Thank you thank you thank you! We loved writing (and reading, and listening, and learning!) with you last night. This is the post for your snippets and continuing post-class questions. We’ll see you in the comments. Love, Jeannine & Billie Readings Exteriority: Two Hearts By Brian Doyle from God is Love
This working document--also known as a Substack post--is how we’d like to capture questions, close reading observations, work you’ll share during class, etc., it is also where you will be able to find tonight’s readings and the followup readings for this class once it’s over, and, the best part, we think, is that the post provides an opportunity for everyone here to continue this conversation going forward.
To keep the comments on that post as usable and navigable as possible, please use the following conventions on your comments:
For questions, start with with QUESTION all caps,
For observations on close readings, use CLOSE READING and the name of the piece, all caps
For sharing snippet of your own work when we get to that part, use the name of the craft principle, as in EXTERIORITY, RESTRAINT, or THIRD LEVEL EMOTION and then your snippet.
Friends, you are amazing--amazing. All of your words, your questions, your curiosity, your energy, your hearts. We loved writing with you.
We will send out all the followup readings tomorrow, along with a link to this post (for the ones who missed class, so they can find it and participate), and the recording and the AI transcript (cross your fingers that it's any good--new tool for us, hopefully it's better than nothing). And Billie and I will be in and out of this comment thread starting tomorrow and over the course of the next days/week, etc. Meanwhile, thank you, thank you, thank you. What an honor!
For anyone who enjoys tarot, I have drawn a card for each principle. Exteriority's card is the Ace of Pentacles - new feelings, beginning a project, and discovering on a sensory level. Feels almost prescient!
3rd Level Emotion's card is 8 of Wands - the card of unfettered progress, strong trailblazing energy. It feels like talking yourself into the thicket to find the shimmer stuck on a thorn.
They stood around the hospice bed looking at their now tiny mother. They had gotten smelly, in those three days and resigned to the goodbye without her ever opening her eyes, so like her to not look. And then her therapist arrived in his suit jacket, blue cashmere sweater, treading gently into the room. "Hello Alida, Its me David." And my mother, whose mouth I had swabbed, feet I had rubbed, hand I had held her whole fearful life, opened her eyes for yet another man, and spoke for the first time, looked for the first time, and talked openly as if she had been doing so all three days we were taking care of her. Oh Mom I thought did you have to get me one last time? Why did I trick myself into believing you couldn't open your eyes when they were squeezed shut, the kind that takes effort? Did I have to say goodbye to you without love, and alone like almost always? Resigned to the return of forlorn, its grip as sure as a python wrapping its body around the mouse meal. I had always hated me a millisecond after I hated her. It gave me my mother back. I should have known.
Thank you for your generous, brave sharing of your words, your heart, your tenderness, and your curiosity. We are so lucky to have you writing with us.
Vicky, thank you for reading your piece last night. It was stunning and real and heart wrenching. When you spoke "opened her eyes for yet another man" it transported me into yesteryear scenes with my own mother who craved male attention too.
Vicky, amazing to have heard this in spoken form first. thank you for sharing during class, and for sharing again here. a few lines that really struck for me--"their now tiny mother" "yet another man" also obviously "I had always hated me a millisecond after I hated her. It gave me my mother back." Oof.
“Look down your shirt and spell attic,” Tim said to me the summer I turned fourteen. Why was my new stepdad always home in the middle of the day?
I peeked at my bare chest beneath my favorite patchwork red and blue shirt with elastic at the top, around my upper arms, and my midriff. Then I proudly recited the word. The starburst clock on the kitchen wall beside the avocado green refrigerator kept time like I hadn’t just fallen into a trap.
It really is helpful in profound ways that go beyond the writing. Think about how it calms our nervous systems, too, how it subtly changes our relationship to lived experience, to be able to render our own power over its volume.
Wow! Yes! I knew there was more than just the improved writing but couldn’t articulate it. The power shift is it. Writing really does keep saving our lives. Thank you for this comment!
