Welcome, dear friends, to Open Mic Friday!
I am so happy to welcome back Ré Harris, whose prose poem “Sparks” was featured on the Open Mic in November. Today, Ré shares with us a story that has been many years in the making, and on which she would deeply appreciate feedback (both positive and critical).
Here’s what she says about her story:
I’ve been working on this story since an eight week writing course I took at the dining room table of a moonlighting college professor in 1993. I think there were six of us students, and for this homework assignment we were told to write down two simple subjects to include in a story. They were put into a bowl, I drew a specific two, and the bones of this story were born. I’ve been told over the years that I have to remember to “show, not tell,” and that sometimes I write things that are told in a way that doesn’t ring true for the reader, so I want to make it clear that I really do want honest feedback. It’s time for me to work harder on my skills, and although I may not always agree with a specific criticism, I need to hear how others truly experience my work so I can grow as a writer. I love the supportive way Lisa’s readers communicate with each other, so I feel safe here. I hope you enjoy this story. Many thanks to Lisa, and to you all for your time!
West on 80, 1993 by Ré Harris
On a cold desert highway in Nevada, the sun shining way over on the other side of the Earth, no moon, she was clutching the wheel of a boxy little car which was piled high with everything she and her boyfriend had decided to take with them to San Francisco. When they had left Chicago, it had been snowing on top of the salty, gray speckled gunk that lay on the streets and sidewalks. It had been cold and sunless for weeks, so although it had sounded like just another of his impulsive and ill-thought out schemes, it hadn’t been difficult for him to talk her into leaving. Besides the intense chill of the weather and of her life there, she couldn’t have paid the rent on their apartment alone with her salary from the deli. Living in her parents’ house again, though possible, would have meant a return to the uncertainty she already knew.
Her younger brother and sister had become disinterested in anything to do with her when they each reached puberty and found out that the things she was able to teach them about teenage-hood weren’t cool. Her ceaselessly distracted father was reasonably good at pretending he didn’t have any money, but not at hiding his love life with other women. Then there was her mother whose warm giving nature butted oddly against an incomprehensible hostility that had once caused her to stop speaking to her daughter for two weeks, after the morning the ten year old had dared to lay out her own school clothes. She didn’t fit into their home as an adult with a mind of her own, any more than she had fit in anyplace else. Rather than the family she had fantasized about that would sit around the dinner table and discuss the news from all the different parts of the newspaper, living day to day again with the family she had been born into would be a torture. Better to go ahead and try San Francisco she hoped, another big city — diverse, cultured, common, poor, rich — but maybe a little different. Hadn’t there been lots of hippies, you know, free thinkers, there in the sixties and seventies? If they were still there — if their children were still there — maybe they wouldn’t think she would be better if she was someone else. Maybe she could change her bad luck with people, and find some who didn’t think that luxuriating in thought and conversation was the same as being strange.
She wondered why so many people seemed to back away from her, receding effortlessly without anger or explanation. They might say that she was nice and they should get together sometime and do something, as they backed away from her permanently like secretly reluctant suitors instead of potential friends. When she first noticed this, trying even harder to be pleasant became her priority. She listened more, and asked questions about what they’d said to be sure that she wasn’t dominating conversations, but still when she tried to share a thought, there was that backing away, like she was a hot stove and they needed to get to a safe distance. Being alone and unheard wore hard on her soul, and it was circular in its effects — if she rarely spoke, she was a good listener and could be tolerated. If she commented on things (assumed the give and take of conversation) potential relationships would soon trail away. She had read some books in her search for an answer to this, but all she had found in them were more concepts for discussions that no one she had ever met wanted to have. She had guiltily, and privately, begun to wonder if she just needed to meet very different kinds of people, and how that could be done.
So there was no one to be sad about leaving in Chicago. The people she’d met in high school and later at work, who liked to party, seemed to think she was boring and quiet. The ones who were quiet looked at her strangely when she tried to make conversation, like they were put off by her small talk overtures, or she stank or something. The only two people she felt she knew, or who seemed to sort of know her (coworkers whose band she’d gone to support a few times at small clubs around town) hadn’t seemed at all fazed that she was leaving. She had told them she was going away during a conveniently shared lunch in the break room, while they were eating sandwiches. “Good luck,” they had each said, and some variation of, “Sounds great.” They asked what was in San Francisco (which she didn’t know how to answer) but they didn’t say they’d miss her. She wondered if they would have said more if the conversation at the other end of the table hadn’t turned to an argument about who the best heavy metal band from the seventies was. Her table mates eventually bowed to Led Zeppelin. She wondered how their conversation concluded without any mention of Steppenwolf.
