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Edit the Editor
I am writing every day for 41 days for the Clarion West Write-a-thon, the writing workshop of which I am Board Chair. And I’m posting my writing here to give anyone who wishes a chance to edit the editor.
These are not necessarily full stories: they may be scenes, conversations, bits and pieces. All the work is absolutely new, and will often be quite raw. I’ll comment on my own process and ideas, and I hope you’ll comment too: what do you see that’s working, or not working? How would you fix this piece? What can you apply to your own writing? Is there anything you’d like me to comment on? Let’s talk about whatever you like.
You can read all the pieces and comments here. I hope you’ll find them interesting and useful.
Sound and Silence
Anyone who wishes can read more about Mars, Duncan, and the band in Dangerous Space.
Duncan and I weren’t speaking to each other, which meant we only talked in the studio, and even that was becoming harder. Lacerated hearts are what they are, but if we let them interfere with a new album, we would really be in trouble. And so everyone was worried.
Johnny said diffidently one night, as he was unplugging his guitar, “So you and Duncan…” He had a strategy of leaving questions unspoken, and most people can’t stand silence; they will rush to answer whatever they think they hear, which often means whatever question is loudest within them. And those moments can be so revealing. So astonishing. Sometimes so cruel.
But I’m an engineer, and I know better than anyone that music is silence as well as sound. I just raised a polite eyebrow.
He gave me the look that meant Fine, make me say it. “Are you two okay?”
I put up a hand. Keep out. Johnny said, “Mars–”
Duncan stepped into the open doorway. He was too thin, and the circles under his eyes were darker even than music makes them: some of it was from me. I knew I didn’t look much better.
He ignored me, and said to Johnny, “Can I get a ride home?”
“Don’t forget your notebook,” I said. He had taken to leaving his lyrics on the floor by the wastebasket every night, as if it were a test to see if I would toss them out.
Now he looked at me. He would have seemed relaxed enough to anyone who didn’t know him. But I could see the set of his jaw, and the anger and hunger and hurt in his eyes. He stepped into the room long enough to retrieve the notebook, and then returned to the door.
“We should go,” he told Johnny. “There are fans three deep across the street, it’s going to take a while.”
Johnny looked unhappily back and forth at us. I felt for him. It’s hard to be between two people whose distance is so crowded with things unsaid that it’s like sirens going off.
“Have a nice night,” I said. And looked at Duncan. Say something. Show me you forgive me. But he turned and left. He’s the best singer I know. He can do things with his voice that make people hear their own deepest questions, whether they like it or not. And he is good with silence, too.
I waited until I was sure they were gone. I imagined them in the car, not talking about it. Then I locked up the studio and went upstairs to have a glass of wine or three, and go to bed alone.
#
When my doorbell rang an hour later, I was so startled that I spilled my wine. And then my heart began to drum inside my chest, Duncan, Duncan, and I was so scared that I nearly didn’t answer, because he had finally come to say something and I didn’t think I could bear to hear it.
But when I did open, Lucky marched past me with two bags of Thai food and another bottle of wine, and the determined look she gets when there is a problem to be solved. She headed for the kitchen.
“Come right on in,” I said, with the bite that dodging a bullet sometimes brings to the moment.
She stopped and wheeled, bags swinging from her hands, bottle precarious under her arm. “Enough bullshit,” she said. “I am tired of getting fretty midnight emails from the band, so you are by jesus going to tell me what’s going on. What did he do? Did he say something rotten? Did he fuck somebody you really can’t stand?”
And I was never, never going to talk about it to anyone, but my heart was still on the disco beat and the wine was wailing within me, and I said, “He wants to move in.”
“What?” It was her turn to nearly drop the wine, and her face was as shocked as if she had just seen the world turned inside out, the shape of everything changed. It was one of the Truths of Our Musical Generation that Duncan Black would never, never commit.
“Holy shit,” she said, and now she was beginning to smile, and I couldn’t let that happen.
“I said no,” I said. But actually, I hadn’t. Actually, when he asked, when his question was there between us singing of love and hope and never before, when the joy of it was shimmering in his eyes and trembling on his mouth, all I could find in answer was silence. Silence. Until he finally said, “You don’t want to?” with so much surprise and despair that I felt his heart break as if it were in my own body, I felt it break.
“But you love each other,” Lucky said. And I held up my hand: Keep out.
