No tags yet.
(Some profanity) This is a transcript of the episode. Keep in mind, things change at least slightly between page, mouth and microphone. Hello and welcome to a special episode of Write Bites. As always, I’m your host Andy Marshall.
One of the main points of Write Bites is to talk about writing and discuss the things that might challenge us, motivate us, and even what frustrates us. I mentioned in the first couple episodes that Write Bites is meant for getting over writer’s block, and while that’s true, I wanted to address a few other things as well.
In the first episode of Write Bites, I said that I’m a memoirist. I also said that fiction writing isn’t quite my thing.
Both of these things are true, but I feel like clarification is important. I generally don’t spend a lot of time writing fiction, but I spend a lot of time dreaming of it. I’ve always had an overactive imagination, and as a kid I wrote stories and came up with big long crazy convoluted stories to tell my adopted older brother; sometimes much to his chagrin. As I got older, the stories got a little more mature, a little more focused; a little more probable.
Throughout my college experience, I tried to focus on creative writing, because that’s where I thought my sweet spot was. I did poetry, short fiction stories (really, I would compare them to kind of twisted little parables) and a few other things. If I could get away with writing fiction for an assignment in college, I did it.
But, while the pieces were fun, and good, the only two pieces that I ever got published were my first memoir-ish piece, titled Running on Naps (which also happened to be the first assignment I wrote in college), and a poem titled The Explorers. It seemed to me that my best stuff would arguably be the stuff that was based in real life, right?
Well, I, like most moody late teens and early twenties at the time, liked to blog. It was during these blogging sessions that I would, very occasionally, bite off big pieces of subject matter to write on. Those were the pieces that my friends really responded to. Those were the ones that made them say “Hey, Andy, you should really at least consider being a writer.”
Recently, I turned thirty. It scared me so much to realize that I had been on this planet for thirty years and had yet to make good on my promises to my childhood self to be a writer. One of the big advantages of hindsight is perspective. I was writing all these weird, sometimes horrifying, stories as a means of escape. I’m a child of several different kinds of abuse, and it leaked into my writing, because it was a way to cope.
I’m writing my memoirs now because I have perspective, and can really see things in a clearer light. I wrote fiction to escape, I’m writing my memoirs to stand my ground and regain clarity and mental health.
So, that leaves us with just the one big question: Why would I, a man trying to write his memoirs, dedicate what turns out to be a rather large chunk of my life to writing fiction?
The answer?: Creativity is universal.In the second episode I stated that, as writers, we need to be able to “play in both houses” meaning be silly and be serious in our writing. That flexibility can deliver deeper, more nuanced writing in general, and it doesn’t limit you to just one thing. It does, however, enhance how you flesh out the thing that you focus on.
When you focus on funny, having some drama can make the funny really pop. If you focus on horror, having something that’s sad can make the horror story a character piece. If you’re doing more of a character piece, you need to be flexible between funny and serious to make the characters have any sort of depth.
In a lot of ways it’s a similar concept as the often quoted piece of advice “never skip leg day”; if you spend all of your time developing only one set of muscles, and neglect a certain group, you’re gonna look lopsided, and no one really aims for that. On the other hand, consider activities like running and swimming. They’re a bit different from one another, of course, but they both require breath control, lung capacity, they cause your heart rate to increase.
No matter how you exercise, you use your lungs.
The same thing with creativity; no matter how you write, you use your creativity.
To illustrate this point, I’m going to read a little bit of my memoir that I’ve been working on and discuss the potential differences that could occur. So, memoir focusing on telling a story that is true, but there are lot of bad ways to tell a true story. Let’s take an event from my life as an example.
First, you have the most obvious way of conveying information, wherein you just state the facts. I call this the Dragnet approach.
A month and a half ago, my wife became suddenly ill. It was on a Sunday. We were uncertain what it could be. She was hospitalized. I was very concerned. My dog was not allowed in the hospital, and stayed home. I drank and smoked to cope with anxiety.
Okay, so I can’t imagine that was particularly entertaining to hear, and frankly I hated reading it.
Second, you have the confused storyteller.
Yeah, a while back my wife was put in the hospital. We had no idea what it was and it was just weird, you know? It took so long to figure things out, my dog was really worried. I went back to smoking. It was just really nerve-wracking you know?
Again, I could go on with this manner of storytelling, but no one wants to hear it. It’s better than the dragnet approach, sure, because it has more character, but what it has in character it lacks in substance.
Third, you have the drama bomb.