On the road headed west, her boyfriend was hunched into the passenger seat, shifting every couple of minutes, trying to sleep. He had been teaching her how to drive in Chicago, at his own insistence. “If my mother can learn to drive,” he had told her, “then any idiot can learn.” He said it had been a tortuous process for him because “She does everything upside down or backwards.” She was surprised that he didn’t say the same thing about her. She was happy to learn, and she had studied “The Rules of the Road” but she was sure that she would never be able to drive in traffic, and had no intention of getting a license.
He had told her he was getting too sleepy to drive and since they were on the desert, in the middle of the night, she should be able to take the wheel without any trouble. She had tried to protest, “Can’t we just stop by the side of the road for a while?” But he had stopped the car, fussing at her with the engine idling, and forced the issue. So there she was driving, sitting up as straight as she could, clutching the wheel tightly. He made fun of the way she did that. He didn’t understand that she wasn’t really uncomfortable behind the wheel, he just thought she just looked that way.
She thought the road looked like a dark stage with a spotlight in the middle, the reflectors along the pavement like flying diamonds. Lucy in the Sky. After a while, she realized that she felt like talking, the self-amusing, road drunk thoughts piling up in her head. A few minutes later, he sat up and announced that he couldn’t fall asleep. He reached over the back of the seat, got a Seven-Up out of their small cooler, put the bottle between his thighs as he opened it, and turned to look at her before he took a drink. “Talk to me, babe,” he purred.
Great! she thought. “You know what I was just thinking?” she asked. She heard him slurp his Seven-Up to answer. “I was just wondering, I mean, you know, people like — Charles Manson, what do they eat for breakfast? Know what I mean? Like Jeffrey Dahmer — what kind of cereal did he eat for breakfast? Rice Krispies? Oatmeal? Or Frosted Flakes?”
He stared at her, holding the bottle in midair for a moment. She had an inquisitive look, her eyes wide though still trained on the road. “You are the only idiot on the face of the planet who would think of something like that,” he said. He held the bottle down on one knee and burped. “What makes you say stupid stuff like that? Who cares what kind of cereal Jeffrey Dahmer ate? If you start saying shit like that in San Francisco, you’re gonna have to figure out how to get along on your own. I don’t want people thinking I’m as weird as you.” He took another drink of soda. Then he said, “Man!” The way he stretched it out sounded as if he was letting the air out of something.
She started to speak, but thought better of it. A long moment passed, and she had to try to explain. “Sometimes we forget that they’re people, too. I mean, they’re so evil or sick that we get scared to think that they do regular stuff just like we do. I was only thinking…”
“Well, you should stop doing it. It’s obviously too much for you.”
Her face went hot, and she could feel all the words she’d ever said to him or tried to say to him sticking in her throat, one on top of another, trapped. She didn’t feel like talking anymore and, mercifully, he didn’t either. He finished his soda, leaned his head back and stared out the window. Soon he was asleep.
It was getting harder for her to remember any of the good things between them. Memories were getting jumbled around inside her as if they were little children playing a naughty game. Yet, driving that night, playing her part on one of the world’s tiny stages with the diamond footlights flashing hypnotically before her, she managed to bring up a memory. A pleasant one of her day off and him coming back to the apartment an hour after leaving for work, with a small bunch of lilacs stolen out of someone’s yard and a surprise cheese and vegetable croissant for her breakfast that had made her cry for happy. He had kissed her on the cheek; he had only ever aimed for her lips before. Then he’d said goodbye. “Gotta get back to work.” Who the hell was that guy? Why did he turn on her? She couldn’t quite remember, if she ever knew. She was tired, too.
There was a halo of light up ahead, to the right. It got bigger and suddenly there were streetlights again. She had probably missed a sign saying what town was coming up. I’ve got to stop for a while, she thought. She wondered if there would be traffic, or stop and go lights. It didn’t matter. I can do this, she thought. Her only problem would be if he wasn’t quite asleep — if he woke up and started yelling at her. Where the hell are we? Why did you stop? You can’t just stop somewhere in the middle of the night! She didn’t want anything terrible to happen to them either, but she wasn’t as scared of things as he was, so she made a different decision. Anyway, she wasn’t sleepy, just tired. The doors were locked and she knew how to start the car. She would stay awake and guard him and all of his precious stuff.
She turned into the town, watched her speed on the off ramp, smiled as she finessed the stoplight, then turned left onto a deserted but well lit block with a Western souvenir store in the middle and a closed gas station on the corner. She parked close to the gas station because of the lights, but she didn’t get out to see how far she was from the curb.