#
The next day in the studio went so badly that we stopped early. The entire band was frantic with frustration and something deeper; the great unspoken question, Are we all breaking up? Angel jerked his bass case from the floor and snarled, “I thought we used to have drama, jesus fucking christ,” and stalked out. Con, the steadiest of them all, was shaking when he left. And Duncan forgot his notebook.
I looked at it for a while, there by the trash can. I couldn’t leave it. So I locked the studio and took it upstairs, and dropped it on the living room table. It sounded heavy in the silence of my house.
When the doorbell rang, I wasn’t surprised at all; Lucky would never give up until she understood why, and when I opened the door I was so busy trying to find the words to explain that I had no answer, that I was completely unprepared to find Duncan instead.
His face was in neutral, and he had shut himself up behind careful blank eyes. “I left my book,” he said. “Can I have it back?” And in the silence that followed, I understood he was saying I left my heart, can I have it back? and that the answer was already drumming within me. Duncan. Duncan.
“I do want to,” I said. “I do. I want it so bad that I’m scared we’ll break it.”
Silence.
Duncan closed his eyes. Then he opened them, and opened his arms, and I stepped in and we leaned against each other. The sound of our breathing, the sound of our hearts, the silence in which everything sang.
Kelley’s notes: I have indulged myself in this story with a return to some of my favorite characters (hence the link at the top of the story).
I’ve learned a lot in my 41 days of writing, my 32,000 words of fiction plus these commentaries. It’s been an interesting ride, and I’m thinking a lot about it. But today I don’t want to analyze. Today I want to make a joyful noise about writing.
And so I am re-posting this piece from my personal blog, originally published in 2008. It’s still true for me, and is still the engine that drives so much of my life.
Thanks for sharing these 41 days with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I have.
——-
Story is real
True confession time: although I’m often billed as a science fiction writer, there’s actually very little science that engages me beyond either the practical (Does it make my life better? Or If it’s broken, how do I fix it?) or the aesthetic (Meteor showers are pretty!). I have never been fascinated by science for its own sake. It is human experience that interests me, and it’s true that much of human experience is grounded in, or informed by, science — in particular, how we respond to our own biology (gender, sex, illness, dying, fear, memory…). Each practically-identical biological human mechanism — and in spite of our individual genome patterns we are 99.9% the same — is also a particular person with our own thoughts and feelings and responses, our own unique set of experiences. We are essentially the same, and a huge part of that sameness is that we hunger to be different and are yet so often terrified by difference in others. We are souls who drive, and driven by, the most complex wetware that we know of in the universe… now that’s interesting.
And so in spite of my general disregard for scientific discoveries, I am in love with the idea of mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons fire in our brains when we perform an action or when we see someone else performing an action. Mirror neurons help us assign meaning to other people’s behavior. I see you and I know what your actions mean, because in my brain there is no neuronal difference between you doing a thing and me doing it myself. It feels the same to my brain.
I know what it means when you look at me with rage or hurt or bedroom eyes — because the same neurons fire when I look that way at you. I know that look. I see you pick up a baseball bat and shift your grip, heft it in that certain way, and I know the only thing you’re planning to knock out of the park is me. I know when a baseball bat turns into a weapon — and there, you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? Because even reading a description of an action, if it is accurately and specific, fires your mirror neurons.
There are lots of theories now that mirror neurons are the basis of empathy, and that they are instrumental in acquiring language. But what they mean to me as a storyteller is that I really can show you what’s happening instead of having to always tell you.
And now I know why story works. I know why words on a page or pixels on a screen can make me feel such deep joy or sadness, can make me tremble with fear or wonder. Because when story in any medium is done right, it really does come to life inside us. For an instant, we live the story. It’s real.
And I know something else: I know why I am a writer. I know why I took an acting degree that I was so clearly at the time unsuited for. I know why I dance. I know why I sing along with U2 at the concerts.
Because story is real. When I write, when I act, when I sing in the car, when I am brave or stubborn enough to keep at it until I have been as specific and honest as I can be in the creation — when I get the story right — it fires all those fabulous mirror neurons, and those moments of story are just as real to my brain as if I were actually doing them. I am watching my life drop down an elevator shaft; I am a rock star; I am fighting for my life or struggling with love or having amazing sex or holding my breath at the immensity of some moment of everyday life in which, suddenly, everything has changed…
In his blurb for Dangerous Space, Matt Ruff refers to “emotions this raw.” I’ve always liked (and been grateful for) that, because it comes closest to my own ideas about what I love in story, and what I strive for in the stories I tell. I don’t give a fuck about Big Ideas. I am all about Big Feelings. Not necessarily big experiences — although I like those too — but the way that the large and the small of life can make us feel, and what we do because of or in spite of those feelings.
