Hello everybody. Happy Thanksgiving.
I just finished the latest session of Monica Drake’s discussion of Best American Essays in which we parse our feelings about three different nonfiction pieces. This week, the third essay was the clear winner, Revelation at the Food Bank by Merrill Joan Gerber. We all thought it was superb, a perfect melding of literary style and authentic voice that shone a light on a topic we maybe hadn’t considered (in this case, aging and simmering resentment). It’s a whole lot of fun to discuss other people’s writing with other writers––fun when the piece is bad, and more fun when it’s great. One thing I really dig about this workshop is the way I feel about my own work afterward. Hopeful, I guess.
It’s hard to pin down what this Substack is for, and what I hope to get out of it. You’ll notice there are a lot of drafty stories and essays here, many of them snippets from work I wrote years ago. I don’t charge for this subscription, so the bar is pretty low for content. In truth, it mostly serves as a distraction.
You probably gathered that I, like many other writers, often have a tough time getting to work on something that isn’t going well. When writing a novel, I reach a certain point where I have laid out all the threads and even gathered them, but then I lose focus on how I want to proceed. I get distracted, and then I look for distractions, and then I take stabs at working, and then I wander away, and eventually I drop the whole thing into a folder and start on something else. Something that makes me feel better about not getting it right. Something to help scratch the itch.
I heard this happens often to writers who shun outlines. James Patterson has a tried-and-true technique to cobble together a story like rungs on a ladder, writing a few paragraphs for each chapter she did this and he did that and then this happened and then that happened and then writing a first draft and then polishing that draft and then revising the revision, on and on until it’s done.
But I really don’t like to write that way. I write from the gut. As Stephen King describes it, you get lost in a fog where your headlights pick out the next hundred feet and then nothing but murk so the only thing you can do is hit the gas and go-go-go.
I wrote three novels in fours years that way, and for me it’s the way that feels best because I have to sit in my created world long enough that it becomes real to me. The characters talk and move, they suggest things, there are actions and consequences. Surprising and delightful things happen, horrible things happen, and somehow it all works out some way. Then the real joy, revising the story, making it sing, clipping the phrases and words, fucking with it until I can’t bear to read it. I actually do like that part, the editor hat stuff.
But it’s so hard for me to write that way when there is so much other stuff going on. Work, AA meetings, time with the family, exercise, music, doomscrolling (my vice du jour) and all the other distractions tend to strand me at the end of the diving board, staring at the water but bouncing instead of jumping in.
My friend Fritz went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and I sometimes give him stuff to read to solicit an opinion over lunch. A few years ago I gave him a treatment for a horror film based on my life (I know, I know). He told me it was the most intriguing thing I’d shown him. I wasn’t so sure. Fritz said that horror always sells, which intrigued me. Here’s part of I showed him:
They get out and explore the place. There is a broken wagon, a wooden castrating table, rusted old farm equipment without name, a rotten canvas wagon covering, a fifty-gallon tank on stilts. The wind rattles the trees. Above them, the windmill turns with a hellish shriek that startles them all.
“I need to get up there and oil it,” says Jeff.
Molly looks up at the thing. It looks dangerous, the whirling blades seeming like evil eyes staring at her.
In the barn there’s more of the same. Big, decrepit machinery, things covered with tarps. Everything seems to build the creeping sense of dread. There are a bunch of grimy trunks stacked against a wall.
“Look at those!” says Molly. She and Jeff go over to them, open one up. It contains a bunch of rusted tools, a whole pigskin with the head still attached, a dusty photo album. Molly looks at the pictures. They are creepy black and white portraits taken long ago. Molly realizes that the people in them are all dead—it’s an album of corpses. She thrusts it back.
Rae reads a name carved in the wall. JONNY A. Beneath it is a scythe.
Molly looks at the rafter high above. There is a rope wound around it, the end hanging off, clearly cut. On the high wall is a hayloft with a rickety ladder.
“Look at this!” calls Jeff, who has uncovered an old pot still and several cases of mason jars in a horse stall. “The old farmer must have made moonshine.”
Melody gives him a stricken look. “They’re empty, honey. Besides, I’m done with all that. You know that.”
She looks concerned, then nods.
Molly is in her sleeping bag on the floor of her empty bedroom. Melody comes in and sits down.