I will never forget the tragedy that has befallen my family. My wife was hospitalized, and we had no hope of figuring things out on our own! The doctors, they didn’t understand either, and I was torn apart by inner turmoil; I felt useless as a husband. My dog was devastated, thinking his mother was gone forever.
Okay, so again, this has more merit, because it’s a bit more detailed, it has character, but no one wants to hear someone bitch and moan overdramatically because they had a bad time. It just doesn’t work that way.
Now, I’m not going to say that I have the best approach to writing, or that I’m the be-all end-all authority when it comes to writing memoirs, but the following is an excerpt from a chapter of my memoir. Yes, it is a lot longer than the previous examples, but none of us have the time for me to re-write this excerpt three more times.
So, here’s the Andy Marshall approach at that story:
One of the greatest injustices in life is that bad shit happens fast, and good shit takes a long time, if it ever occurs at all.
It takes years to find and develop love, but only a few moments for everything to be massively disrupted. One moment you’re sitting at your in-law’s house celebrating Father’s Day, and the next, your wife is ill in a way that defies understanding and treatment. Let me set the scene.
The aforementioned celebration of Father’s Day took place inside Hannah’s childhood home, where her parents still peacefully reside. In the main sitting area, and thoughtfully placed through the house, are decorations, paintings, knick-knacks from a multitude of faraway points from all over the globe. It makes little sense when thought about for long periods, but these disparate pieces from various countries, little hovels and disease-ravaged areas come together to create an atmosphere of hominess and warmth. There is a sense that, through the travels of my mother and father-in-law, they found their home wherever they went, serving the Lord in the ways they knew how.
My mother and father-in law both work in the medical field. My father in law is a tall man, but anything that would make him seem imposing is undone by his kind smile, warm demeanor, and general caring nature. He is a gifted nurse practitioner and prolific missionary, often out of town, out of the country for weeks on end. Sometimes my mother-in-law goes with him, but often she is too busy teaching bachelor’s level nursing students. They work with dignity, dedication and sincerity in all they do.
This life of dedication and sincerity has always guided them back home to their loving family and for the past 18 years, this house. The decorations serve as a roadmap of sorts, and are carefully and purposefully placed, lovingly cleaned and cared for regularly by my mother-in-law’s busy hands. The decorations, colorful and unique, are offset by the fact that every room in the entertaining space is painted a slightly muted off-white, reflecting my mother-in-law’s tasteful sensibilities, and underscoring her soft-spoken, gentle nature.
This is, of course, until you see the downstairs bathroom. Hannah’s sister, three years younger, and an almost infinite distance from Hannah in taste, personality and mannerisms had picked the color some years ago. They painted a small patch of the wall and decided that the color was daring but would look just stunning in the tiny little room.
The result was certainly stunning, but perhaps overshot its mark. In all of the colors known to man and certainly a few beyond, none have ever captured a spirit of chaos as this unholy hybrid of pink and orange. The color is ravenous, occluding any other color in the room, devouring it to gain power, and then reflecting itself on whatever is left. In this room, there are no colors, there is no escape; the Great Peach Nightmare has claimed the bathroom as its own.
It was to this nightmare of color that Hannah ran when she began to take ill shortly after our dinner. My wife has a severe tree-nut allergy. This defect in her body has been the cause of many waking nightmares in my life, as I, a general ball of anxiety in the areas of caretaking, fear accidentally killing my beloved. While there have been many a near-miss, there haven’t been any outright misses on things that I’ve served her since we started dating. Likewise, her parents have been exceedingly careful to ensure that tree nuts are not invited to any family gathering. Of course, there have been easily made mistakes at restaurants that have caused Hannah to have allergic reactions of varying degrees of severity. This is an almost routine thing for someone with severe food allergies, but for the loved ones surrounding the allergic, it’s still scary as an unsupervised field trip to hell.
This particular field trip didn’t take long to get rolling, but like every fieldtrip I’ve ever been a part of, there were tears and a longing for home before the end. It started in her hands, just a small bit of redness, and she wasn’t sure if she had touched something that she was allergic to. We realized soon, as she got more and more nauseous, that this was clearly not caused by something that she touched, and her allergic reaction had gone systemic.
Then, my wife, who has mentioned fondly the idea of having an apartment on the surface of the sun due to her constant inability to maintain warmth of any kind, begins to shed any clothing she feels she can get away with. She is hot, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in her life. She begins to itch; every inch of skin needs to be scratched at once. We initially don’t see the problem; the peach nightmare has claimed my wife’s skin, and it is impossible to tell where her redness begins, and the rooms ungodly, foreboding peachiness begins.