I’ve said that I write because I want to make people feel those things. To make difference accessible to readers — behavior and feelings that they might not otherwise choose in their own lives. To open a mainline into someone else’s personal truth. But that’s not it, or at least not the most important part. I do it because I want (or need) to feel those things myself, in ways that don’t necessarily involve actual experience. I won’t ever be a rock star, but I want the physical and psychic blast of 20,000 people singing my song to me. I don’t want people I love to die, but I respond so violently to grief in stories that it’s like I am practicing or preparing as best I can for the day when it will grab me by the throat and shake me. I can’t be an astronaut (that science thing…) but I want to see my world suspended in a deep dark universe of wonders.
And I can. We all can. We’re not limited by our own lives, by our own choices. We can live other lives and other choices too, and that’s not just an intellectual concept. It’s real. It’s as real to your brain as your last banana muffin on a warm Sunday morning, or how your sunglasses make you feel hip even when you’re just pumping gas, or the smile yesterday from that beautiful stranger on the train, or the heartstopping second before you say I love you to someone new.
And there. I just told you four little stories, and perhaps one of them was real to you. Perhaps for a second you were there. Really there.
Story is real. It makes me want to shout or dance or cry or go hug someone from the sheer joy of being human. Every story you love, whether it’s Frodo and Sam, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, or Buffy, whether it’s Shakespeare or Calvin and Hobbes, is alive and real in the amazing space inside you.
I am writing every day for 41 days for the Clarion West Write-a-thon, the writing workshop of which I am Board Chair. And I’m posting my writing here to give anyone who wishes a chance to edit the editor.
These are not necessarily full stories: they may be scenes, conversations, bits and pieces. All the work is absolutely new, and will often be quite raw. I’ll comment on my own process and ideas, and I hope you’ll comment too: what do you see that’s working, or not working? How would you fix this piece? What can you apply to your own writing? Is there anything you’d like me to comment on? Let’s talk about whatever you like.
You can read all the pieces and comments here. I hope you’ll find them interesting and useful.
Shake It
Maybe it was the goddamn rain, or the guy next door with the relentless topiary sculpture impulse and the chainsaw; or maybe it was simply everyday life that was starting to get Danny down. He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he was on a treadmill, a little hamster going round and round. It made him want to roll over and go back to sleep, just say fuck it for once… But oh my god the Lawrence file deadline, was that today? And now he was already late.
Out on the street, he discovered his car boxed in by SUVs, bumper to bumper. He maneuvered out carefully, and took a deep breath, and launched himself into the mad rush of the commute. Everyone with day jobs will now please do the crazy chicken to get onto the expressway. Everyone on the expressway will now please immediately come to a stop and proceed to your destination one meter at a time. Thanks for playing our game! Enjoy your day!
He didn’t have time to stop for coffee, so he called his admin and begged. By the time he got to work, he was totally off schedule. He slung his briefcase in the corner and sat. The desk was a mess. Did Marshall even know how to file?
“Here’s your fix,” Marshall said. One ear was plugged into his iPod; the other earbud dangled down his shirt front, next to his tie. Tinny music leaked out as he leaned to put Danny’s grande non-fat fair-trade macchiato on the corner of the desk. Was that the Miami Sound Machine? Apparently, it was: Marshall plugged back in and did a little conga step out the office door. Must be nice to have nothing more to do than dance. Like filing.
Deep breath.
He opened the Lawrence file. Jesus, what a giant spaghetti mess this meatball’s life was; everything turned upside down in a single bad-judgment moment of signing an employment contract without reading all the words. The document itself was a masterwork of convoluted language and parenthetical clauses, a solid one-way trip to Don’t look now, you’re fucked, and Joe Lawrence was just another schleb who had followed a boss cow into a chute and then gone white-eyed at the slaughterhouse door.
Deep breath. It was his job to help this guy. Dig in and figure it out. So he got to work. But then there was a crisis on the McCready filing and he had to do an emergency conference call. And then just as he got back into the zone on Lawrence, there was a fucking fire drill. Blaaat blaaat wroop wroop wroop. Effectively loud: he wanted to keep working but he couldn’t stand the noise, so he grabbed his coffee and headed for the stairs, and wow, he needed a caffeine blast right about now, and that’s when he found out the coffee was cold.