“You like it?”
Molly nods.
“It’s not Chicago, I know. But it will be fun. It’s like a pioneer homestead. Maybe we’ll bake some pies and bread.”
“You don’t know how to bake, Mama.”
“Maybe I’ll learn. How about you and I go to the library in town and get some books on farming? We can plant some vegetables in the spring.”
Molly nods. It’s clear she sees this as empty talk. Her mom kisses her on the forehead.
“Goodnight. Sleep tight.”
She goes into Rae’s room. Molly hears her say goodnight to Rae. She turns out the light and goes downstairs.
Molly lies in her sleeping bag and stares out the window. The curtains move and she can see the windmill spinning in the moonlight.
The school bus picks Molly up by the side of the road in front of her house. Molly rides the almost empty bus to the school in Arthur Township. They pass Mennonite Barns and Amish carriages on the road. Everywhere in the town are strangely woven vines and dolls, like voodoo charms. They pass a huge old church with a graveyard outside. In front of the general store, old men sit and stare. They look like the death photos.
The school is tiny and strange. Odd pictures on the walls, lots of girls dressed in Mennonite garb. The teachers are nice enough, but there is still a creeping sense of dread. The other girls in the school are unfriendly and cluster together in groups. One girl sits by herself. She stares at Molly. She is white blonde, almost an albino, with strange pale eyes. At lunch, Molly sits at a long table full of children. They all go silent and move to another table. The blonde girl comes over. She is LACEY, who lives in town. She moved here also, from Texas. She tells Molly the other girls are mean because they belong to Friendship.
“What’s Friendship?” asks Molly.
“It’s the church.”
“Do you belong to it?”
“We did, but my father was kicked out.”
“What did he do?”
The girl shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich.
Jeff picks her up from school, smiling and telling her that the moving van came and the men are putting everything away so it will be just like the old house.
“Why did we have to move here, Daddy?”
“Daddy lost his job, honey. You know that. Mommy wants to go to writing school.”
“Why don’t we live in the town where the school is?”
“Mommy wanted to live on a farm. When she saw it on the internet, she knew it was the place where she could write her novel while she went to school.”
“But what did you want to do?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want to do, Molly. Grandma left the money to Mommy. It’s her decision.”
“Is that why you were fighting? Back in Chicago before we moved?”
“We weren’t fighting, honey. We just disagreed is all.”
Molly looks out the window.
“Now how about we pick up your sister and go get some ice cream?”
In the end, I abandoned the screenplay idea, instead turning it into a novel. After a while I realized I wasn’t really ready yet to write a story about a dissolving marriage, an alcoholic decline, a haunted farm, and a town full of dark secrets (all of which sounds an awful lot like a cross between The Shining and ‘Salem’s Lot). I got to about 40,000 words and then drifted away.
Today I opened it back up and read some of it, looking for an except I could bring into Substack this week. It’s just good enough for me to save it until another time. Maybe I’m ready. It’s definitely got some cool stuff in it.
Molly and Rae play on the porch. Rae makes a loop of long grass around her doll, braiding the ends to form a tight little knot. She hums a strange little chant while she does this.
“What are you doing?” asks Molly.
Rae doesn’t answer, just keeps knotting the grass-ends.
“Rae, what are you doing?” Molly taps Rae’s knee with her finger.
“I’m hexing a portecting,” says Rae. “Mrs. Ames teached me.”
“Taught me,” says Molly. “What else did she teach you?”
Rae shrugs.
“Did she say anything about this place? About the farm?”
Rae shrugs again. “She said that the people who lived here were bad.”
“Bad? How did she mean?”
“Just bad is all.”
Molly watches Jeff come out of the barn wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He staggers a bit. Molly looks dismayed. He smiles and waves, but hurries in to the house. She follows him. He bends over and is drinking water from the tap, rinsing his mouth.
“What were you doing out there, Daddy?”
“Just looking around. There’s a lot of neat old stuff out there.”
“Were you drinking?”
His face is tight. “Just water. No. You know I quit drinking alcohol before we moved here.” He smiles nervously. “Besides, what could I drink?”
I may push some of the story, which is called Friendship, onto this platform in bits and pieces, but I may not. Time will tell.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!