The Case for Ain't

Hi, friends.

Hope you’ve taken some time to relax and recharge or that you’ve got some time scheduled soon for this very thing. There were so many unusual sights on my vacation. So many animals to watch in all of their wildness. Bears and bison and wolves and moose. Spots where you could peer up and see the nightsky in all of its vastness without any lights nearby. And there was very little cell service. I’ll be honest. It was nice, for a minute, not knowing the specific ways the world is falling apart. But one afternoon, I happened upon a hot spot. It was cool and I sat on a rock sunning myself like a lizard, watching people eat ice cream, watching ravens try and steal crumbs, checking the twitterverse. The Pulitzers had just been announced. Someone that I studied with, who I admire a lot, had won one.

Story.

And that’s today’s reading. Mitchell S. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize winning essay, Twelve Minutes and a Life. It’s a little long. And it’s heavy. But it’s important. And so, so good. So clear some time to sit with this one.

Craft tidbits.

I had the good fortune to study with Mitch when he was a Master Artist in Residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. (I’ve been twice and studied with two Pulitzer Winners while there. Each residency is different, bringing together musicians, dancers, artists, writers. The upcoming schedule here.) It was a bit before his book Survival Math came out. In fact, he read a snippet from it while there. He’s a sentence level guy, concerned with voice and musicality, making the words scream off the page. It’s one of the reasons I was drawn to working with him. All the way to the reading, an hour or so, he fiddled with the piece, making line edits in the van.

Unlike Mitch, I think it’s difficult to teach voice. It seems like you either have it or you don’t. Sometimes, I think, people suppress their voice in order to sound a certain way. I call this MFA prose. Too precise. Over-written. And frankly, boring. They are trying too hard to sound like a writer. Like what a Pulitzer Prize Winner should sound like. Certainly, they don’t use ain’t. Or Sheeeeeit! Or white-ass. Or any of the slang Jackson uses here. Except. Maybe they should.

(I think often of an interview in which Barry Hannah lamented that the novel is dying of competency. And I think that’s right. There’s an awful lot of competent writing. I would much rather read something ambitious that doesn’t quite stick the landing than something… competent. Let us aim higher than that.)

Kehinde Wiley, Fisherman Upon a Lee-shore, in Squally Weather

In class, Jackson would refer to this as the Language of Home. The way we talk to our family. To our friends who love us the most. We code switch in our classrooms, in our writing, when we want to be taken seriously. And by doing this, we lose our voice. In the middle of the sixth grade, I moved from the sticks of Appalachia to middle Georgia. The kids made fun of my accent which was twangy and country. So I scrubbed it. So that I could fit in. It pops up here and there. When I get mad. Or when I’m in my cups. When I talk to my family, I fall back to it. Students are sometimes surprised when I drop an ain’t in the classroom.

In the piece, Jackson splices the story of Maud’s life - the things we don’t really know, his time on the football field, his family life, his friendships - with what we do know - from news reports. It’s interesting to see where Jackson is using his language and when he’s withholding it. The paragraphs where he’s being the most factual: the history of segregation, the demographics of South Georgia, the shooting itself. These could be written by anyone. It’s the paragraphs where he and Maud have a shared connection that Jackson uses familiar language, the language of home.

Maud got a job working at McDonald’s, to keep some scratch in his pocket, but also, to help his mother, who often worked two jobs.

It’s in these similarities that there’s an us. A place for supposition and for questioning.

But I suspect that Maud also doubled back because his life as an athlete was over and disappointment can grind on even the toughest of us.

Maud—dear God, whhhyyy?—is dead, and I, by grace, am a writer-professor hurtling toward middle age.

these nekkid dudes have been running since 333 b.c. They must be so, so tired...

Ask yourself, as a reader, which spots hold your attention and stick with you?

I’d say it’s where he’s using repetition. The paragraph of rhetorical questions:

Peoples, I invite you to ask yourself, just what is a runner’s world? Ask yourself who deserves to run? Who has the right? Ask who’s a runner? What’s their so-called race? Their gender? Their class? Ask yourself where do they live, where do they run? Where can’t they live and run? Ask what are the sanctions for asserting their right to live and run —shit—to exist in the world. Ask why? Ask why? Ask why?

And the long list, near the end, that details who Maud was. Just look at it, it’s a page long paragraph. Overwhelming, in fact. And that’s the point.

What I want you to know about Maud is that he and his brother would don the helmets they used for go-carting and go heads-up on their trampoline, and that he never backed down from his big brother. What I want you to know about Maud is that he jammed his pinkie playing hoop in high school and instead of getting it treated like Jasmine advised, he let it heal on his own—forever crooked. What I want want you to know about Maud…

It’s repeated in some iteration sixteen times. Until it’s exchanged for another repetition:

He was more than a hashtag or a name on a list of tragic victims. He was more than an article or an essay or a posthumous profile. He was more than a headline or an op-ed or a news package or the news cycle. He was more than a retweet or a shared post… He was more than a rally or a march. He was more than a symbol, more than a movement, more than a cause. He. Was. Loved.

But it doesn’t end there. No. It circles back to his time on the football field. The end of a season. The sadness of loss. And not knowing what lies ahead.

Sparks.

Prompt: Jackson must’ve interviewed a lot of folks to get a clear picture of the man Maud was. You don’t have to do that. But consider, what story or essay have you been putting on the back burner because it requires work? Maybe it’s a family member. (I once interviewed my grandmother for details to use in a story set during WWII.) Maybe a neighbor has some expertise. Maybe it involves reaching out to someone you don’t know yet. Now’s the time. We’re cheering you on.

Revision: One of the best pieces of advice Jackson gave us was this: there’s no heart in information. Read that again. There’s no heart in information. I recently re-read a chapter of mine that was flat. It was very observational. This happened, and then this, and then this. Information. The character and what he wanted were not on the page. And there was no reason to care about him. Where do you need to add more heart? Delete some information?

Other tidbits.

Rachel Yoder asked twitter for some line-editing advice and got some great suggestions.

Flash Fiction Online is looking for reprints of flash pieces. Hurry. Deadline tomorrow!

Let’s read a novel, shall we? I had a hard time deciding (so! many! books!) but July’s newsletters will both be focused on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. It’s one that’s been on my to read list for a while. So, grab a copy from your lovely library or Bookshop.org. I’m primarily concerned with the pacing of a larger project but let me know what you’d like for me to focus on and I’ll try to work those thoughts in.

I’m also going to start holding weekly Writer’s Office Hours via Zoom on Mondays at 11 CST. You can pop in to talk about accountability or talk through a sticky plot problem. We can brainstorm writing residencies or where you should submit your pieces. Whatever makes the writing life a little less lonely. If you want to pop in tomorrow, holler and I’ll send you a zoom link.

Ok, scribblers, I’ll leave you with one more Mitchism: Don’t talk about it, be about it.

Pencils up. Be about it~

Marsha