Author: rjoshi9

Barrie Jean Borich

Borich is a professor in the English Department and MFA/MA in Writing and Publishing Program at DePaul. She leads nonfiction writing workshops for graduate and undergraduate students at DePaul, teaches courses in LGBTQ memoir, multicultural memoir, and the history and practice of the American literary magazine, and she edits Slag Glass City, a digital journal of the urban essay arts.

The Music of Character in Memoir

by Barrie Jean Borich

Character may be the area where memoir is the most unlike fiction, because memoirists will never be able to fully speak from a deep character point-of-view separate from our own. Our characters are not inventions; they are actual people  potentially wounded by any words we publish about them, leaving the creative nonfiction writer a relatively limited ethical field within which to work. This means that characters in most memoirs play a much different role than they do in most novels, functioning as portraits and foils for the narrator, rather than as longing and obstacle-battling narrative engines, advancing plot.

When talking about creating character in creative nonfiction we begin, as does the fiction writer, with the classic five-pack of character development: What do they look like; what do they say; what do they do; what do they say about themselves; what do others say about them.  From these elements, as in fiction, memoirists are able to bring a sketch of human character to the page. We may also refer to the definition of character John Gardner described in his classic text The Art of Fiction, as an agent struggling for his or her own desires, reminding us that characters, to take full presence on the page, must act, not just be acted upon (65).

What then is needed to deepen the memoir portrait? Some creative nonfiction writers have used third person point of view as a tool to unfurl human presence on the page—though in most cases this strategy is merely another way to expand the first person. Some memoirists employ a limited third person point of view guided by deep interview, capped off by what a subject is willing to reveal in response to the writer’s questions. Some memoirists even digress temporarily into invention, a move tempered by any essay or memoir’s structural ability to withstand tangent.

In these cases—as in a more straightforward descriptive portraiture in which the narrative lens of a first-person narrator’s point of view is clear—the people on the page are essential elements of the narrative atmosphere, necessary to provide the reader with concrete understanding of a narrator’s world, but which operate in the manner of what Virginia Woolf called “moments of being” (70), carrying the reader past the skin and bones of the human subject, into the observable cloud of impression all humans leave in their wake. We understand people through the sound and movement of their existence as well as their physical and psychological impression, which is an approach to portraiture that moves away from the longings and obstacles of plot formation and into the “music of character.”

By “music of character” I mean a literary strategy that gets at our encounters of be-ingness— a symphonic impression or experience of moment, image and understanding, obtained without telling a story or attempting to explain, but rather achieved through opening the subject to some gut-felt view. The music of character can shatter a reader into a sound and shade of consciousness that can’t be achieved in any other manner. Sometimes that impression or understanding comes of letting go of discursive meaning, the way we might experience a jazz improvisation or abstract painting. When we approach character as experience rather than story we get to the evocation of observable human presence.

This craft essay is adapted from:​

“Deep Portrait: On the Atmosphere of Nonfiction Character” by Barrie Jean Borich. https://www.assayjournal.com/barrie-jean-borich-deep-portrait-on-the-atmosphere-of-nonfiction-character65279-21.html

Works Cited

Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Vintage: Random House, 1983.

Woolf, Virginia. Moments of Being. Ed. Jeanne Schulkind. New York: Harvest/Harcourt Grace & Company,1985.

Molia Dumbleton

Molia Dumbleton’s fiction has appeared in Best Small Fictions, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Catapult, and elsewhere. Her stories have been awarded the Seán Ó Faoláin Story Prize (Ireland) and Columbia Journal Winter Fiction Award (selected by Roxane Gay), among other honors, and her collections have been honored as finalists for the Iowa Short Fiction Award, Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, The Masters Review Chapbook Open, and the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. Forthcoming work will appear in Ecotone and The Sun Magazine.

Dumbleton is currently an Assistant Fiction Editor for Split Lip Magazine and a member of the Curatorial Board at Ragdale, and has served as a reader for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and the AWP Series Prize for the Novel. She is a freelance writer and editor and teaches creative writing as a member of the part-time faculty at DePaul University

Want a trick for getting a “stuck” story unstuck? 

(Of course you do. Who doesn’t have a folder full of things that aren’t…quite…working?)

Here’s a thing I find fundamentally helpful, both in thinking about my own work and in responding to the work of others. It’s a simple distinction and it by no means belongs to me. It’s the difference between “top story” and “understory,” and it’s a great way help get a story unstuck.

In simplest terms, you can think about “top story” as the actual sequence of events taking place in your story, and “understory” as the emotional undercurrent running beneath it. A story’s understory frequently features a change, discovery, or evolution of some sort, and thus can be thought of as the reason the story is being told. (We rarely read or tell stories in which everything happens just as it did yesterday.)