He didn’t wake up. She looked over at him sleeping, his face turned away from her, his head leaning against the window. By the end of the next day they should make it into San Francisco; a little more time, then something new. She thought about turning the radio on low, but she didn’t want to take the chance of waking him. She hoped he wouldn’t wake up until after daybreak. Whatever place they were in would have to look safer in the sunlight. Maybe then he wouldn’t throw a fit.
She was very still for a while, not thinking about anything. Then she remembered her serial killer question. Which cereal would Jeffrey Dahmer choose for breakfast? What cereal would a serial killer eat? She started to smile. Then she looked at the man sleeping in the passenger seat. The empty Seven-Up bottle was still between his thighs. I don’t know what a serial killer eats for breakfast, she thought, but I do know what kind of soda an asshole drinks. Her head fell back against the headrest and she laughed convulsively, but quietly, for a full minute. Then the loneliness welled up inside her, and the tears spilled out.
She had coveted his huge, coffee-colored messenger bag since the first time she’d seen it. She thought it looked like something a cowboy would sling over a saddle, and she had fallen for him again every time she saw him carry it. Because of that, she had erroneously thought that his taste and hers must be a shared attribute. He was still sleeping heavily when she finally figured out how to consolidate her most important things into it and her big backpack. The cool wind, soon to be hot, along the desert road was quickly drying her tear soaked collar, and though she knew the dangers of hitchhiking, she had decided that she was much more comfortable with those risks than with the ones in her ex-boyfriend’s boxy little car.
If her life was a country song she would still be holding his keys, or they would be as far from the road as she could have thrown them, being covered slowly by wind born sand and dirt — but she hadn’t taken them. They were on the floor of his backseat, under the box of t-shirts and jeans that was under the cooler.
The sun was coming up behind her as she walked west, and she didn’t look for the name of the town that she’d left him in.
Copyright © 2011 Kathleen (Ré) Harris. All Rights Reserved.
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Ré Harris
Ré Harris is a longtime writer, and new crochet pattern designer, who lives in Chicago. She began seriously writing on her young blog late this summer when a chance experience at a free rock concert resurrected her creative spirit. You can find her posts at sparksinshadow.wordpress.com.
Thank you, Ré! Give her your applause on the comments, and don’t forget, she would be very grateful for your earnest critiques as well.
[…] Personal: My story, “West on 80, 1993″ is featured today on Open Mic Friday at Satsumabug’s art blog. Lisa’s blog captures her personal journey as an artist in such a wonderfully written, […]
nice piece! it really sucked me in by the end and got me invested in the character. i think some of the sentence structure threw me for a bit in the beginning (maybe cuz i’m not used to it) but by the middle/end it felt like it really hit a “groove” 🙂 i’m not a writer so i can’t offer any specific “writing” advice, but those are my thoughts!!
“She thought the road looked like a dark stage with a spotlight in the middle, the reflectors along the pavement like flying diamonds. Lucy in the Sky. ”
^beautiful line
“I don’t know what a serial killer eats for breakfast, she thought, but I do know what kind of soda an asshole drinks.”
^haha my FAVORITE
Thank you so much for your input, tamgerines! (Please forgive me if I ever wrote your name wrong before!) I have heard that my sentence structure can be difficult to wade through. I’m trying to work on clarity, and I’m also trying to figure out if the way I write has something to do with my “individual voice” — i.e., should I work toward clarity within that voice, or is the voice some sort of affectation??? I lean toward thinking that it’s not an affectation, because I do it a lot without thinking. (I spend a lot of time editing to untangle it!) In the end, that’s a question that only I can answer, but that’s where input from others comes in. Everything I hear helps to point me in the right direction.
Thanks for taking the time to point out specific lines that you liked! I really do appreciate that. Take care.
Ré
like i said before, i’m not a writer so i’m no expert, but it seems to me that your “individual voice” would be important to making your work unique and giving it the life you mean it to have. otherwise everyone’s prose would start to converge on the same ol’ boring style (kind of like everyone getting plastic surgery to look like boring little clones!). so i think honing your work to find clarity within your individual voice would be the right way to go, rather than worrying about it being an affectation. but that’s just my take on it!
“If her life was a country song she would still be holding his keys, or they would be as far from the road as she could have thrown them, being covered slowly by wind born sand and dirt — but she hadn’t taken them.”
^another favorite line. espesh since i love country songs… and that’s so true! 😛
Thanks for the encouragement to work on clarity while holding onto my individual style. The way you put it, really made me remember how much I just want to be creative — both for myself, and in ways that others can experience positively.
(I love country songs, too!)