My mother-in-law decides to shine the light of her phone on my wife and discovers that now my wife had become red on her back, her legs, her neck, her face, everywhere was red, save for the almost transparent skin surrounding her lips. Hannah’s attempts at feeling better lead to what must surely be one of the most sincere offerings to the porcelain god of sickness since the dawn of man. She could not stand on her own and needed help to do nearly anything required of her by her digestive system. She felt a strong, consistent urge to both vomit and defecate violently, but could not manage either, for a while.
Now, I’ve given my wife an EpiPen before, and as anyone who has had to do this for a loved once or twice can tell you, it’s not exactly a calm experience. Especially when your wife stops you as you go to give it to her and demands that you sterilize the area first. Fear and panic aside, it’s actually a pretty easy interaction. Press firmly against leg, push plunger, hold for 10 seconds; then, it’s just a waiting game, and you sit there holding their hand telling them it will be alright and hoping that you’re not made a liar by anaphylactic proxy.
However, there were no signs that it was really working, as Hannah seemed to keep getting worse. Hannah’s skin, as judged by flashlight, wasn’t improving as rapidly as we had hoped. We went on like this for hours, waiting for her to ask me to help her onto the toilet, helping her off of the toilet, asking her what she needed. Finally, everything in Hannah’s body worked in agreement, and she was able to throw up. She was able to throw up a lot. Perhaps an alarming amount, she was able to throw up.
Our poor dog, who had accompanied us to the celebration of Father’s Day, looks gravely concerned. He is, in many ways, a momma’s boy, and the wellbeing and presence of my wife seems to be always at the forefront of his fuzzy little mind. Concerned though he is, he will not go near the bathroom of terror to see my wife; this could be the fact that he dislikes bathrooms and baths, but personally, I am convinced that the Great Peach Nightmare had pierced the veil of colorblindness that dog-kind has long had to endure, and the pure existential dread that my dog experienced upon approaching the visual howl of that particular void was overwhelming to him.
At this point we are approaching midnight with pace that would make Cinderella sweat right through her ball gown. Everyone in the house is exhausted. The dog has strewn himself across the carpet in his best imitation of a discarded sweater. Hannah’s father, gifted with the superhuman ability to fall asleep with no regard for noise, temperature, sleeping surface or epidemiological activity is nodding off on the couch. Hannah’s mother, cursed with the inability to stay still when something could be cleaned, straightened or improved is beginning to lose steam. Hannah’s sister, the mother of the Great Peach Nightmare has long since retreated to her room, unaware of the chaos contained in the tiny little bathroom. I am beginning to understand that if I do not go home soon, I am spending the night.
When I was in my early teens, at the house in Swannanoa, I twisted my knee, very badly. My parents, being of the “if this is going to cost us money, you’re probably fine” school of medical care decided that I simply needed to suck it up. They thought the same thing when I had mono and strep throat at the same time, but that’s another story for another time. Point is, knee never healed right, and I can feel when there’s a bad storm coming on. I have the same feeling in my gut when there’s a shit-storm a-brewin’.
I was getting to have that feeling right then.
Hannah’s parents and I discussed what the best plan might be, and after talking to Hannah we discerned that there was only a snowball’s chance in hell that she’d be able to make it up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. It’s never a great feeling leaving a loved one that might need you. There’s this pulling on your heart strings, and it doesn’t matter if you know that there’s not a lot you can do, or that they’re in good hands; your body may ache and your mind may be dull, but it’s difficult to leave.
Of course, she was in the best hands available. John alone has seen more than most doctors would choose to, and Elizabeth was born with an apron on and a brow wrinkled with concern for anyone who may feel even slightly off in her vicinity. I help get my wife up the stairs to what used to be her room and tuck her in. I pack up the dog, who is more than happy to go home, but distressed that his mom isn’t coming. “Mommy will be fine” I tell him, and try to believe it myself.
I get in the door of our apartment and start gathering. Hannah needs her meds, and we’ve achieved a delicate balance of pills, potions and other things that seem to keep her going through her chronic migraines (another story for later). I gather them all up, and include a nice set of sweatpants, a sports bra, and a tank-top; my wife’s favorite bedtime apparel. I tell Elizabeth to give her a kiss for me.
There’s a part of me that would like to tell you that I laid awake that night, staring at the ceiling with unblinking eyes, worried for the welfare of my wife, but I can’t. Yeah, I had some trouble getting to sleep, but let’s be fair; a queen-sized bed to myself was a welcome change, and the dog and I spread ourselves on the bed like butter on fresh bread.