Also, Vanessa--the starburst clock keeping time "like I hadn't just fallen into a trap" --that combination of very precise exteriority with a brief reflective revelation is just ++++++
They returned, looking shiny, tall glasses gripped in their paws, seltzer and cranberry, not gin or scotch. It was after all twenty one years later, and we had all grown somehow in the shelter of that stone beach house, all cool, and temperate, unlike them. They lurched through that first year, our parents, funneling troughs of ice cream, gingerly slurping what became canals of soda, their hands tight on their drinks like stop locks, sweat and fear in their stares, squatting in front of the never before watched television, sometimes on, sometimes not, blankly like them. Where did they go I wondered, I had waited my whole life for them to come back, and they didn't. He died after eleven months of living as a half broke thing, a coat on a rack maybe but more like a deer hit by the side of the road, its antlers pointed to the woods but never having made it home. He said sorry, holding his journal in his fingers, sorry.
"their hands tight on their drinks like stop locks...in front of the never before watched television, sometimes on, sometimes not, blankly like them" omg.
I tried to comment on this earlier, and don't know what happened. But this line, Vicky--"They returned, looking shiny ..." is just so powerful, it says so much with so little. Also, "their hands tight on their drinks like stop locks" -- that is just, it's gripping. And the deer image. Really, really powerful.
3rd level emotion: SNIPPET: Third Level Emotion: The sound of someone hitting my door awakes me. "What the fuck was that?” I thought, full of annoyance from being awakened so early. It was only 7.20 am. I get up to investigate and as I open the door I see the hall full of smoke.
I run back to grab my purse with my keys and my notes for work, thinking I had better get out NOW. Which was should I go? left or right?I am like a rodent in a burrow. no, I will be calm, I tell myself and plan the best exit strategy.
I find the fire escape stairwell but it is dark, and the steps metal and slippery. People are going down them but slowly, stupid slowly. Why won’t they move I want to scream! I talk to no one. Should I have asked someone if I could help them? Should I have asked what they know? what is going on? But I don’t and later I would feel guilty.
AS I emerge out the fire door onto the street I am blinded by the sunlight, and miserable about the cold cement on my bare feet. I am safe I think. But I am surprised at how cold I am. I look up to see the massive hotel engulfed in thick black smoke, curling and winding up at a devilish rate. Fascinating, I think. Horrifying. Oh shit, what about the others in the hotel? I've only just thought about them. Again I feel guilty - for the last 15 minutes coming down those stairs I have only thought of myself, getting myself out.
Diana, this bit -- "I find the fire escape stairwell but it is dark, and the steps metal and slippery. People are going down them but slowly, stupid slowly."--is an amazing unfolding of exteriority. I know you're working on 3rd level here, but really wanted to highlight that very potent moment of exterior concrete detail for the huge work it does in this scene!
I don't want to critique anyone here! But I will be back tomorrow and through the week continuing to read. I like to do two things: really look for what is singing and seething in the words, and 2) look for questions or maybe unseen opportunities that you/writers can explore. I think this is the way we grow! It all comes from attention, love, and curiosity. I am so glad to write with you, Diana!
RESTRAINT: the card for Restraint is The Chariot - interesting! This card usually represents determination and willpower, but it also means sharp duality and making clear decisions; actively choosing one word OVER another, one phrase and NOT another. Willpower, restraint, I can see that connection. :)
It was mom's idea to sign up for the six course meal with the wine pairings. It was also her idea to start drinking in the casino first. Double amaretto sours, 3 cherries, $400 already gone on slots and only one crack about me not wearing makeup anymore. but me, my liver is half the age of hers and all the sunbaked couples at this table, the terra cotta Palm Springs couple and the Harley-driving Colorado couple and the wine country pair of doctors, they drink like it's their job.
She cannot keep up and I am bragging now; I no longer shrink when I tell strangers I am a writer but I see her knuckles grip the tablecloth anyway. She doesn't know what part of the dish is the yuzu dressing and what part is the vanilla emulsion. I do. There are times I can see the cheerleader under her transluscent skin and feel the prick and burn of our biweekly ritual. She used a needle, a bobby pin and Sea Breeze to scrape the blackheads on my nose off, muttering "these are your father's pores."
She wants to brag about me, about my writing now and not our looks, no way we pass for sisters anymore, but she's slurring the words now. She ordered her steak medium well like a savage. The table chatter wheezes to a crawl while my mother forgets the name of my show. Lynda with a Y proposes a toast to my mother: "To Lindy, who clearly did everything right..." and I crow with laughter. I smile at her drooping face through the smoke of all the burnt pages of every journal she found, read, set ablaze. Hip hip hooray.