I really like this story, too. Like Tam, I am not a writer, so shy away from analizing/critiqueing a writers work. However, I do know what strikes me as real, and this story did draw me in. Good work! (I am curious — you said that this story was started a few years ago in a workshop when you were assigned to write a piece that included two simple subjects that were drawn from a bowl. What were your subjects?)
Thank you for your comment, Sherry! It feels good to know that my story drew you in and that you enjoyed it.
My subjects were cereal and either a car trip, or driving on the highway (I can’t remember exactly how it was written down.) The other students laughed a little and the teacher asked if I wanted to change the cereal one for another, but I didn’t see it as much of a challenge. It reminded me of fifth or sixth grade, on Wednesdays when we had to write a sentence for each of the week’s spelling words, and I always made all 25 of them work out into a story. The teacher told me she really liked Wednesday!
For this story, I came up with the serial killer stuff before any of the rest. Thank you so much for reading it! Take care.
Ré
i’m impressed with how you managed to incorporate the cereal/car trip subjects into your work without making them awkwardly stand out. i wouldn’t have been able to guess what your 2 “subjects-to-include” were, so that speaks to your abilities to come up with such a robust character/story around them and seamlessly work them in there!
Thanks!
I was trying to guess what the required two subjects were, and thought perhaps the cross country car trip might be one. But the cereal? Amazing! It is such an integral part of the story, and subject of one of the best lines. Well done!
And thanks to you!
Ré, I am so late with my comments! I hope they still help. I have a lot. 😀
First off, I think you’re a wonderful writer. You have a gift for observation and for picking out some of the stark emotional things that pluck at all of us. Some parts of this story were quite painful for me to read, actually, because they hit so close to home; they are things I’ve dealt with or things I’ve watched friends cope with. Like holding your tongue in front of others because they might not “get” you or might even belittle you like this jerk of a boyfriend! So kudos to you for that — there is definitely emotion here.
Let’s see, how to organize what rest I want to say. Well, you mentioned “show not tell” and “sometimes I write things that are told in a way that doesn’t ring true for the reader,” so we can start there. I think these are issues that affect many writers (I know I’m really bad at “show not tell,” myself), and they’re connected. In a large sense, there’s a character arc in this story that packs less punch because much of it happens by telling; the arc doesn’t ring as true as it could. The same goes for many small details of the story. It’s not that they don’t ring true at all, but that there’s so much more potential in them to be mined. Again in the large sense, your story alternates between big chunks of backstory (her past, her personality) and smaller chunks of present-story (they’re in the car, they have a conversation). This is all good to know, but there’s something that doesn’t ring (as) true here, because that’s not the way we experience life. If I’m sitting in a car with someone I have strong feelings about, the backstory hits me in bits and pieces, provoked by our words exchanged, or habits observed. I don’t sit there going, “Well, this is because of that thing that happened when I was 12, and everything since then, and look where I am now.” Of course, what you’re doing is much more subtle than that, but there’s still some element of that there.
This story has pieces that you can fit together differently to make an even more compelling story. For instance, here’s some showing-not-telling: “Her table mates eventually bowed to Led Zeppelin. She wondered how their conversation concluded
without any mention of Steppenwolf.” I love this because it takes us into this scene: here she is, hanging out with people she should be able to chat easily with, and yet she’s refraining from expressing opinions she obviously feels strongly about. That shows me that her social interactions are uncomfortable, that she stays quiet when she has things to say, and that she’s interesting! Scenes like this help explain to me what her character is like — and why she would let the boyfriend push her into driving on the highway when she doesn’t feel ready to do so. I also love her “road drunk” (great phrase) ramblings — they endear her to me as a quirky, thoughtful person with a lot of originality.
Likewise, this line shows us that the boyfriend is an asshole: “If my mother can learn to drive, then any idiot can learn.” God! Who says that about their mother? Not someone I’d want to take a road trip with, that’s for sure. It’s great timing for you to drop that in where you do, as our first introduction to him! And I love the memory later, of him surprising her with flowers that were stolen. What a guy, indeed.
I love the ending — beautiful — but I think it’d be even more poignant if there were more of these “show” scenes and dialogue throughout the story. Then we’d feel like we really made the journey with her (both the physical and emotional journeys!), because it’d be truer to how these things unfold in real life.
I hope this is all clear! Email me if you want clarification on anything. 🙂 I can go on with feedback for pages and pages (this was a real problem for me when I did online writing tutoring), but I don’t want to make this comment too much longer than it already is. 🙂 Major congratulations to you for finishing this story, and thank you so much for sharing it here and courageously asking for our responses. You write so well, I am really honored to be asked for input, and hope that what I say can help you to hone your craft still further. My feedback is offered in the spirit of camaraderie, as someone who struggles with quite the same issues in my writing!!