I woke up to a text message from Elizabeth, telling me that she was taking Hannah to the urgent care. I wasn’t particularly alarmed by this, as it was one of two discussed outcomes, the other being that she would be fine by morning and the allergic reaction would have worked its way through her body. What did alarm me, however, was the fact that the text message had been sent roughly three hours prior.
It was around 10 AM. If either H.G Wells time travel or J.R Tolkien’s Palantir exist, I’m fairly certain that Rimsky-Korsakov, composer of Flight of the Bumblebee was spying on me from way back in the year 1899. I am a very large man, and not given to rapid movements unless under extreme duress. Under extreme duress, however, you can feel the wind as the 320-someodd pound wall of panic that is me speeds past you. I am most likely to be identified as the bear-shaped man spewing profanities, questioning the parentage of various household objects, people or concepts, and spouting what I am told are amusing, if inappropriate, physical impossibilities.
My dog has become accustomed to this behavior and is neither alarmed or particularly impressed. He did, however, want me to know that he needed to go potty. My dog, who has a vertical jump that would proportionally make him an Olympian athlete, is showing off his abilities by jumping and scratching at the door, during which I was seen attempting to call my wife or her mother (I wasn’t picky) with one hand, pull my pants on with the other, and swearing my kingdom to whoever could find me an intelligent octopus to help me do the litany of other things I needed to do before I got out the door.
Of course, the first words I hear from my wife when she answers the phone are “Hey, sweetie, how’s puppy-boy doing?”
“You’re in urgent care and the first thing you— fine. The dog is fine. How are you?” Nash’s head tilts as he looks up at me, as if he wonders how his mother became trapped in the phone.
“Well, I’m drowsy; I spent most of the night puking.”
“I’m sorry, honey. What are they saying at the urgent care?” I opened the door and the dog takes off. Having never quite grasped the concept of a leash, he seems perpetually flustered by the invisible force that pulls him back from the sprawling world of adventure he must see from the 20 inches above ground that his eyes rest.
“Well” I could hear that she was trying not to worry me. “They’re not really sure. They’re keeping me for a while, and they’re giving me fluid.” I hear her groan in pain. “Hey, sweetie, I’ma let you talk to mom, okay?”
My mother in law gives me a short list of things that Hannah might need and asks me to pick them up before heading over. No one but me seems to care what a bad husband I am. I brush the feeling to the side and finish the walk. Nash’s disappointment that we were not immediately going on an adventure was nothing compared to the feeling of betrayal his little brown eyes gave me as I put him in his kennel.
I have no official data to back it, but I’m certain that dogs understand more than we give them credit for. That’s why I tend to talk to my dogs as if they were smaller, furrier humans. “I’ll bring her back, buddy. I promise. Right now, I gotta go help mommy, okay?” This conversation isn’t helping either of our feelings of abandonment. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be good boy, daddy loves you.” I lock the door behind me, and head down the stairs. I can hear the dog yip in what I imagine to be a final plea to bring him along.
I abandoned my wife last night, and this morning I’m abandoning the dog. Shiny.
I pick up the things that Hannah might need from the store. Apparently, the urgent care didn’t have Gatorade, which seems significantly odd. I go with it, though, and bring along some ginger ale. I’ve packed her some extra clothes and I bring along a mountain of various things to do to distract myself from the fact that I am completely useless in this situation, as I am in many others.
I shake my head again, struggling to free it from the dark place it wants to go.
I check in at the urgent care and wait altogether impatiently to see my wife. Upon entering the room, I am greeted with a familiar sight. My wife is pale and has a tube running to her arm. I have seen this movie, and it gets worse before it gets better. My wife’s migraines have increased my overall knowledge of IVs and hospitals, both subjects I never cared for. I look around in the room and begin to wonder if this is the sister of the Great Peach Nightmare. The color that my wife had acquired last night has been removed from her altogether. The Terrible White Void, with its fluorescent lighting and seemingly pure white veneer has siphoned the vibrance from my wife’s skin, robbed her of all energy. I begin to think that I’m in a Progressive commercial.
Nurse Flo does not make an appearance. Instead, a fit young man (probably less than thirty) introduces himself as the nurse practitioner on duty. He explains what Elizabeth has already told me, but I nod politely. “We aren’t letting her go home until she can keep something down. She needs to keep trying to drink water or Gatorade, and maybe eat some saltines before I can see sending her home.”