Thank you, Lisa. I love writing into the rage and then back out, seeing where it can lurk and where it should strut. Appreciate your attention and kind words!
Rachel, this knocked me out when you read it out loud. The hip, hip hooray is such a gut punch after all the exterior detail that precedes it, like we have worked our way up to this exact moment of deflation and pain. It's beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, and more.
It was one of those moments that, as it happened, I knew I'd be writing about it. I love performing an autopsy on a scene that feels like three different stories playing out - I learned to dissociate early and lock onto external details rather than explore what was happening in my body-brain. It's only the writing afterwards that helps me make sense of it.
She stood in the doorway, her hand on her stomach, a slight smile on her face. The kitchen behind her was spotless, the stainless-steel pots hanging from their hooks just so. This is how my daughter liked things to be. I could run my finger on any surface and not find a speck of dust. I knew what she was going to tell me before she opened her mouth and I wished I could have stopped her.
“Mamma, I’m pregnant,” she said. When she saw my expression, her smile got crooked. She lowered her hand. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy for me?”
I wanted to shake her. She knew about our family history. She knew the risks. Just last week when she called me she said she and Jeff had been looking into adoption agencies. And now this. I gripped the railing of the staircase. I looked into the eyes of this girl who used to shadow me from the sink to the back garden to the laundry room, never letting me out of her sight. “Mamma, listen. Listen!” she’d say, tugging the bottom of my shirt.
I took three quick steps across the blue tiled kitchen floor and pulled her into my arms.
So powerful in its restraint, "I wanted to shake her. She knew about our family history."
It caused me to think about Huntington's Disease, where if one parent has the gene there's a 50% chance of a child inheriting this devastating disease.
Thank you Joseph. These two characters and this scene flew into my mind during our 8-minute free writing session for this exercise, but I think there's more to discover here. I am very curious now to know about them and to know what happens. Thanks for the information on Huntington's Disease. I had heard of it but don't know much about it. It does sound devastating for families.
I enter the doctor’s office wearing jeans and a summer top. I remember the summer top because there was a moment when it was twisted up around my torso, revealing my breasts as though modesty would matter.
The fainting began before the nurse had even pulled the needle out of my backside. Was I falling? She firmly grabbed me around the waist like she did this every day
. “It will sting a bit,” she said.
Something is wrong I thought, if not said. The door is far away, though it’s a small room.
The seizures began then, moving me to the corner of the room, though I reached for the door. Help If
I could get out to the waiting room, someone might save me. The table I leaned against while she injected the antibiotic is in the way.
Did I scream? Someone dressed in surgical greens burst in the door and grabbed me from where I was spitting and jerking in the corner. He held me against his chest.
You’re killing me. You’re killing me.
You will know when you’re dying.
Soldiers cry out for God in foxholes, they say. And for their mothers. For me, it was God.
You know me.
Not my life, but all I was losing was spinning. Trees, grass, I want to see my children grow up.
Thank you for reading your beautiful work on Thursday, Kelly. The opening, for me, is the most powerful segment of this powerful vignette. You have my full undivided attention, and this, "as though modesty would matter" is just such a gut punch.
Restraint: I hear a knock at my apartment door. I’m not expecting anyone. I open the door to my mother. She looks down, not raising her eyes to mine. Her hair is tangled in the back. She never leaves the house with tangled hair. She raises her hand to wipe a tear tunneling along her nose. A purple bruise blooms on her hand. She never lets anyone see her wounds. I stand back to let her pass. We say nothing. She sits heavily on my sofa, the one I bought from a law school friend when she packed to leave after graduation. It still stings that she didn’t tell me the price until after she’d left. Mom sits at the edge of the couch, not leaning back. I wince, imagining what is under her shirt. She’s wearing a thin white blouse.
Pixie, this made me feel so sad. The short, clipped sentences march like a drum beat--or a heartbeat, actually--to that final line, which slays. I also find that the narrator's brief resentment over the sofa does so much work. Powerful writing!!
