The Lasting Image
Hi, friends.
The days are getting shorter and the nights cooler, and I hope you are enjoying fall where ever you are.
I’ve been noticing a trend lately in the novels I’m reading—almost all of them written pre-pandemic—of loneliness. A good number of them are about the loneliness of mothers with young children. Often their husbands are traveling for business. In the picture, but off the page. I think there’s a longer essay to be written about this. I’m just over here seeing it, thinking about it. Wondering what these stories tell us about the world we’re living in and how detached we are from it and from one another.
Story.
This week’s story—Three-and-a-half Billion Chances by Kendra Fortmeyer—isn’t one I’d planned to write about. But it’s something I read earlier in the week and has stuck with me. The final image, in particular.
Craft tidbits.
At the heart, it’s a story about loneliness and being haunted. Yes, there’s a ghost.
There was a gentle knocking from upstairs, the ghost of her mother that haunted a bedroom closet. Joanie had left the closet closed for years. At night, she said, she could hear her mother crying, but was afraid to let her out.
But the primary haunting here seems to be the same thing that haunts the lonely mothers in these novels I mention—the life that could’ve been, if only…
If you’ve been reading these newsletters for a bit, you’ve surely noticed (as I have) how many hauntings (of one kind or another) appear in the stories I share. Perhaps I am drawn to this hauntedness more than other kinds of themes. (My novel deals with a haunting of sorts, and so do many of my short stories.) Or perhaps, it shows just how prevalent hauntings are to our language of storytelling. There are so many stories, so many ways to come at hauntedness, I’ve themed my spring workshop around it. (So, more haunted stories surely coming your way as well.)
The final image here is a surprise. It’s joyful. And serves as a juxtaposition of the emptiness that comes before (of the empty vase, of Joanie’s life).
I was halfway home when flowers began to fall from the sky. The frogs hushed, and the whole night went ripe with gardenia. Then it was on me, a heavy rain, damp petals plastering to my face in the dark: dahlia and lily and rose. Stems and blossoms arcing from the clouds to tangle on trees and bounce wetly on lawns, a fragrant golden crush in the porch lights. Something wild opened in me, then. I twisted back to the yellow square of her kitchen window. I wanted to run back inside, to say, Joanie, come on. I wanted to run into every lonely house of every lonely women on the street, to take them by the hands and fling their arms wide and lead them shy and tender and fearful into the rain with their arms outstretched, telling them: this is for you, this is all for you.
It’s one of those images I wish I’d come up with. Flowers falling from the sky. Yes. Why haven’t I thought of that? Writerly envy can be a good thing. It can push us to be more creative. To take larger risks. To strive and not settle for the first, easiest thing that comes to mind. For me, a good image is often a starting point. It can be all I need to get the pencil going. It is harder to find a good image, a fresh image, in a work that you’re knee deep in.
Writerly jealousy can also be unhealthy. When everyone else is celebrating their wins, it can make us doubt what we are doing, wondering why it seems so easy and effortless for them. But chances are, it is not. Maybe we have an image of where we expected to be in our writerly lives that doesn’t match up to reality. And that creates some stress. Some loneliness. What can we do then?
Keep showing up, I suppose, with our eyes wide, with faith that one day soon the flowers will fall for us too.
As Sharon Olds has said, “I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.”
Sparks.
Take a walk. Just you and your transparent eyeball looking for images and inspiration. Maybe you go somewhere new. Or maybe you walk a familiar route, noticing the small changes.
Write about a character who runs into someone from their past. Or a character who returns to their hometown. How does the past haunt their present?
Revision. How could you bring in a new image that would give life to a work-in-progress? Where does it feel flat? What could a character see (or think they see) that could add some conflict or energy?
Other tidbits.
Here’s another piece where William Shatner talks about the expectation he had of his trip to space and the profound sadness and loneliness he had instead.
The Daily Drunk is looking for haunted house pieces through Oct. 15th. HAD will open on Oct. 21st at 9 pm (est) for spooky stories under 750 words. Zone 3 is also open for poetry, fiction, and CNF until Oct. 21. Barely South is open for fiction, CNF, and flash until Oct. 25.
Nimrod is hosting $5 craft chats on zoom. The next one, Oct. 27th, is on surprise in fiction. Future talks are about collaborative poetry (Nov. 11th) and BIPOC empowerment for women (Nov. 30th).
Okay scribblers. That’s it from here. It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful world. Let’s go write about it. Pencils up~
Marsha