I often think of the other. Or when I remember traveling to Australia, I go my grandfather. We were at the gate when I saw my mother’s email. When I think of Australia, I think of a twinned narrative: that I might have canceled a plan and gone home to Wisconsin winter instead. When I think of Australia, I am seven, balancing on the crossbar of Grandpa’s ten-speed, racing down the hill. There was wind and his perspiration and the command not to fidget.

So yesterday I thought about what to add to this Charo story. Give the narrator a separate experience. Entwine the two. But I wonder if the better story is to understate the narrator’s separate life: it is there, given in a few lucid details, but not brought forward.

I consider who is telling the story. And whose story am I telling. The narrator is a white woman like me. I want her to listen like I listened to Charo. How do I write to make the narrator listen, to let the reader hear too? I think now this story is still an entanglement of two: listening is its own story.

Portland, Maine

January 11, 2020 By in Daily WP Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I am in Maine to begin my MFA program. I arrived a couple days early to shift my body to east coast time. Yesterday I walked downtown and sat to write.

When I return to Korea I am covering a maternity leave. One of the classes I’ll teach is creative writing – I’ve missed teaching this course and had fun planning. One of the books I pulled material from is Writing Alone & With Others by Pat Schneider, and yesterday I practiced the following exercise from memory. Which means I didn’t do the exercise exactly.

Take a small bit of writing – a page or so – from your journal. Or write a straight narrative account of something that happened to you. (Give yourself only five or seven minutes to do this, and write fast, without editing). 

When you have finished, put it aside, and without looking at it, begin again to write the same narrative. Do not look back! Allow yourself to say exactly the same words if they come to you, or to change it in any way you wish. After a bit, introduce into the narrative an object that was not there in the first draft, and that was not there in your memory. Make it completely imagined. Go on writing the narrative for a bit, and then introduce a character (again, completely imagined) that wasn’t there, and give him or her a significant place in the narrative.

This is fun – and for many people it simply magically erases the big problem of how to break out of literal memory into imagined scenes and characters.

I wrote for a couple of hours. What I did was quick write the narrative. One block page. Then I rewrote this narrative twice, introducing a new object in the second telling, and playing with dynamic between the two characters in the third. The point is to get comfortable pulling from life, turning fiction. Successive rewrites are a constraint too, pressing your creativity to work with your immediate imagination – one, two, three – rather than giving space between drafts. Successive rewrites are also a challenge to keep yourself interested as you write. I like the way I finally describe the salt rimed sidewalk, and the subtle (uncomfortable) conflict of the third draft.

Try this by way of Schneider’s original exercise, or with my accidental modification.

One

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Process

July 10, 2019 By in Process, Thirty-Nine Stories Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

A few years ago (several years ago, likely – the years and practice bleed) I started note drafting my narrative pieces. This is a way for me to pull my daydream drafts to a page, sketch a story while the ideas are in my head. Character names, places, motivations, situations or plot points, whole sentences, dialogue, whatever elements I can see in the moment I put on the page for later use. Sometimes my story notes weave through a few notebooks before I commit much to a draft.

Yesterday I thought about that line

I don’t take the heat like I used to

and what story I might make from it. We’re up in northern Wisconsin, on a lake with my husband’s parents for the week. I imagine any vacation as a potentially prolific time for my writing, and most aren’t, but here I’ve taken an hour or two each day to journal and draft. Last night, citing spotty wi-fi in the cabin, the kids and I headed to the camp lodge where they connected to play Minecraft and I thought about not taking the heat like I used to.

Today I headed into town for a coffee and drafted the first paragraphs of the story. I like to draft longhand, at least to get the piece started, before I begin typing, and I usually return to my notebook to draft scenes or think about a story further. Again, this can run through a few notebooks. Thirty-Nine Stories is supposed to cut the space between thinking and making so today I quit journaling (I have little new to say anyway) and started the draft. Then, with fifteen minutes until closing (at 2pm!) I began typing.

Maggie called Lynn on Monday night. Mom, she said, I have an interview in the Cities tomorrow morning. Maggie’s usual sitter caught a bug or had food poisoning, something gastric, and couldn’t watch Cheyenne. Can you? Maggie paused. Please? Within the hour Maggie pulled into the drive, popped the trunk of her old Honda to retrieve a duffel bag. Come on! she called over her shoulder and Cheyenne unbuckled, opened the car door and followed her mom up the walk. Maggie knocked but pulled the screen door open before Lynn moved from her view at the kitchen window. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Maggie said, I didn’t want to leave early and still hit traffic. She met Lynn in a tight hug. Third interview, she said, They actually booked a hotel for me. I think this is when – . She stepped back, shook her head.

Honey, that’s great! Lynn smiled. She sounded and looked like this was great news, and it was. Maggie caught the effort but didn’t know if it was Lynn, hurt by the surprise, or Lynn, still unmoored by widowhood. 