"not leaning back. i wince" is such an amazing line--i feel it in my body. the sensation we get when we witness someone else's pain. really well done. also agree, the last line is so powerful
1 st grade classroom: Green blackboards with black erasers. Miss Gaughan's gold squishy eraser. Blue lined cream colored paper with 3 line increments to write Capital and lower case letters. brown desks with attached seats that had graffiti written all over. inkwells that we didn't use. Space underneath to keep my workbook and pencils.
EXTERIORITY: When my mom left my dad, my sister and my mom sat up front next to a soldier in the front of an olive green Jeep. I sat backward, on the back of the Jeep, next to a soldier, who held a large gun next to me. I waved to my dad from the back of the Jeep as we drove away from him.
Jenn, we don't HAVE to keep the narrator out to be exterior. When I teach shimmer/sharding specifically, I do ask writers to keep the narrator out, because it makes it so much clearer and easier to be exterior. That said, we can write exteriority AND have a narrator, and you have done that here. The sister/mom, soldier, Jeep, the other soldier, the large gun, the wave. 100% exterior and SO powerful. We're all leaning in now to follow this narrator.
A loft bed and a regular bed arranged on opposite sides of the room, dingy flat-weave carpet on the floor. A single window with a window seat where we put the microwave. My roommate's dresser and desk and cello case, the first things I see each morning, and my roommate, always asleep when I'm awake, always awake when I'm asleep. She frowns when she sleeps, always. The sound of her speaking a language I don't understand loudly on the phone, yelling a language I don't understand to her friend who lives down the hall. But there is one word I understand: Natalie. My name. She talks about me a lot at first, using words I do not know, and then one day, she moves most of her stuff into the lounge down the hall. But I still wake up to the sight of her mostly-empty furniture each morning, and her sleeping, frowning, face.
I agree with Raju, this line!! "But there is one word I understand: Natalie." And this is super disciplined exteriority. The wonderful thing about exteriority is how it builds into an emotional experience inside of the reader. Each detail, adding up to more than the sum of its parts. Thank you for this wonderful example!
“always asleep when I’m awake, always awake when I’m asleep” “But there is one word I understand: Natalie” These two details reveal so much.. Thanks Natalie ♥️
What an incredible event - thank you all, especially those who shared and Jeannine and Billie for hosting and teaching. So much to chew on and process.
And stroll I shall!! I’ve had a rather overwhelming plumbing problem this past week so I’ve been MIA and I’ve missed the interaction. Will catch up soon!
It’s so odd how we take for granted the “luxury” of functional indoor plumbing!! It’s been a lot!! Glad it’s fixed! The joys of owning a 50yr old house….
This working document--also known as a Substack post--is how we’d like to capture questions, close reading observations, work you’ll share during class, etc., it is also where you will be able to find tonight’s readings and the followup readings for this class once it’s over, and, the best part, we think, is that the post provides an opportunity for everyone here to continue this conversation going forward.
To keep the comments on that post as usable and navigable as possible, please use the following conventions on your comments:
For questions, start with with QUESTION all caps,
For observations on close readings, use CLOSE READING and the name of the piece, all caps
For sharing snippet of your own work when we get to that part, use the name of the craft principle, as in EXTERIORITY, RESTRAINT, or THIRD LEVEL EMOTION and then your snippet.
Friends, you are amazing--amazing. All of your words, your questions, your curiosity, your energy, your hearts. We loved writing with you.
We will send out all the followup readings tomorrow, along with a link to this post (for the ones who missed class, so they can find it and participate), and the recording and the AI transcript (cross your fingers that it's any good--new tool for us, hopefully it's better than nothing). And Billie and I will be in and out of this comment thread starting tomorrow and over the course of the next days/week, etc. Meanwhile, thank you, thank you, thank you. What an honor!
Thank YOU and Billie!
For anyone who enjoys tarot, I have drawn a card for each principle. Exteriority's card is the Ace of Pentacles - new feelings, beginning a project, and discovering on a sensory level. Feels almost prescient!
I'll post the other two as we go!
3rd Level Emotion's card is 8 of Wands - the card of unfettered progress, strong trailblazing energy. It feels like talking yourself into the thicket to find the shimmer stuck on a thorn.
This is so third-level emotion--the thicket that reveals!
Oh I could not love this more!!!