Thanks for all your feedback! It helps a lot and kind of reinforces what I was afraid of. (Not awful afraid! just concerned.) My biggest problem is including what feels necessary to the reader (information they need to understand this story) when that’s not a part of the specific story that I actually want to tell.
Most of the difficult parts that you refer to, were written in the past few months, and are composed of information that the teacher and others have said was missing. Those parts are also very personal to my own life, so I need to find a way to fictionalize them, while still keeping them real.
I guess still have a lot of work to do on this story. (I’m feeling quite determined!) I hope you won’t mind if I take you up on your offer to email you about this work. It would be great, as I try to make this story better, if I could have a little dialogue with someone who gets what I’m trying to do with it. Thanks again!
Your determination inspires me! 🙂 Yes, email me anytime — I can’t guarantee I will be able to respond quickly, but if you want an answer ASAP, let me know and I’ll do my best. 🙂 I’d love to watch your story grow!
Thanks, Lisa!
[…] a sock in the jaw?! My current bout with editing began with my January 21st guest appearance on the Open Mic Friday feature of Satsumabug’s art blog. One of my stories was featured that day and I asked for […]
Dear Ré,
For me, your story started at the line, “On the road headed west…”. From there on, you had me by the throat. Your main character is nothing but sympathetic, and I am completely on her side, rooting like a manic cheerleader.
He “didn’t understand she wasn’t comfotable behind the wheel, he just thought she looked that way.” A lovely, suble way of shifting us to his perspective and showing us how wrong he was. I loved the delicate touch of showing (vs telling) in this line: it is slipped in sideways amid action and dialogue and so it goes straight to my heart.
Then, when he called her an idiot, just like his mother, I hated, hated him, I wanted to strangle him in her defense. (Did you want me to hate him that much? Because I did!)
I think th vehicle (if you’ll pardon the pun) of her not knowing how to drive was a brilliant metaphor, and could have been extended even further without being overused.
“I don’t know what a serial killer eats for breakfast”– I want to know, too! Serial=cereal, no? I love your main character. I am totally on her side.
But then she shifts– she decides to leave– and I needed a little more internal lead-up to explain this change. She loved him a couple paragraphs ago, and I didn’t see exactly what changed and why. Maybe I wanted some memories (the first explanatory sentences of the story?) to seep in here, now, to explain her change of heart? In any case, I wanted to know what transformed her.
Please excuse my incoherent, choppy way of giving feedback– I was a teacher and am used to writing in the margin, not all at once, with paragraphs.)
I love, love, love your main character. I want to watch what she does for two hundred more pages.
I pushed enter and then I wished I had waited.
I assume that you, like me, post things that are not 100% “perfect” (if there is such a thing) and that you really want a different perspective on.
When I write, I feel very hungry for someone out there to really read and see and meet me.
What I really read and see is a spectaculary brilliant, twinkling, glowing light that should be breathed upon softly, softly, for it to blaze, and I feel very grateful that you are doing that for us all to see.
Oh my gosh! I just started to cry… Thank you so much for your feedback! And for your encouragement! The first thing that strikes me about what you said, is that the paragraph that you said actually began the story for you, is the one that was the second paragraph when I originally wrote the story. (In 1993, of course!) I was out on that road, with these two people who might never be happy, because that’s the way life is, and the story ended with her tears after she parked the car when he was asleep. Three of the other students at the table seemed to “get” my story and liked it, but the one other student was fighting back tears, and he got upset at the teacher when she said she didn’t understand the female character.
Over the years, as I’ve tried to make my female character’s actions more understandable to those who don’t “get” her, much of the “telling” that Lisa noticed came about. I hadn’t wanted to delve into all the background of her life because it was too depressing for me. I’ve realized in the past few weeks, that my resistance to being fully honest about her doesn’t serve the story, and actually cripples it a bit. So I’ve been working on it, and adding what most readers say they need, by practicing my “show, don’t tell” skills. At this point in my writing life, the best way for me to accomplish that seems to be in a more linear approach. I’d love to share this story again, when it feels done for me, so I can see if I’ve addressed all the problems.
Oh, and the basic ending here, her leaving, was strongly suggested by my daughter, who couldn’t take the crying and the very real possibility of this woman’s life never changing. I kind of always thought that myself, but I only changed it when I came up with something that really felt like this character.
Thanks again for reading this, and for your very, very kind support and your wonderfully helpful feedback!