“I don’t want to eat” Hannah half-mumbles after he leaves. Having a sick wife that doesn’t want to eat brings out the parent in me. My wife is able to read my mind and gives me a look which makes it clear that the Saltine Airline is not cleared for landing, and no amount of sound effects will make her stomach feel better.
Elizabeth, having nothing to clean, has run entirely out of ideas to occupy her. She is worried, and unable to do anything. Elizabeth doesn’t really worry like other people though; her worry doesn’t come out as breathing into a paper bag, wringing her hands or any other physical compulsion; well besides cleaning. No, when Elizabeth worries, she tries to make sure that things are getting done.
She has been urging Hannah to eat and drink as much as she can. That hasn’t worked, so she switches to urging me to urge Hannah to drink and eat as much as she can. Elizabeth explains that she’s worried that Hannah is going to end up in the hospital, and that the only way to see how bad this thing really is, is to follow orders as closely as possible.
After some very careful prodding, some reasoning, and a healthy amount of cashing it and the Bank of Brownie Points, Hannah is convinced to try to eat and drink a little. She was given what’s known as a G.I. cocktail; a mix of antacid, lidocaine and a few other things that sound about as fun to swallow as a shot glass of frog mucous. Funny enough, it kinda looks like that. My wife soldiers through it as I am informed that this is the second such cocktail she has been served since her visit began. Apparently, it’s G.I. cocktail happy hour here at the urgent care bar and grill.
My wife is a champion at dealing with pain. If dealing with pain were an Olympic sport, my wife would be right up there with the dog’s high jump, bringing home Gold for the family Marshall. I guess I’m kind of like the coach in this example. Maybe a spotter. Regardless, I am so used to her pain responses at this point, that I can basically tell what’s going on with her by facial expression within a small margin of error. She is normally not very vocal about her pain, and it can get pretty intense. It’s been a long time, at this point, since I’ve seen my wife cry from pain.
Tears have welled up in my wife’s eyes and she is beginning to move involuntarily due to the pain in her abdomen. The nurse practitioner tells us he’s called ahead and they’ve got a spot waiting for her at the emergency room. I pull up the car, and the nurse and my mother-in-law help my wife into the car. I try to drive as smoothly as possible, though I feel I mighty urge to turn on sirens and push the gas pedal through the floor of the car.
My wife and I don’t talk about much. She asks me to make sure Nash gets a walk from someone today.
Because of course she’s worried about the damn dog.
Of course, I was too.
Okay, so this one is a lot lot longer than the others. Maybe I’m just proud of my work here, but I feel this illustrates the point.
There are many times that I could have let descriptions go without as much detail. The bathroom didn’t have to be described as the Great Peach Nightmare, but it really brings a bit of humor to the story, and allows the imagination to take over and paint the scene.
I don’t need to tell you about the fixtures in the bathroom, or what kind of soap they have in the bathroom, you just need to know that the color is an awful, nightmarish peach.
I don’t need to tell you every thing that was said that night, I just need to hit the highlights. I can take some liberty with this, too, as no one can remember exactly what they said, and frankly, I’m not keen to ask them. I use the same choice-making paradigm in dialogue in the memoir that I use in fiction: “does this move the plot along? Does it add flavor and texture to the world I’m creating? It is literally just filling space?” The answers to that question vary, and invariably someone will have a vastly differing opinion.
Also, I can’t know what was on my mother and father-in-law’s’ minds, I can’t know what was in Hannah’s mind. I can only describe what I was going through with any real accuracy. I can go into a lot more detail because I’m the main character of the story, at that point.
I didn’t misspeak there, either, I am a character in this story, as are my wife, my in-laws, my dog, the doctors, everyone.
I have the advantage of knowing them in real life, and in the case of my in-laws and wife, have spent years getting to know them from a broad variety of experiences both pleasant and terrible. The reader hasn’t had that, so I have to do character development. I’m not going to make things up, I just have to decide what’s most important that you know when, in order to make the characters in the story seem as real as they are.
Even though I’m the main character, I don’t to sound like the only real person, either; I have to creatively describe the people in the context of the events so that readers and listeners get a clear image of the people I’m describing.
In the same way, when I talk about emotions, I don’t use plain words (or at least I try not to), I try to describe what that feeling is like. While it’s easier to do this with things I’ve actually felt in experiences I’ve actually been in, it’s my practice in fiction that allows me to explain it in a way that wouldn’t be open to me if I was just simply approaching this from a non-creative position.
Creating a world that doesn’t exist, and characters to fill that world, ways to make my imagination speak into your imagination is what helps me paint a more vivid picture of what happened in real life.