There was a garbage can by the stairway door. He ditched the latte. Marshall saw, and said, “I’ll get you another,” and they joined the throng funnelling into the stairwell and trotting down two by two, side by side, very orderly in the stairwells and then shifting and jostling as new people came in at the landing on each floor. The alarm racket made any conversation impossible, and the flashing red and white lights made it all seem more urgent. He was glad to get out into the parking lot, where there was more space.
When he got tired of standing, he opened his car doors and windows and sat in the driver’s seat. He put his hands on the wheel. Maybe he should just say fuck it after all. Get on the expressway and move with ease between lanes, because everyone with day jobs was jobbing. Text in his resignation from the airport while he was boarding for Guadelajara or Venice or Vegas. But then what? The fact was that he liked his house in spite of the chainsaw artist next door, and he liked his car, and he even liked his job saving dumb fuckers like Joe Lawrence from the axe. He didn’t want to be free of those things. He just didn’t like the feeling sometimes that he was in a chute.
Deep breath. Soon it would be time to go upstairs and make more documents for Marshall to not file. And here came the Dancing Queen himself with Danny’s latte, plugged into his iPod again.
Something inside Danny shook itself awake.
Danny said, “Give me that.” And when Marshall offered the coffee, Danny said, “No, that,” and pointed to the iPod.
He was conscious of Marshall staring as he found the song and plugged the player into his car system. And turned it up loud. Marshall’s eyebrows were in the stratosphere.
Danny said, “Come on, shake your body, baby.” And showed him how. Marshall grinned, and took hold, and did. People stared. People smiled. And people lined up and followed Danny, just like he was the boss cow leading them to greener pastures, and they did the conga around the parking lot until it was time to get back to work.
Kelley’s notes: I think this is the piece in which it’s easiest to see that the writing schedule is taking its toll, and so perhaps it’s useful to analyze what happens when the writer is too tired.
What happens to me is that the piece never achieves that final organic integration that makes it a true story experience. The sentences are fine: even when I’m tired, I can write an interesting sentence. And I’m experienced enough that I can write a lot of good sentences in a row, and create some emotional truth — put a reader into a moment of experience.
However, on a structural level, this piece needs a lot of work. There are too many metaphor systems competing for attention here: the cattle chute/being boxed in, dancing, putting out fires. They don’t really flow smoothly, and the ending moment with the conga line is, I think, a workable idea, but not yet properly executed. It’s not properly set up, and so doesn’t provide as satisfactory of a payoff. If I were to work on this piece, I would start by developing a couple more “office characters” that Danny could interact with, so that when he dances at the end we can better visualize actual people in a parking lot. I also would want to establish something about dancing early on that relates more directly to Danny: maybe he hates dancing, or maybe he embarrassed himself mightily on the dance floor last night with a date (a guy? a woman? maybe a guy…) and drank too much and overslept and now he’s late… (Actually, I am liking this idea!).
At any rate, the point is that the conga feels just a bit too random right now, a bit too contrived, and that’s because it’s not properly emotionally linked as an overall concept to Danny.
When I get tired, I start relying on my ability to create emotion: I think on some level I am hoping that if I just sell it hard enough, the reader will believe. Sadly, this is generally not good enough, and it shouldn’t be good enough for you. It’s not the reader’s job to create a plausible story: it’s the writer’s job. The beginning needs to resonate at the end; the end needs to be causally connected, both emotionally and by events, to the beginning. And it all needs to be important somehow to this particular character in this particular moment. Connections of event, feeling and choice — that’s the fabric of story. Neglect it, and the reader will know either consciously or unconsciously.
I am writing every day for 41 days for the Clarion West Write-a-thon, the writing workshop of which I am Board Chair. And I’m posting my writing here to give anyone who wishes a chance to edit the editor.
These are not necessarily full stories: they may be scenes, conversations, bits and pieces. All the work is absolutely new, and will often be quite raw. I’ll comment on my own process and ideas, and I hope you’ll comment too: what do you see that’s working, or not working? How would you fix this piece? What can you apply to your own writing? Is there anything you’d like me to comment on? Let’s talk about whatever you like.
You can read all the pieces and comments here. I hope you’ll find them interesting and useful.
This and That
“Ma, you want to meet a nice guy, you should try the Senior Center,” Christy said. She put the last of the canned corn in the cabinet, folded the cloth shopping bags under her arm, wiped the counter with the dishtowel, straightened her waitress uniform, and said, “What else are you doing today?”