They stood around the hospice bed looking at their now tiny mother. They had gotten smelly, in those three days and resigned to the goodbye without her ever opening her eyes, so like her to not look. And then her therapist arrived in his suit jacket, blue cashmere sweater, treading gently into the room. "Hello Alida, Its me David." And my mother, whose mouth I had swabbed, feet I had rubbed, hand I had held her whole fearful life, opened her eyes for yet another man, and spoke for the first time, looked for the first time, and talked openly as if she had been doing so all three days we were taking care of her. Oh Mom I thought did you have to get me one last time? Why did I trick myself into believing you couldn't open your eyes when they were squeezed shut, the kind that takes effort? Did I have to say goodbye to you without love, and alone like almost always? Resigned to the return of forlorn, its grip as sure as a python wrapping its body around the mouse meal. I had always hated me a millisecond after I hated her. It gave me my mother back. I should have known.
Some many beautiful moments in this writing, Vicky. I had to stop several times and take them in!
Thank you so much for your comments and your generosity of heart and deep knowing of writing.
Thank you for your generous, brave sharing of your words, your heart, your tenderness, and your curiosity. We are so lucky to have you writing with us.
I agree, Joseph! I am enjoying your comments here, too, as I slowly make my way through these snippets and the followup conversation.
Vicky, thank you for reading your piece last night. It was stunning and real and heart wrenching. When you spoke "opened her eyes for yet another man" it transported me into yesteryear scenes with my own mother who craved male attention too.
I agree—that took my breath away.
As I have said to you, Vicky, this writing is stunning, and the ending takes my breath away. I have re-read it so many times for its brilliance.
Vicky, amazing to have heard this in spoken form first. thank you for sharing during class, and for sharing again here. a few lines that really struck for me--"their now tiny mother" "yet another man" also obviously "I had always hated me a millisecond after I hated her. It gave me my mother back." Oof.
READ
“Look down your shirt and spell attic,” Tim said to me the summer I turned fourteen. Why was my new stepdad always home in the middle of the day?
I peeked at my bare chest beneath my favorite patchwork red and blue shirt with elastic at the top, around my upper arms, and my midriff. Then I proudly recited the word. The starburst clock on the kitchen wall beside the avocado green refrigerator kept time like I hadn’t just fallen into a trap.
The subtext here. The seismic foreshadowing. I had a Tim, too.
Thank you. I'm sorry you had a Tim too. I'm finding this Restraint/ Hot/Cold writing technique SO helpful.
It really is helpful in profound ways that go beyond the writing. Think about how it calms our nervous systems, too, how it subtly changes our relationship to lived experience, to be able to render our own power over its volume.
Wow! Yes! I knew there was more than just the improved writing but couldn’t articulate it. The power shift is it. Writing really does keep saving our lives. Thank you for this comment!
Wow, Vanessa! This is so restrained, specific, and powerful. Thank you. 🙏
Thanks! Restraint and exteriority…a remarkable combination.
Breathtaking snippet, Vanessa--breathtaking.
Thank you, Jeannine. Your comments mean so much to me. I couldn’t have boiled this down without your helpful teaching.
That is amazing to hear and actually a huge honor. Grateful. Thank you for writing with me.
Also, Vanessa--the starburst clock keeping time "like I hadn't just fallen into a trap" --that combination of very precise exteriority with a brief reflective revelation is just ++++++
They returned, looking shiny, tall glasses gripped in their paws, seltzer and cranberry, not gin or scotch. It was after all twenty one years later, and we had all grown somehow in the shelter of that stone beach house, all cool, and temperate, unlike them. They lurched through that first year, our parents, funneling troughs of ice cream, gingerly slurping what became canals of soda, their hands tight on their drinks like stop locks, sweat and fear in their stares, squatting in front of the never before watched television, sometimes on, sometimes not, blankly like them. Where did they go I wondered, I had waited my whole life for them to come back, and they didn't. He died after eleven months of living as a half broke thing, a coat on a rack maybe but more like a deer hit by the side of the road, its antlers pointed to the woods but never having made it home. He said sorry, holding his journal in his fingers, sorry.
"their hands tight on their drinks like stop locks...in front of the never before watched television, sometimes on, sometimes not, blankly like them" omg.