I’m sorry, Maggie said, I should have told you sooner. But it’s like, a little too good. I didn’t want to say anything. Behind her, Cheyenne scuffed the floor with her shoe. Could be fun, right, Chey? Maggie reached an arm around to pull her daughter into a side hug. Cheyenne shrugged. Maggie dipped to kiss the part in Cheyenne’s hair, then looked up at Lynn, made a face that said please help. Lynn was out of practice helping, though she’d been great help during her granddaughter’s first years as Maggie finished a degree and found work. Tether distance, Maggie said after landing her first job, echoing Lynn’s own joke about which colleges Maggie could apply to, when Lynn couldn’t imagine not seeing her daughter each day. But Maggie flung a wide net and moved to the ocean, returning with a baby, staying tether distance in the decade since. 

Lynn looked at her granddaughter, reached a hand to touch Cheyenne’s shoulder. I’ve missed you, she said, We should do all the things. Cheyenne smiled then, ducked her head at that, an old exchange that once opened their time together. What should we do? Lynn would ask. Everything! Cheyenne would open her arms wide. You mean, all the things? Lynn would lift Cheyenne to rest on a hip and they would begin listing: lunch first, then a safari, a walk to the playground, a trip in a hot air balloon, ice cream for dinner. Cheyenne became the small voice of reason. Grams, she would say, We can’t go to Paris. It’s a hundred million miles away! 

Thank you, Maggie mouthed. She hugged Cheyenne and whispered something. Cheyenne nodded. Then Maggie was out the door, backing the Honda down the drive. Lynn asked, So what should we do? and Cheyenne sighed, picked up her duffel and retreated down the hall to her mom’s old bedroom. 

Nineteen of thirty-nine started. 496 words so far.

I Felt Like My Seniors: Writing A Personal Narrative That Says “Like Me, Choose Me”

October 10, 2016 By in Process, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

English 12 started the school year with the College Essay. The all important personal narrative that matters more now that more college admission boards read applications holistically. When I applied to state university nearly twenty years ago (!) I remember handwriting a couple of paragraphs in pen. I do remember thinking about what I wanted to say first but I don’t remember worrying if those sentences would sell me as a student because I was weirdly unworried about where I went to college, thinking I’d move on to an art and design school later. This passive approach to major life decisions was a pattern I kept through dating, career choice, marriage, jobs and children up until maybe two years ago. It’s mostly worked out. But this year Justin and I are looking for a new country and while I’m not anxious about where we’ll land, I also want to be wise about the search, upping our chances at choosing a place rather than taking what seems the easiest or most practical option.

So as my seniors were thinking how to frame themselves in a single, short narrative, I was also worrying what I look like on paper. I spent a couple of months picking at my resume, counting the many times I opened the document, sighed, and closed it. Then I had to write a bio for the international teaching placement service we’re using. I was in the thick of reading college essay drafts and revisions. During conferences with students, we’d look at whether they were telling a specific story to illustrate their character or ambition. We’d point where to expand, where to cut. We’d commiserate over the difficulty of conclusions. All the while, I penned bio starts in my notebook and thought it was hopeless, I wouldn’t find a way to say to potential employers: This is who I am!

One Friday afternoon the kids were out and I made myself write the bio. A lot of my essays get a first draft like this, the just-write-it-now draft. After I’ve written an idea again and again in my notebook, I surrender it to a typed page, see how I might shape it.

My first draft was long. I had to cut nearly a third of the words. Concision appeals. Having to pare a piece forces precision into your work. I don’t totally like the short version best. However, some of the revised diction and syntax works better. While I posted the short version as my bio, I decided to create a last draft combining my long and short version in a piece I think works well. What is gained or lost in the expansion or cuts?

First, the combination draft at 971 words:

This summer I learned to bake French macarons. I can buy them at a bakery for a half dinar or about two dollars apiece but I wanted to see if I could bake a tray myself. I do this sometimes, pick a pastry and learn how to make it. When we first arrived in Kuwait, I spent a few months perfecting the croissant. For a while I baked our bread. I spent a year playing with chocolate chip cookie recipes until I found one I like enough to use exclusively. And now, the French macaron.

I bought a kitchen scale and weighed one hundred twenty grams of almond flour and two hundred grams unrefined powdered sugar which I then sifted between two bowls half a dozen times. Making macarons is meticulous. Recipes use words like “just” as in, whip the egg whites until they just form a stiff peak, and warn against over folding the almond flour and sugar with the egg. But you don’t know you’ve done it right until the macarons are in the oven forming crinkly feet at their edges. Even then, the shells might be hollow in the center. Macarons are maddening. I’d finish a batch and guess what to change on the next round. I ate a lot of macarons in one month. I sent plates to neighbors. I found my favorite flavors – pistachio, salted caramel, and raspberry. Most of my macarons were imperfect, the rounds a little lopsided, the filling too thick or thin. I had fun though.