“Oh, this and that,” Shirley said.
Christy sighed. “Okay, then I gotta go. You got everything you need? Love you.” Kiss, kiss, and she was gone.
Shirley sat in the chair by the apartment window and watched Christy cross the street. A taxi driver yelled out his window, “Lookin’ good!” Shirley saw Christy’s appreciative smile, the extra spring it put in her step. And Shirley smiled too, although it still hurt the right side of her face: it was good to see her daughter with that bounce.
“So what do you think?” Shirley said. “Go to the Senior Center and meet a nice guy? Think this face will scare them off?”
Frank chuckled. Those guys oughta be so lucky. You’re beautiful, kid.
Outside the window there were people going places, and shops that made any kind of coffee you wanted. There was a park down the street full of little ones on swings in the morning and older kids on skateboards in the afternoon. There were cafes that served all kinds of food. Greek, Ethiopian, who even knew? There were neighbors on the stoops in the evenings. And there were ambulances that took people to the hospital where they died and there were kids with frightening faces and hard hands who would knock an old lady down and break her face and take her purse and make her scared so that now her daughter did all her shopping while she sat at the window.
This and that, kiddo, Frank said.
Shirley nodded, and stood to take her tea mug into the kitchen. On her way past the mantel, she kissed her fingers and pressed them to the box with his ashes.
#
“Ma, you want to meet a nice guy, you should maybe go to the Spring Festival at the church. Probably a lot of nice guys there.” Christy checked the bathroom closet. “You got enough toilet paper? Toothpaste?”
“Honey, give me a break, will you? I had your father, they don’t get any nicer.”
Christy came out of the bathroom and leaned against the doorway. “I just want you to be okay. I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I been doing fine on my own,” Shirley said. “I’m wrinkly and my knees hurt and I can’t eat garlic anymore, but I’m not…” She didn’t want to say it: I’m not old. But she saw the look on Christy’s face.
What are you, an idiot? Yes, you are, Frank said. Shirl, you’re old.
“I’m not old,” Shirley said. “Inside I still feel like a kid. I want to go eat some of that Greek food they got over on Central. You know I never had that? I want to go dancing. I want to go hear a big band play and drink one of those Sex on the Beach cocktails. I never had that either. The cocktail, I mean,” she added. “I had sex on the beach.”
“Ma.”
“What? It was with your father, in case you’re interested.”
“Ma!”
“I’m not too old to have sex, you know.”
Christy put her hands over her ears. “Oh my god, stop talking, Ma, stop talking right now!” She was laughing. And Shirley didn’t know how to say that in her heart she was still dancing all night and then fucking on the beach while the surf pounded in time. But now she was supposed to get her kicks at the Senior Center? When the fuck did that happen?
Three months ago when some kid knocked you down and took your Social Security, Frank said.
“I just think it would be good for you to get out,” Christy said.
“Somewhere for old people,” Shirley said, and was surprised by the tiny tremble of anger in her voice.
“Ma–”
“Maybe next week,” Shirley said.
#
It happened so fast, she was wheeling her basket to the supermarket, it was raining, not too hard but enough to make people keep their heads down, and suddenly WHAM on the side of her face and YANK her purse jerked off her arm and OLD BITCH HAHAHAHA and thump of young cruel feet gone gone gone. So much gone in that moment. Her keys and the cash from her Social, the photo of Frank and Christy, her little pillbox with the painted flower, and all those nights of dancing, and all those days when she knew that she was young of spirit, no matter what her body had to say about it.
She sat in the chair after Christy left, sat all afternoon while the sun went down behind the buildings and the shadows lengthened in the streets, and thought about next week, and the week after that, and the week after that.
“Frank, tell me what to do,” she said.
I can’t tell you anything, Shirl. I’m dead. Christy finds out you’re asking me, she’ll get you out, all right. Straight to the nuthouse.
“I don’t want to be old.”
That’s life.
“Fuck you, Frank,” she said, with all the love in her.
I wish, kiddo.
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
#
“Ma, I’m at the apartment, where are you?!” Christy’s voice on the phone was frantic.
“I’m fine, honey. I’m with a nice guy at the beach.”
“What? How did you get… Ma, are you lost? I’ll come get you.”
“I got a phone smarter than I am, how do you think I got here? My phone told me to take the number 3 bus and by god, it was right.” And never mind about how she’d almost turned around at her own front door, how she’d nearly peed herself with terror every time a kid got on the bus. “I’ll be home later, I’ll call you.”
