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.

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Wings

Another bad day at school. Bruises under Nora’s clothes, and a heavy sodden panic in her chest that made it hard to lift her head or think, or even breathe. Like when Mrs. Morrison erased the board before Nora understood something, and then it showed up on a quiz. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe one day Mrs. Morrison put on the board what kids were supposed to do to make their parents not hurt them, and Nora missed it, and now she couldn’t pass the test.

Today she gave the wrong answers the first two times Mrs. Morrison called on her. The third time, she just stared at her desk. All the other girls giggled, until Mrs. Morrison said in a sharp voice, “Very well, Laura Lipton, when you’re quite done tittering, you have a go.” And Laura didn’t know the answer either.

Out in the corridor after class, Laura said in a vicious whisper, “You’re stupid,” and pinched Nora hard through her shirt. Another sore place. Another bruise. The panic in Nora’s chest was heavier now, choking, like yesterday… she didn’t want to think about that. She kept her head down and went to her history class.

At recess, she stood pressed against the iron fence that kept kids from wandering off the bluff and down to the rooftops below. She liked to come here these last few weeks, even in the rain. She liked to watch the blackbirds swoop over the bracken and then fly away. It made her chest feel lighter for a minute or two.

“Hello, Nora,” said a voice, and Mrs. Morrison stepped up beside her, hugging a cardigan around her shoulders. “Birdwatching?”

Nora nodded without turning her head.

“Birds are lovely,” the teacher said.

“Yes,” Nora said, and couldn’t hold back the single tear that spilled from her eye down her cheek.

“Do you know, when I was about your age, birds taught me to fly?” Mrs. Morrison said. Now Nora looked at her, and the weight in her chest was the worst ever, because if Mrs. Morrison was making fun of her it would break Nora’s heart. It would be even worse than the pinching, or whatever might be waiting for her at home.

“I was very sad,” the teacher said, “about something that happened. And I came out to this very fence and watched the birds, just like you. Then I picked one special bird, and I imagined what it was like to be right inside of it, flying up in the sky. Can you do that?”

Nora chewed on her lip. And then, because it was Mrs. Morrison, she tried. She imagined herself in the air, her arms spread like wings. But that would never work. She was too heavy to fly.

She began to shake her head, but Mrs. Morrison said, “Imagine, Nora. There we are, you and me, blackbirds up in the sky looking down on these two peculiar creatures on the ground. Can you see us?”

And then, “Oh!” Nora said, because now she understood. It was like yesterday being held down in the bathtub until she felt wet and heavy all through, and then she wasn’t in her body any longer, she was up on the ceiling watching and it didn’t hurt anymore. Oh….

And spang! there she was, up in the sky looking down at her own tear-smudged face lit up with wonder, watching Mrs. Morrison crouch and put an arm around her, hearing as if from far away the teacher saying, Well done, Nora, well done. Now, would you like to tell me what’s making you so sad? And Nora would try in a minute, she would try, but right now she was stretching her wings, she was wheeling away, she was heading for the open sky.

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Kelley’s notes: Today I to share a bit of how I found my way into this piece.

This is written for my sister-in-law, a former teacher, and my signpost was the imaginative leap of a child putting herself into the perspective of a flying bird (which was one of my self-directed imaginative experiences as a kid). My reasons weren’t so dire as Nora’s, but for story purposes it’s important to make big choices and give the characters high stakes.

Often, to find my way into a day’s work (whether it’s a brand-new piece, or a longer piece that I’ve been working on over time), I will write the first paragraph of the day and then do immediate revision/noodling until I feel that it’s set a clear enough path forward for me. Not everyone works this way, and it’s not the “right” way — it’s just my way. I find it hard to move forward very far if I think the opening is wrong, and if I can’t get it to work fairly quickly, it means I haven’t done enough thinking, and have not clearly visualized the arc I want to begin building. That’s when I go get another cup of tea and stare out at the trees for five minutes before I come back to the computer.

Here’s the very first draft of the first paragraph today:

Nora learned to fly when she was nine and having another bad day, coming to school once again with bruises under her long-sleeved blouse and a panicky feeling inside, like when the teacher erased something important from the board before Nora could understand it all. There was some kind of test that she wasn’t passing yet. If someone would just tell her what it was, she would study hard. She would learn. She would do whatever other kids did to make their parents not hurt them.

And here’s how it ended up, as published above:

Another bad day at school. Bruises under Nora’s clothes, and a heavy sodden panic in her chest that made it hard to lift her head or think, or even breathe. Like when Mrs. Morrison erased the board before Nora understood something, and then it showed up on a quiz. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe one day Mrs. Morrison put on the board what kids were supposed to do to make their parents not hurt them, and Nora missed it, and now she couldn’t pass the test.

As you can see, the first pass at the paragraph is in the ballpark, but messy. It’s much looser and less dense than the final version, and part of the revision I did was to make it more specific, like whittling down a rounded end of a stick into a point.

I knew I wanted Nora’s experience in the story to include the imagined flight, and so I started with that knowing that it was obvious, but also that it would help me find my way in. There’s no harm in telling yourself what the story is about, as long as you don’t end up with a final version that “tells” the reader.

Sometimes opening with a summary/spoiler for the story can work. If you take a look at The Pre-Brunch Special (wow, does that seem like a long time ago!), you’ll see that it also starts with a summary statement: Sandy Gustafson lost his faith the day he met Jesus. However, the difference is that statement already implies some kind of reversal, and therefore it sets up a tension in the reader: how does meeting Jesus cause one to lose faith? That kind of summary statement pulls a reader forward and provides extra momentum for the story.

Today’s original first sentence, however, does not do that. It simply sets up the idea of “flying” as important, and then fails to deliver on it in any way until the end of the piece. The entire paragraph becomes flabby and unfocused, because it wanders from one topic to the next — flight to school to a specific focus on tests and then to the information about abuse. Although that information is meant to be the hook into the story, it gets lost under the noise.

Once I focused in on the right details, the paragraph came together much better. Are the long sleeves important? Nope, not really. We can talk about clothes and let the reader imagine where the bruises are. Is the teacher important? Absolutely, so let’s give her a name — that gives her more immediate emotional importance to Nora, and therefore to the reader. School is clearly important to Nora, so I decided to open with “school” to set that notion firmly in the reader’s head, and frame the paragraph by ending with “test.” That creates an unconscious small arc for the reader, and actually serves to increase the impact of the information about abuse because the narrative grammar of Nora’s thinking is much more clear.

There’s an old theatre director’s adage that I quote often in edits (and to myself and Nicola when we are struggling with work): If the scene isn’t working, the entrance is wrong. I often find that problems with a scene start in the opening, and that’s why I’ve learned over time that the opening needs to be not perfect, but at least pointing in the right direction, before I go on.

Posted by: Kelley