Oh Vicky, this last line “He said sorry, holding his journal in his fingers, sorry.”
I tried to comment on this earlier, and don't know what happened. But this line, Vicky--"They returned, looking shiny ..." is just so powerful, it says so much with so little. Also, "their hands tight on their drinks like stop locks" -- that is just, it's gripping. And the deer image. Really, really powerful.
really really loved reading this Vicky. i am instantly pulled into the story--thank you for sharing with us <3
3rd level emotion: SNIPPET: Third Level Emotion: The sound of someone hitting my door awakes me. "What the fuck was that?” I thought, full of annoyance from being awakened so early. It was only 7.20 am. I get up to investigate and as I open the door I see the hall full of smoke.
I run back to grab my purse with my keys and my notes for work, thinking I had better get out NOW. Which was should I go? left or right?I am like a rodent in a burrow. no, I will be calm, I tell myself and plan the best exit strategy.
I find the fire escape stairwell but it is dark, and the steps metal and slippery. People are going down them but slowly, stupid slowly. Why won’t they move I want to scream! I talk to no one. Should I have asked someone if I could help them? Should I have asked what they know? what is going on? But I don’t and later I would feel guilty.
AS I emerge out the fire door onto the street I am blinded by the sunlight, and miserable about the cold cement on my bare feet. I am safe I think. But I am surprised at how cold I am. I look up to see the massive hotel engulfed in thick black smoke, curling and winding up at a devilish rate. Fascinating, I think. Horrifying. Oh shit, what about the others in the hotel? I've only just thought about them. Again I feel guilty - for the last 15 minutes coming down those stairs I have only thought of myself, getting myself out.
Diana, this bit -- "I find the fire escape stairwell but it is dark, and the steps metal and slippery. People are going down them but slowly, stupid slowly."--is an amazing unfolding of exteriority. I know you're working on 3rd level here, but really wanted to highlight that very potent moment of exterior concrete detail for the huge work it does in this scene!
Thank you Jeannine, I am hungry for any piece of critique you give me.
I don't want to critique anyone here! But I will be back tomorrow and through the week continuing to read. I like to do two things: really look for what is singing and seething in the words, and 2) look for questions or maybe unseen opportunities that you/writers can explore. I think this is the way we grow! It all comes from attention, love, and curiosity. I am so glad to write with you, Diana!
RESTRAINT: the card for Restraint is The Chariot - interesting! This card usually represents determination and willpower, but it also means sharp duality and making clear decisions; actively choosing one word OVER another, one phrase and NOT another. Willpower, restraint, I can see that connection. :)
Oh, this is just amazing, Thank you for this card + reading!!
THIRD LEVEL EMOTION [READ]:
It was mom's idea to sign up for the six course meal with the wine pairings. It was also her idea to start drinking in the casino first. Double amaretto sours, 3 cherries, $400 already gone on slots and only one crack about me not wearing makeup anymore. but me, my liver is half the age of hers and all the sunbaked couples at this table, the terra cotta Palm Springs couple and the Harley-driving Colorado couple and the wine country pair of doctors, they drink like it's their job.
She cannot keep up and I am bragging now; I no longer shrink when I tell strangers I am a writer but I see her knuckles grip the tablecloth anyway. She doesn't know what part of the dish is the yuzu dressing and what part is the vanilla emulsion. I do. There are times I can see the cheerleader under her transluscent skin and feel the prick and burn of our biweekly ritual. She used a needle, a bobby pin and Sea Breeze to scrape the blackheads on my nose off, muttering "these are your father's pores."
She wants to brag about me, about my writing now and not our looks, no way we pass for sisters anymore, but she's slurring the words now. She ordered her steak medium well like a savage. The table chatter wheezes to a crawl while my mother forgets the name of my show. Lynda with a Y proposes a toast to my mother: "To Lindy, who clearly did everything right..." and I crow with laughter. I smile at her drooping face through the smoke of all the burnt pages of every journal she found, read, set ablaze. Hip hip hooray.
Sooo good!! Thank you for reading it aloud. Nice to have a voice to pair with the posts!
Thank you Kathleen! I just started Invisalign and hate how I speak lately.
Not to worry - I could not hear that. It was lovely to be in your company! Great job! 👏🏻
Your attention to exteriority is luscious, Like a tasting menu!
