Hi, friends.
Hope you are warm and well here in the middle of January. At the beginning of the year, I began printing out my manuscript and reading through it. It’s slow going, important work that I meant to do in August. I knew that the back half needed a lot of work. It makes me anxious to think about how much work it needs. And so I find myself twiddling here and there on other chapters instead of facing it. Turns out, there’s a lot of vibes back there, and ideas, and paths I could explore. If and when.
The anxiety is still there. Only now I’m also pretty annoyed with myself for not doing it earlier. But I am doing it. Trying to see what I’ve got. What I can let go of. What still needs to be done. Reconsidering structure. Always and forever.
If there’s any worthwhile advice that I can give you, it’s don’t be like me. When was the last time you read through your project in its entirety? (If the answer is never, or it’s been a while, let this be the nudge you need.)
I’ve also been cobbling together my syllabus for my writing class this semester—What Haunts Us. The idea came to me writing this very newsletter, and considering how many times I mentioned a narrator was haunted by this or that. So, thank you for your help! I’m not sure if these hauntings speak to my mindset or story selection or writing in general. But I ran across this quote by the late, great Barry Hannah which will serve as our guide this semester: “All stories are ghost stories. Something haunts the work, and the reader turns the page to find out what it is.”
I read over a lot of first pages looking for haunting stories. And I passed over a good many of them that didn’t pull me in. Didn’t have a sense of urgency from the jump. I just finished reading a novel about a hunting that should’ve been full of urgency, plotwise. The premise had loads of stakes. A lot of potential conflict. And yet, it was almost entirely concerned with the past. Plotwise there were a lot of baths and a lot of telephone calls that didn’t connect for one reason or another. Pretty frustrating as a reader (I nearly put it down several times) but great for revising. It helped me see where I had hit the same note with the same action. Where I was metaphorically running a bath. Where I was letting the telephone call go unanswered instead of having the difficult conversation or asking the questions that needed asking.
Story.
This week let us take a look at Neck, an essay by Maggie O’Farrell. It’s part of her memoir, I am, I am, I am. And yes, it’s about a haunting too. (It begins halfway down the page.)
Craft tidbits.
I had every intention of discussing the last essay in her memoir where she is racing to the hospital with her daughter who is suffering from anaphylaxis from a peanut allergy, and though I thought it was online, and though the book suggests it is, alas, it is not. And the copy I read has been returned to the libraray so I can’t pull it off the shelf but can tell you the way she renders the urgency of the situation is so powerful my feet were sweating as I read it. Structurally, it’s also great for getting you into the crisis right away and then going back and explaining situation and the care O’Farrell has taken over the years to prevent this exact thing from happening. (So, something for your reading list.)
Though told with a bit more distance, Neck, also conveys a sense of urgency. Of foreboding. Of fears realized.
On the path ahead, stepping out from behind a boulder, a man appears.
We are, he and I, on the far side of a dark tarn that lies hidden in the bowl-curved summit of this mountain. The sky is a milky blue above us; no vegetation grows this far up so it is just me and him, the stones and the still black water. He straddles the narrow track with both booted feet and he smiles.
Okay. Not ideal. Out here in the country, alone, on this walkingpath with this man.
“Hello again,” he says to me, and his gaze slides over my face, my body, my bare, muddy legs. It is a glance more assessing than lascivious, more calculating than lustful: it is the look of a man working something out, planning the logistics of a deed.
O’Farrell slows down this moment by evaluating his glance, building the same kind of dread in the reader as she felt in the moment. She does it again in the next section through contradictions. The older self looking back on the younger self’s naivety.
I am careful to use strides that are confident, purposeful, but not frightened. I am not frightened: I say this to myself, over the oceanic roar of my pulse. Perhaps, I think, I am free, perhaps I have misread the situation. Perhaps it’s perfectly normal to lie in wait for young girls on remote paths and then let them go. I am eighteen. Just. I know almost nothing.
