A while back I wrote two short stories and couldn’t place either of them. After receiving the umpteenth rejection slip, I plunged into the Swamp of Despair.
The months rolled on. I wrote and sold non-fiction, but in my heart of hearts, I wanted to write a short story and have it published. Finally, I chained myself to my computer keyboard and futilely waited for inspiration to strike.
I sat down day after day and tried to write. My brain and hand underwent instant paralysis. Every time my fingers touched the keyboard, I’d picture my mean ninth grade English teacher saying: “Not exactly the right word for what you want to say, dear.” Or, “Is this the best plot you can come up with?”
My trash can filled with crumpled pages. I became frustrated and gave up. A week later, my six year old came home with the flu. Within a few days, our whole family was sick. One feverish night, I dreamed about an antique silver tuba and an upholstery repairman. The next morning, I realized my overheated brain had provided me with the kernel of a story.
Too sick to sit at the computer, I lay in bed speaking into a tape recorder. I didn’t have a plot in mind, just the images of the tuba and repairman.
I had never tried creating a short story this way, but the storytelling tradition is strong in my Italian family. Growing up, I would hear one tale after another: Cousin Lori’s crazy customers at the beauty shop. Grandma Benedetta’s experiences in a thread factory at the turn of the century. My father’s pranks at a CCC camp in the Smokey Mountains.
I pictured my bedroom filled with my friendly attentive relatives as my audience–then I plunged into my tale. I didn’t pause to think about details or twists and turns in plot. I let the story unfold. Characters walked in and out, with voices all their own.
A few days later, when I felt better, I sat at the computer and typed. I intentionally did not go back and listen to the taped story. I didn’t try to recapture words, sentences or ideas. I just wrote. I wanted to see what would happen.
As it turned out, a somewhat different story emerged. I had spoken the tale in the third person. Without realizing the shift, I wrote the story in the first person. The dialogue in the taped story sounded lively, spoken in fragments rather than given as ponderous speeches. The verbal interactions between the characters were more believable and sounded funnier.
However, I gave little sense of setting in the spoken version. As I plowed along in the story, I garbled details about characters. Then, I came up with an ending that didn’t make much sense, therefore did not entirely satisfy.
My written version carefully set the scene. I spent time puzzling through the details of the plot. I fleshed out the characters by including flashbacks. I did research on turn of the century tubas and used the information to make the story more credible. When I read the written story out loud, though, the dialogue sounded clunky. The plot was bogged down with detail and flashbacks.
So, I went back and as I listened to the tape, I re-wrote sections of material. Finally, I came up with a third version, combining the best elements of both stories. I incorporated the lively dialogue, trimmed the descriptions and flashbacks, and tightened up the plot and pacing.
What did I learn from this little exercise? First, the obvious: it is impossible to write when you have imagined a negative critic peering over your shoulder. Being sick caused me to forget the ninth grade English teacher and allowed the creative part of my brain free play. Second, if you are feeling stymied, you can try to jump-start yourself by telling your story rather than writing it.
I realized that telling a story is somewhat like playing ping pong. You plunge right in and keep going. Your audience is sitting expectantly. You can’t stop to figure out the finer points of your plot or the tiny details that make your character who he is. You hope that comes to you. Regardless, you keep going and come up with the tale that spills out, flaws and all.
Writing a story is more like playing a chess game. You think through each move, puzzling out the relative benefits of any choice you may make. The process is slower, more intentional. The end result may fit together well and may be satisfying. Yet, the overall story may collapse under the weight of all that intentionality.
So, my bout with the flu gave me a new way to approach writing a short story. Perhaps we make use of one part of our brain to tell a story and another part to write one. It sure seems that way to me. By using both approaches to create my tale, I came up with a far better story in the end.
You are probably wondering whether the story ever got published—well, miraculously, it did in The Virginia Quarterly Review (Requiem for One Tuba in B flat).