“She used a needle, a bobby pin and Sea Breeze to scrape the blackheads on my nose off, muttering "these are your father's pores."”
“Lynda with a Y proposes a toast to my mother: "To Lindy, who clearly did everything right..."”
I've read this again here, in the quiet, and it's brilliance is a clarion call. Remarkable writing. Thank you.
I'm so touched that it's been resonating! Thank you Barbara.
Loved hearing your piece last night and then again today after reading! I had so many emotions listening to this and by the end, felt your rage.
Thank you, Lisa. I love writing into the rage and then back out, seeing where it can lurk and where it should strut. Appreciate your attention and kind words!
Rachel, this knocked me out when you read it out loud. The hip, hip hooray is such a gut punch after all the exterior detail that precedes it, like we have worked our way up to this exact moment of deflation and pain. It's beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, and more.
It was one of those moments that, as it happened, I knew I'd be writing about it. I love performing an autopsy on a scene that feels like three different stories playing out - I learned to dissociate early and lock onto external details rather than explore what was happening in my body-brain. It's only the writing afterwards that helps me make sense of it.
THIRD LEVEL EMOTION:
She stood in the doorway, her hand on her stomach, a slight smile on her face. The kitchen behind her was spotless, the stainless-steel pots hanging from their hooks just so. This is how my daughter liked things to be. I could run my finger on any surface and not find a speck of dust. I knew what she was going to tell me before she opened her mouth and I wished I could have stopped her.
“Mamma, I’m pregnant,” she said. When she saw my expression, her smile got crooked. She lowered her hand. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy for me?”
I wanted to shake her. She knew about our family history. She knew the risks. Just last week when she called me she said she and Jeff had been looking into adoption agencies. And now this. I gripped the railing of the staircase. I looked into the eyes of this girl who used to shadow me from the sink to the back garden to the laundry room, never letting me out of her sight. “Mamma, listen. Listen!” she’d say, tugging the bottom of my shirt.
I took three quick steps across the blue tiled kitchen floor and pulled her into my arms.
"her smile got crooked" -- Amy, that's one hell of a line. Wow. Big work, that does.
Thank you💗
So powerful in its restraint, "I wanted to shake her. She knew about our family history."
It caused me to think about Huntington's Disease, where if one parent has the gene there's a 50% chance of a child inheriting this devastating disease.
Thank you Joseph. These two characters and this scene flew into my mind during our 8-minute free writing session for this exercise, but I think there's more to discover here. I am very curious now to know about them and to know what happens. Thanks for the information on Huntington's Disease. I had heard of it but don't know much about it. It does sound devastating for families.
Yes, a lot more to discover. That's part of the fun!
Gorgeous, full, vibrantly alive. The conflicts of being a mother and the resolution to mother within desperation. Thank you.
Restraint hot/cold
I enter the doctor’s office wearing jeans and a summer top. I remember the summer top because there was a moment when it was twisted up around my torso, revealing my breasts as though modesty would matter.
The fainting began before the nurse had even pulled the needle out of my backside. Was I falling? She firmly grabbed me around the waist like she did this every day
. “It will sting a bit,” she said.
Something is wrong I thought, if not said. The door is far away, though it’s a small room.
The seizures began then, moving me to the corner of the room, though I reached for the door. Help If
I could get out to the waiting room, someone might save me. The table I leaned against while she injected the antibiotic is in the way.
Did I scream? Someone dressed in surgical greens burst in the door and grabbed me from where I was spitting and jerking in the corner. He held me against his chest.
You’re killing me. You’re killing me.
You will know when you’re dying.
Soldiers cry out for God in foxholes, they say. And for their mothers. For me, it was God.
You know me.
Not my life, but all I was losing was spinning. Trees, grass, I want to see my children grow up.
Thank you for reading your beautiful work on Thursday, Kelly. The opening, for me, is the most powerful segment of this powerful vignette. You have my full undivided attention, and this, "as though modesty would matter" is just such a gut punch.