And then he puts the strap of his binoculars around her neck. Now, reality sets in. There’s no use in trying to downplay his intentions. The situation becomes more urgent and she conveys this to us by a long, running monologue. We’re right there in her head with her.
I decided I must play along with the birdwatching game. I knew that this was my only hope. You can’t confront a bully; you can’t call them out; you can’t let them know that you know, that you see them for what they are. I glanced through the binoculars for the length of a single heartbeat. Oh, I said, eider ducks, goodness, and I ducked down and away, out of the circle of that strap. He came after me, of course he did, with that length of black leather, intending to lasso me again, but by this time I was facing him, I was smiling at him, gabbling about eider ducks and how interesting they were, did eiderdowns used to be made of them, is that where the name came from, were they filled with eider duck feathers? They were? How fascinating. Tell me more, tell me everything you know about ducks, about birds, about birdwatching, goodness, how knowledgeable you are, you must go birdwatching a lot. You do? Tell me some more about it, about the most unusual bird you’ve ever seen, tell me while we walk because is that the time, I really must be going now, down the hill, because I have to start my shift, yes, I work just there – you see those chimneys? That’s the place. It’s quite close, isn’t it? There will be people waiting for me. Sometimes if I’m late, they’ll come out to look for me, yes, my boss, he’ll be waiting. He walks up here all the time, too, all the staff do, he knows I’m out here, he certainly does, he knows exactly where, I told him myself, he’ll be out looking for me any minute now, he’ll be just around that corner. Sure, we can walk this way, and while we do, why don’t you tell me some more about birdwatching, yes, please, I’d like that, but I really must rush because they are waiting.
It’s overwhelming. This paragraph of text. The onslaught of questions. We feel the urgency that she did.
Later she realizes that another tourist wasn’t so lucky. She thinks about that girl, the girl she almost was, every day. She dreams about the man. And yet:
It is a story difficult to put into words, this. I never tell it, in fact, or never have before. I told no one at the time, not my friends, not my family: there seemed no way to translate what had happened into grammar and syntax.
And yet. Isn’t that the job of the writer? To put it into words. To find a way. To translate in some fashion what we think we cannot.
Sparks.
Is there a story you don’t tell? Maybe you could whisper it into a notebook. A journal. Just for you. Or. If you’d rather think of it in fictional ways, what story might your character not tell? What secret have they been keeping? (I am thinking of the Jilting of Granny Weatherall, where granny, on her deathbed remembers the time that she was jilted at the alter. No one in her family knows. Or. I just read a story in which the narrator has not told his current wife and child about the wife and child that he walked out on. Um. Talk about hauntings. And great story prompt in its own right: from the POV of the second wife.)
Or. Where do you need to create a sense of urgency in your work in progress? Is there urgency on the first page? On the last? What does that soggy middle look like?
Other tidbits.
A month or so ago everyone was hailing Chat GPT as the next big great thing. And worrying about its disruption to the classroom. And fretting over the consequences of this technology. Admittedly, I have not played around with it, but it’s been on my mind. I’m considering using it as an essay prompt in my lit class—having students use it to generate a response and then correcting it. In the meantime, a student has written an app that can tell if an essay is AI generated or not.
Speaking of classroom assignments, I often turn to the Electric Typewriter as a source for essays on specific topics. They’ve just put out their 50 Best for 2022.
Barrelhouse is open through Feb. 5 for nonfiction books (essay collections and memoir) that fuse personal narrative with something else culture-y. Stillhouse Press is seeking speculative novels. Salt Hill Journal is open through January 31. Greensboro Review is open through February 15.
I am thinking of two separate What Haunts Us offerings: a reading group and a writing class. So stay tuned for those.
In the meantime, it’s a beautiful day to scribble down some of the things that haunt us. I’m off to snail through my manuscript (with urgency!). Until next time, let’s keep those pencils up, friends ~
Marsha
My finger’s are stained from all the underlining I’ve been doing in The Writer’s Notebook II about suspense and anxiety and longing. Perfect time to receive your email. Thank you!