“Ma–”
“Christy, honey, you need to get a life,” Shirley said, and it gave her immense pleasure to hear her daughter’s indrawn breath and then her delighted burst of laughter before Shirley hung up the phone.
How you doing, kiddo? Frank said.
“My knees hurt,” she said. “Want to dance?” And she held her purse to her chest so she could feel the box of him against her breast, and she turned with him slowly on the sand.
Kelley’s notes: In general I have not shared the prompts for these pieces because some of them seemed private. But this one was not, and it gives me a chance to talk on a meta level about prompting.
This piece was written for a friend who is a writer and teacher, and she supplied a set of character questions that she uses to help writing students develop character. Her only stipulation was that whatever character I came up with was a different age from my own.
I enjoyed writing this piece, but I have to say that a list of questions wasn’t particularly useful as a prompt for me. Questions are a fine way to build character if that works for you; it’s not how I do it, and I find it a bit artificial and awkward. There is no One True Way to build character, so if questions work for you, great! But if they don’t, please do not stress. It is not a rule.
I firmly believe that character is the engine of story; but character in and of itself is not story (any more than emotion alone or plot alone are enough for story). And so I’ve found throughout these pieces that the most immediately engaging prompts for me are something that I can hook some event onto as quickly as possible. And here’s the thing — it’s more useful if the prompt is not completely open-ended. A character might do anything, you know? But if the prompt is a bike, or a green chair, or a video showing zoo animals trying to eat kids — well, it’s a lot easier to get ideas for specific events that might happen with one of these things.
And an event is often your way into the story.
Limitation is useful. Specificity is our friend. If you are creating prompts for yourself or others, don’t be afraid to be specific: a line of dialogue, an object, an emotionally evocative phrase. What’s easier to dig into as a prompt — love or rubber duck? Can you find a story arc more quickly for war or a deserted Main Street at high noon on a Wednesday? i’m sure it’s clear from my perspective these are rhetorical questions. This plays into my bias against “stories about theme” — stories are about people taking action, making choices, experiencing consequences, and being changed. Theme underlies what we do, but war is not a story: war is millions of stories about millions of people.
And so, when I considered the list of questions that formed my prompt for this piece, I actually pounded my head against it for quite a while. I got so tangled up that I finally thought, Well, this is just like answering one of those online dating site questionnaires! And in the mysterious way of the writing brain, that brought me to the idea of an old woman signing up for eHarmony because she was a widow. I discarded that pretty quickly — didn’t really interest me — but the idea of Shirley talking about herself led me into the idea of her talking to Frank, and then it was a question of finding the most compelling reason I could think of for that. The event of the robbery that made Shirley feel for the first time truly old and alone.
Having more limitation on this prompt would have helped me find a story faster. Maybe not this one — who knows? — but there are many good stories to be told. Don’t be afraid to explore story through limitations.
And conversely, if you are writing yourself into a corner, be willing to back out and find a different path. Be willing to reject an event that isn’t advancing your story in the right direction: because ineffective story choices are the kind of limitation that really will limit you.
I am writing every day for 41 days for the Clarion West Write-a-thon, the writing workshop of which I am Board Chair. And I’m posting my writing here to give anyone who wishes a chance to edit the editor.
These are not necessarily full stories: they may be scenes, conversations, bits and pieces. All the work is absolutely new, and will often be quite raw. I’ll comment on my own process and ideas, and I hope you’ll comment too: what do you see that’s working, or not working? How would you fix this piece? What can you apply to your own writing? Is there anything you’d like me to comment on? Let’s talk about whatever you like.
You can read all the pieces and comments here. I hope you’ll find them interesting and useful.
The Bad End of M3
“Miss Simons is substituting for Emma Longstrom,” Principal Dubby said. There were polite smiles and involuntary grimaces. “Poor old Emma,” the math teacher mumbled. “Terrible thing.”
Susie agreed it was a terrible thing when an educator of 25 years experience — an utter professional, to Susie’s certain knowledge — could be so distracted in the classroom that she would allow her attention to wander while operating dangerous equipment. And an arts and crafts teacher with only half a hand… well. Susie shook her head.
Dubby said, “Miss Simons specializes in behavioral issues.” The others nodded and then frowned into their coffee, except for the older woman in the back of the room, whose knitting needles continue to whip up stitches while she regarded Susie.