Restraint: I hear a knock at my apartment door. I’m not expecting anyone. I open the door to my mother. She looks down, not raising her eyes to mine. Her hair is tangled in the back. She never leaves the house with tangled hair. She raises her hand to wipe a tear tunneling along her nose. A purple bruise blooms on her hand. She never lets anyone see her wounds. I stand back to let her pass. We say nothing. She sits heavily on my sofa, the one I bought from a law school friend when she packed to leave after graduation. It still stings that she didn’t tell me the price until after she’d left. Mom sits at the edge of the couch, not leaning back. I wince, imagining what is under her shirt. She’s wearing a thin white blouse.
Pixie, this made me feel so sad. The short, clipped sentences march like a drum beat--or a heartbeat, actually--to that final line, which slays. I also find that the narrator's brief resentment over the sofa does so much work. Powerful writing!!
"not leaning back. i wince" is such an amazing line--i feel it in my body. the sensation we get when we witness someone else's pain. really well done. also agree, the last line is so powerful
1 st grade classroom: Green blackboards with black erasers. Miss Gaughan's gold squishy eraser. Blue lined cream colored paper with 3 line increments to write Capital and lower case letters. brown desks with attached seats that had graffiti written all over. inkwells that we didn't use. Space underneath to keep my workbook and pencils.
Oh my those 3 line increments and unused inkwells, I love when literal things are so literal they take on metaphorical connotations. This is lovely.
EXTERIORITY: When my mom left my dad, my sister and my mom sat up front next to a soldier in the front of an olive green Jeep. I sat backward, on the back of the Jeep, next to a soldier, who held a large gun next to me. I waved to my dad from the back of the Jeep as we drove away from him.
I'm not good at keeping the narrator/story out of it... Geesh.
Jenn, we don't HAVE to keep the narrator out to be exterior. When I teach shimmer/sharding specifically, I do ask writers to keep the narrator out, because it makes it so much clearer and easier to be exterior. That said, we can write exteriority AND have a narrator, and you have done that here. The sister/mom, soldier, Jeep, the other soldier, the large gun, the wave. 100% exterior and SO powerful. We're all leaning in now to follow this narrator.
EXTERIORITY
A loft bed and a regular bed arranged on opposite sides of the room, dingy flat-weave carpet on the floor. A single window with a window seat where we put the microwave. My roommate's dresser and desk and cello case, the first things I see each morning, and my roommate, always asleep when I'm awake, always awake when I'm asleep. She frowns when she sleeps, always. The sound of her speaking a language I don't understand loudly on the phone, yelling a language I don't understand to her friend who lives down the hall. But there is one word I understand: Natalie. My name. She talks about me a lot at first, using words I do not know, and then one day, she moves most of her stuff into the lounge down the hall. But I still wake up to the sight of her mostly-empty furniture each morning, and her sleeping, frowning, face.
I agree with Raju, this line!! "But there is one word I understand: Natalie." And this is super disciplined exteriority. The wonderful thing about exteriority is how it builds into an emotional experience inside of the reader. Each detail, adding up to more than the sum of its parts. Thank you for this wonderful example!
“always asleep when I’m awake, always awake when I’m asleep” “But there is one word I understand: Natalie” These two details reveal so much.. Thanks Natalie ♥️
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Yes, I agree!
"where we put the microwave" LOVE this specific detail. brings me right into that haphazard way college dorms are often arranged.
What an incredible event - thank you all, especially those who shared and Jeannine and Billie for hosting and teaching. So much to chew on and process.
Well, I wanted to really show up for you all. I know it was a LOT but now we can stroll through it for days to come. Thank you for being there!
It was a lot, but oh so worth it!
It was a lot--and also, a little, if you really think about it. What does it mean to pay attention? It will be fun to continue the conversation!
You put an enormous amount of preparation into this class, Jeannine! I was both impressed and very grateful. My writing jumped up a notch! Thank you!
And shoe up you did Jeannine! Thank you! And thanks to Billie too☺️
Yay. We are excited to continue the conversation, too.
And stroll I shall!! I’ve had a rather overwhelming plumbing problem this past week so I’ve been MIA and I’ve missed the interaction. Will catch up soon!
Ugh plumbing problems are so stressful! Glad it is resolved and glad you are here!
It’s so odd how we take for granted the “luxury” of functional indoor plumbing!! It’s been a lot!! Glad it’s fixed! The joys of owning a 50yr old house….