I’ve been using this newsletter/blog/whatever you might call it less and less lately, primarily because I’m devoting all of my writing energy to the writing course I’m taking. Anyway, here’s what the last few weeks have looked like.

Week five: description

In addition to being a lecture about description, week five was also my critique week. I think I ultimately got eviserated, which, being out of practice of the workshop dynamic, stings. A thing that happens a lot with my stories is that people focus less on the message and meaning or the writing itself and laser in on specific details that don’t seem to add up. Before, I’d just ignore that, but I’m trying to take the criticism to heart as a helpful way to improve the overall logic of my story.

Still, it feels a bit annoying when everyone’s wondering what happens to background characters at the end of the story rather than what’s happening to the main characters. Additionally, people automatically read my main character as a woman, despite the guy they’re dating clearly being fag-coded. But that’s 100% my fault because I never actually said my main character’s gender. Oops.

I’m trying to be less sensitive about my writing because I want to get better at it. But I still, it’s pretty hard. I really place a lot of personal value on my writing, thinking it’s a core part of my identity that’s sort of central to understanding who I am as a full person. However, I don’t think I’ve really had anyone in my life who recognizes that part of me. My past partners knew I wrote, but didn’t really ask about it or comment on it. Friends don’t really bring it up as a creative pursuit of mine, and even being in this 10-week course, I’ve had sparse conversations about it (and only with my brother, who is also an artist, so he kind of gets it). I think I’d like to talk more about what I’m exploring in my art and what I’m interested in, but maybe that’s not something people really do.

Our homework prompt is to describe a couple arguing without mentioning the actual argument, just staying in the motion of the two characters, not their internal thoughts.

I write:

Daniel sits slumped over on the couch, brows furrowed like a silverback, flicking through videos on his phone while behind him, Evan rubs his hands red-raw under a never-ending stream of hot water, dish soap, and ivy green stoneware. After each rinse cycle, Evan whips the dish towel in furious circles across the plate, slamming the half-dry pieces into the cabinet with labored breaths. Daniel’s back curls further inward with every sigh; the garbled sounds of his desperate flicking are punctuated by Evan’s groaning. 

Evan finds more things to clean: water cups and wine glasses, stove tops and kitchen counter, and dining room tables piled high with clothes. He sweeps the floors and dries the sink, straightens the cutting boards, and rearranges the tableware, scrubbing at each spot of hard water, dimming their faux-golden gleams. Daniel fiddles with his phone and the TV remote before throwing it across the couch and trotting through the kitchen, pulling the shade from the door, and letting a stream of bright-hot Texan sun pierce their afternoon. Music fills the room, So Long by Rilo Kiley, melding into sun and dust and cleaning particles. Head tucked deep into his chest, Daniel extends an arm out to Evan, who rolls his eyes, sighs, and closes the gap, tracing small circles into the back of Daniel’s hand. Together they converge: wrapping hands around waists, nestling heads into necks, pressing muscle against fat, and swaying in the sunlight.

Week Six: Dialogue

I really struggle to write authentic dialogue. It’s probably because I don’t actually feel like I authentically talk with anyone. I don’t know how people talk to each other in real life because I feel like I always talk like some sort of foreign alien communicating for the first time.

I’ve been trying to understand more about the types of stories that interest me. In the current short story I’m working on, Wildfire, I think I’m trying to explore what it feels like to want to be consumed by something greater than your mundane life. Ultimately, this comes out as romance, but I suppose it could be a deep, complicated friendship too. I think right now I’m really interested in the type of personality that wants love to consume them, leaving no trace of the person they were before. The metaphor of fire fits well because it chars everything it touches, burning it to ash.

Our homework prompt for the week is to write just dialogue of a therapist who the patient slowly realises is a little crazy.

I write:

“Welcome, willkommen. Get comfortable and tell me what brings you to therapy?”

“Well,” I said, plopping down onto a sofa, overstuffed with throw pillows. “I suppose I’ve been struggling a lot

with my anxiety lately. Maybe some feelings of generalized depression?”

“We all face these feelings from time to time, but it’s good that you came in.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to be more practical in my life, sort of take charg–”

“Before we dive straight into the broth of your mind, as it were, should I explain to you how things work?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve been to therapy before, so I’ve got some experience with a bunch of different methods.”