“Even private schools these days are a war zone,” the young Social Sciences teacher said. She had a high blink rate, and Susie thought that cleavage really wasn’t appropriate in the classroom. “A war zone,” she said again, and crossed her arms tight over her breasts. In the back, the history teacher shook her head briefly.
“The fifth-graders can be a bit of discipline challenge,” the math teacher said, with a twitch. “Just got to show them who’s boss.”
“You can count on it,” Susie said. The history teacher seemed to be the only one who got the joke: she smiled into her knitting as if to say, Well, now we’ll see something interesting.
#
A good substitute had sharp powers of observation and snap assessment skills. Susie could step into a fifth grade home room and within 30 seconds spot the usual suspects: the class wit whose father generally beat him at home, the boy embarrassed by rapid onset penis growth and therefore likely to act out physically, the girl who secretly collected spiders in a jar in the basement — you had to watch those girls, they liked to work from a distance — and, of course, the bossypants. Susie’s long experience had taught her that 80% of trouble in any class could be laid at the feet of one of those kids. She would have bet her mortgage on it, if she’d had one. Well, there you were, being a substitute was not a stable job, but it was important and fulfilling, requiring judgment and precision, and Susie always executed well.
Principal Dubby led her to the classroom. Through the glass pane in the door, Susie saw pretty much what she expected: uniformed children behaving badly. A couple of boys wrestled in a corner. A girl with a jar of poker chips doled them out to petitioners in twos or threes. At least five students were on phones. A boy in the back was defacing his desk. And they were loud; they sounded like a football crowd, even from out here.
The principal took a breath, looked at the door handle, and rubbed his palms on his trousers. “Never mind,” Susie said. “I’ll just introduce myself and get started, if that’s all right with you.”
“Ah, well, yes…” he said.
“All will be well, Mr. Dubby,” she said. “I’m a professional.”
“I just hate… I’m not sure I should put you in there.”
She waited. They all thought their situation was special.
He looked through the glass again. Inside the room, a boy stood behind a seated girl, grinding his pelvis into the back of her head. Ah, the penis case. The girl was crying and trying to protect her head without touching his crotch.
The principal said, in a grim tone, “They really are little beasts.” Susie nodded.
“Thank you for your help, MIss Simons,” he said, and turned and left her. Susie smiled. Time to get to work.
A textbook flying through the air narrowly missed her as she walked to the front of the room, but she’d noted that it wasn’t aimed at her, and she decided not to put the book-flinger on the list; apart from anything, he was defending himself, and Susie respected that. She spared a moment of contempt for the young Social Services idiot who thought she was fighting a rearguard action, apparently with her breasts; perhaps public schools were a war zone, but private schools were a jungle.
“Hello, class,” Susie said at normal volume. Two or three students at their desks sat up straight and looked at her. Good. She made sure they saw her put her fingertips in her ears and then nodded at them: You too. They did, looking suspicious.
Susie said again, Hello, but now the word went on a long time, and her voice grew louder and thinner, until the students began to shake their heads like dogs being trained by barkstopping whistles: There’s something in my ear, get it out!
The noise stopped, and the children looked at Susie with gratifying stupefaction.
“I am Miss Simons,” she said. “Sit.”
They did. The girl with the jar of poker chips took the classic Bossypants seat in the second row, where everyone could see that she was unhappy and ready to express at the first opportunity. Susie thought, Let the hunt begin.
“Now that I have your attention,” she told the class, “I will call roll. Please raise your hand when you hear your name.”
The second-row girl said, “That’s not how you do it. We already checked ourselves in on the list at the beginning of class.”
“If you want to speak, please raise your hand and I will call on you.”
“That’s not how Ms. Longstrom does it. We each get chips and we have to put a chip in the jar every time we speak.”
Susie noted without comment that Bossypants did not put in a chip. Then she began with the first name on her list, “Laura Alvarez,” and looked for the relevant hand.
“That’s not how we do it!”
“Brixton Adler,” Susie said. Ah, penis case. Billy Carson responded to his name with Hellooooooooo and gave Susie a satisfied look when everyone laughed. The tear-faced girl, who Susie now unfortunately thought of as the Headbanger, raised her hand to the name Elizabeth Meeks, and gave Adler a spider-eyed look.
Then Susie called, “Mary Marsha Mahoney.”
Bossypants said, “No one calls me that. Everyone calls me M3. Because my name has 3 M’s.”
Susie said. “Do you prefer Mary or Marsha?”
“All the teachers call me M3,” Mary Marsha Mahoney said.