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570 Word Sentence

May 9, 2016 By in Daily WP, Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment

This month I put to words something that I had been nudging, getting the shape of, for a while. I’ve been teaching for over a decade, though I accepted my first job expecting to leave the profession after a few years, when I was ready to start an MFA program. I like teaching. But when I think about being part of the field of education, I don’t aspire to do more than keep a classroom and become better at teaching. Meanwhile I’ve watched many colleagues and friends take on other roles in the field. And sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t clamber for a new title too. But what I really want is to be a great writer. So I practice this craft at the loss of tallying credits toward a masters in education, at the loss of school leadership, at the loss of a raise. Occasionally I wonder how long I hold this split: it seems I might be a great teacher or a great writer but teaching full-time and cobbling time to draft and revise means I’m good at both (even very good, catch me on the right day), but not great at either. I’m only good for the consistent practice. Ten more years of this creative tension and I’ll be exhausted but great.

So I’d been looking for a way to say this. I haven’t found the best way. But when I had my students write one long sentence telling a complete story, I told a kind of story too. Part profile. Part rumination. I chose to write about myself in the third person which helped me cut through the noise and say what I wanted.

Great At ___/ The Only One For ___

This year Sarah Marslender returned to teaching full-time after four years of teaching part-time because her writing career remains an unpaid fantasy (let’s say this really is her fault and she knows it, because she’s a squawking chicken about collecting rejections from literary magazines and because she isn’t sure she is a brand anyone wants to publish and because she’d rather not stay up past nine for this fantasy, instead wishing for an editor or agent to magically materialize and insist she take sabbatical and finish what she’s started: a multigenre collection tacked together piece by piece over the last five years and showing readers what mattered/ matters to this woman/ wife/ mom/ writer/ friend/ teacher) but also because she is good at teaching and likes it well enough that she’ll probably keep teaching in some capacity for years to come and, more, she wants to figure out better ways to teach writing and revision and developing flow while you write (something she is desperate to hold onto for more than an hour at a time herself) and she wants to help you instill discipline in your practice (something she has by way of games she plays, like filling a notebook a month) – yes, Sarah wants good things in her classroom but this month she also craves being told she is good at what she does because like every other thing that sucks her time and talent, teaching remains a fairly thankless profession if you have anything but a selfless mindset or take to heart the Facebook posts about how great teachers/ teaching is and Sarah thinks this is because there is a high moral expectation for educators, that teaching is akin to taking religious vows which spur dedicated teachers to find even greater meaning outside the classroom, packing their schedules with voluntary committees, sports coaching and activities sponsoring; vows which spur dedicated teachers to pursue masters in education with an eye on curriculum or administration which may get them out of the classroom because that is one way to gain notice in the field, to leave the classroom and all that entails (grading, management, grading, planning, grading) to prove themselves as great educators by helping their colleagues better assess/ manage/ plan; Sarah is just embarrassed to realize that watching her fellow teachers grow into promotions at her school, chosen for positions they fit just right, has made her look at her own empty want of specialness, that icky taste in her mouth of wishing someone would look at Sarah Marslender and think She’d be great at ___/ She’s the only one for ___ and then she’s ashamed because she knows she’s needed and appreciated not only because Facebook regularly praises her profession but because she has relationships at school that matter for a semester or two or a year or so and many times much longer; oh, Sarah is embarrassed her ego was bruised by her colleagues’ deserved placements, which she didn’t even want for herself: no, it’s the wanting to be thought of as Perfect for ___ that kills her this month because what she’s perfect for is teaching and learning and adding up unpublished pages and making herself say it’s okay to matter in a hundred unsaid ways and it’s okay to keep balance like a quiet and flushed student thinking of an answer when someone asks what Sarah Marslender is great at/ the only one for.

Knee Deep In Narrative

April 10, 2016 By in Process, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

Timing is everything. At school we’ve left poetry for fiction. Today I introduced one of my favorite flash fiction prompts (more below). And at home I’m taking an online creative nonfiction workshop through Stanford Continuing Studies. This week I’m working on a personal essay for workshop, but the flash fiction prompt is too tempting to skip, one I return to each semester and still love.

The prompt from What If? by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter:

Write five mini-stories (limit: 200 words each) to account for a single event or circumstance, such as a man and woman standing on a city sidewalk, hailing a cab. Each story should be different – in characters, plot, and theme – from the others.

So this time I’ve asked my students to use this exercise to explore narrative choices: first/ second/ third person; limited or omniscient narrator; past or present tense. Since we have five (super short, nonthreatening) stories to write, we can play with the choices we make as authors. Play along at home!

If you’re looking for a situation or circumstance to get you started, here are some we came up with in class today:

A father and son at a football match

A young woman steps onstage

Two friends at lunch

The power goes out

The phone rings but no one answers it

I like the idea of this prompt generating a finished piece, either as a longer story born of an itty bitty draft; or as a series whose parts stand alone but, when purposefully ordered, create a stronger whole.