“Wunderbar! You are familiar with our methods! Before my spiel, might I ask what you’ve experienced before?

“I started with some CBT, and that helped for a while, but then it didn’t really get to the heart of my issues,

more like coping mechanisms, you know?”

“To cope is human!”

“Right, right, sure. But I still felt like I needed to explore myself a bit more. So I did a lot of somatic work with

another therapist, which I really enjoyed.”

“Could you spell that for me?”

“Somatic?”

“Oh, yes, sorry. I thought you said something else. One of those no coffee mornings, you know? Please continue.”

“Okay, um, what else? I did some trauma-focused work, doing EMDR. I was skeptical of that at first because I

had read about its clinical success rates, but honestly, it was eye-opening.”

“I’m a big fan myself. I find a lot of patients benefit from its rich concert culture and heavy use of synthesizers.”

“Oh, no, sorry, not EDM, EMDR”

“Just a bit of therapy humor! I find humor unlocks our inner child and makes it easier to process the world as it is.”

“Humor’s great. Love humor. But yeah, that’s most of my experience.”

“Perfect, perfect. You’ll find all of that helpful here; your toolbox is practically overstuffed with strategies and

resources. Perfect hammers and screwdrivers for anxiety.”

“Yeah. But, you were saying something about your process?”

“Yes, yes. Thank you. I grab a little bit from here and there. I don’t stick to one method but rather try to think of

the client as holistic.”

“Good, because–”

“You see, I think of mental health like a thick, rich soup. The human psyche contains a dash of this and a dash of that, so one needs a discerning palate to slurp it all up.”

“Ha, slurp is a funny word choice, but not inaccurate.”

“This is no laughing matter. I assure you we’ll be doing plenty of slurping here. Some sipping. Maybe even some gulping. It takes guts after all, but you know that, you’ve taken the first step.”

“Wait. Sorry, is that a metaphor or literal? I’m a bit lost.”

“Ah, that is the question right: what of our lives is metaphor and what is literal?”

“No, I mean…like the sentence you just said was that a metaphor?”

“Let’s dive in: what do you believe it is?”

Week seven: Setting/Place

I’ve been thinking a lot about where I live and whether or not that’s the setting I want to spend the rest of my life in. I don’t think it is, but it feels like there are a lot of obstacles to making the new future possible: family members that are definitely going to stay here, Zach’s job, and Cookie not really being fit for dense urban life.

I listened to an episode of the Modern Love podcast where Bridget Everett, of Somebody Somewhere, reads a story about how a deep friendship can be the most important love in your life. I’ve been thinking about how I can write a short story about friendship and the pains that come with it. I think if I wrote something, it would be a story between two former lovers coming together as friends. Maybe realizing that they were always better friends than they were lovers.

It would probably be some form of ghost story, too. I think the metaphor of a past relationship/friendship as a ghost that haunts your daily life works well for me. Truthfully, I’ve been thinking a lot about friendships lately. The desire for deeper ones, the mourning of ones long gone. When I was going to therapy, my therapist thought the reason I don’t invest in friendships is that I had a particularly challenging friendship situation that hurt me too much, leaving me unwilling to make new connections.

I think that’s true. I’ve never told the people I consider my friends that they hurt my feelings, primarily because I just naturally assume that they won’t care. But, I’m trying to be realistic, that I’m not really the type of person who makes a good friend anyway.

Our homework prompt for the week is to write a description of a lake from the POV of someone who has just committed a murder. Don’t mention the lake.

I write:

From the rocky cliff, I tossed stones onto the surface of the water, considering each action and its subsequent opposite. The day was overcast; the clouds hanging low and hazy in the sky, painting everything in a drab gray-green that hinted at future rain. My muscle strained against my bone. The air pushed against the stone. The stone arched and fell, splashing against the surface and sending small ripples in concentric circles out across the water before resetting it back to a single sheet of stillness. Given the effort, I could calculate my impact. Diving deep enough, I could count and categorize each mossy stone. Like Sisyphus, I could make moving rock my new demand; the wide-open range of endless blue my eternal home.