“Mary, then,” Susie said, and went on. And privately enjoyed the look on Bossypants’ face: You’re not doing it right!
#
When Susie brought out the paper cutter, she could see some of the students flinch reflexively.
“We’ll continue the bookmaking project that Mrs. Longstrom began,” she said. “Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of. No one is to use the paper cutter without my supervision. Please form into your groups and begin working.”
Susie moved through the room offering guidance and reviewing their work. Her teaching mind was impressed, as she’d expected: Emma Longstrom really was a pro. Look at the talent she’d encouraged out of Spider Girl! Susie very much hoped Elizabeth would not be on the final list, and turned the other part of her mind to sorting out what had happened to Emma.
It didn’t take long. Across the room, she watched M3 Bossypants commandeer the paper cutter with the group’s manuscript in hand, shushing a girl who said, “We’re supposed to wait for the teacher.”
“We don’t have to wait for her, she’s just a substitute and she probably doesn’t even do it right.” And then Bossypants raised the handle and shoved the too-thick stack of paper under it, and held it in place…
With her thumb right under the blade.
And as Susie assumed control of the situation, and the paper cutter, and sent Miss Mahoney back to her chair, she could see it as clearly as if she were watching a film: Emma seeing the vulnerable thumb, rushing for the cutter, moving young Miss Bossypants aside, the wail of protest, “I was doing it!” and the shove and the teacher’s hand slipping as the blade came down.
“Class dismissed,” Susie said. “It’s time for lunch.”
#
She stuck her head into the Faculty Room to see who was there, and wasn’t surprised to find the history teacher knitting. “How’s it going?” the teacher said.
“Just wrapping up,” Susie said. “I wonder if you’d care to join me for lunch?”
“Thank you,” the teacher said with a smile, and put away her knitting.
They waited in the janitorial closet beside the girl’s bathroom, and when Mary Marsha Mahoney came by alone, Susie opened the door and smiled and said, M3, here’s how we do it, and dragged the girl inside. The janitor’s duct tape and the classroom paper cutter came in quite handy.
“Has anyone seen Miss Mahoney?” Susie said when she called roll after lunch. “No? Well.” She ticked Mary Marsha Mahoney off her list, and went on with class. Time to start keeping an eye on Brixton Adler.
Kelley’s notes: This was fun, and I enjoyed making a contrast with my earlier heartfelt paean to teachers.
This is what I think of as an “ice-skating” endeavor: tone, pace and plausibility are inextricably connected. This piece is pure speculative fiction. it doesn’t actually “make sense” in the context of the real world that a school would hire teachers to come in and murder troublemaking kids. So in order to work, the story has to move the reader along a slick surface with as few bumps as possible. The more I stop to present a thoughtful consideration of world-building, or dwell in a nuance of character, the more likely I am to bring the reader’s experience to a grinding halt.
This doesn’t mean that there is no need for character or consistency of situation. In fact, I think that a smooth, fast ride depends on both. The trick is focus. Everything we learn about Susie Simons is designed to support the overall notion that she’s a crazy substitute who is the agent of a larger conspiracy among the school faculty and administration (which is why I have the history teacher join in the fun at the end). Even the offhand remark about Susie’s lack of mortgage is there only to show that she isn’t “stable” (an emotional cue to the reader that things might get a little non-standard).
I’ve also tried to provide a great deal of specificity in the classroom and the students — much more so than the adults — but I’m doing it all from the adult perspective. I’ve tried to select examples that also hint at the non-standard-ness to come (spiders and penises!). I think that presenting a group of behaviors like this is more interesting and useful in story than only having one Problem Child and focusing immediately on her.
But — having focused on her, the goal is then to get to the finish line quickly. Repeated scenes of bossypants behavior won’t advance this story in any way, and unless they do, they will feel — well, repetitive (smile). Anything that makes the reader feel like they are treading old ground derails that smooth surface glide. I tried to find a build of bossypants behavior in the first classroom scene, and then get immediately to the paper cutter scenario. Throughout, the cue to bossiness is “doing it right” — I chose it because it’s versatile enough to have many permutations, and also makes a nice callback for Susie at the end.
In this story, I’m also consciously using the technique of entering the scenes as late as possible, and leaving as early as possible: this is particularly important in the case of the “Let’s Get M3″ scene in the janitor’s closet. The longer that scene, the less effective it is. If you’re skating on thin ice in terms of plausibility/logic, then skate fast!