Here’s an example:

• Joe drives to New Mexico to scatter his father’s ashes. (Top story)
• On the journey, Joe grapples with memories of his complex relationship with his estranged father and comes to terms with his father’s fallibility as well as with his own anger and grief. (Understory)

See the difference? What happened = top story. Why it “matters”/why we’re hearing about it/what makes it a story = understory.

Tease apart any story you know (this includes books, stories, movies, fairy tales, etc.) and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to identify a top story and an understory. (Try it. It’s fun.) This same process can also be helpful when you can’t figure out why one of your own stories “isn’t working.” A story that “isn’t working” is often just a story whose layers are out of balance.

Let’s go back to our example:

• In your story, Joe gets word that his father has passed away. He sits on his porch and thinks about his relationship with his father, reflecting on various memories from his childhood.

This story is going to be almost entirely understory. That means it’s also probably going to feel a bit slow and static. Readers might think, Okay, but he’s just sitting there, thinking. Is anything going to actually happen?  

• Now let’s flip it. Joe gets the same call, packs a suitcase, and sets out on a road trip to New Mexico to scatter his father’s ashes. In your story, Joe drives, stops at various motels, gets meals, has conversations, sees the sights, scatters the ashes, and then heads home. And that’s it.

This story is almost entirely top story. That means it will click forward physically just fine, but it’s probably also not going to really feel like much. Readers might wonder, What is this actually about, though? Why am I reading this? Shouldn’t I be…feeling…something? 

So. Solutions?

Yup! These are hugely oversimplified, but in basic terms, they can be very, very helpful.

• Is your story understory-heavy?

Pan out. Widen your lens to let some other things in. If your character is alone, get another person in there. (A lot of understory-heavy stories feature a person alone, thinking.) So make that doorbell ring! Give your person a goal, a job they have to go to, a road trip, a hurdle, a pushy sidekick, a nosy neighbor. Get things moving. Make things more complicated at the concrete level. Push your person into the world. Complexify.

• Is your story top-story-heavy?

Slow down. Zoom in. Make some space for reflection. What is your character thinking or feeling? What does your character notice or observe, and what do those observations reveal? When your person does something in the now, does it remind them of something they did in the past? What’s the connection? Between the food and the sights, can Joe look at the stars? Do they remind him of anything? What about them spurs a new understanding? What changes for Joe? Ask yourself: What is the story really about, at a deeper level, and why is it important that you tell it?

It can be both fruitful and interesting to analyze your own stories to see if you can identify clear (or even murky) top story and understory layers; to think about ways in which your story’s layers intersect and intertwine (or don’t); and to consider whether/how your story layers acknowledge or resolve one another in some way (or don’t) by the end of your story.

This last part can actually be harder than it sounds, but the time you spend thinking about it will never be time wasted, and will almost always reward you with dividends in the form of one realization or another.

Good luck and happy writing!

Ted Anton

Ted Anton is the author of four books and co-editor of a fifth. His book, Planet of Microbes: Perils and Potential of Earth’s Essential Organisms  (University of Chicago Press, 2017) describes the power of single-celled life to rescue the Earth, while a previous book, The Longevity Seekers, traced the science and business race for a drug to extend human health. His book Bold Science: Seven Scientists Who Are Changing Our World (Henry Holt: 2000, W.H. Freeman, paperback: 2001) was an Amazon.com Science Book pick and a featured choice on howthingswork.com. The San Francisco Chronicle described it as being on the “pioneering edge of science writing, spreading the notion that is a viable field of literary work.

Endings and Beginnings

I always wondered what it would be like to be a writer, and I remember my college teacher who was a famous author telling me, “it doesn’t get any easier. It gets harder.”  I did not believe her, but now I think I understand.

In this moment, I am finishing a book of popular science writing on the new science of synthetic biology, which is changing life by changing DNA. This new research field gave us the Impossible Burger and the COVID vaccine, and perhaps may help save the planet with sustainable fuels, medicines and chemicals. My book is not a textbook. It is written like a novel, about fascinating scientist characters, and so far I have shown 25 of the scientists the passages I wrote about them.

Of those scientists, 22 of them liked the passages and gave me edits. A couple were critical but gave me edits. One was very critical but still gave me many edits he suggested. I take many of their suggestions, but not all  This raises the question, should you show someone what you are writing, if it is nonfiction?

The answer is, generally not. You are supposed to call them and read aloud or ask questions about specific passages. That is called fact checking. But in science writing, the final edits are very hard because most writers are not scientists, so it is easy to get something wrong.  The publisher wanted me to get permissions from some of my sources, so that is what I am doing. Generally the suggestions are helpful.

If you want to be a writer I hope you open yourself up to writing about science. Such writing is very creative and very much in demand because not many people do it. They are afraid. It turns out scientists are usually very approachable and happy to help you write well about them.  It is a good field for jobs. That is my ending project.

I am also starting a new project, a podcast pilot episode with a very good team of younger documentary makers based on my first book on an unsolved Chicago murder. It was the death of a beloved professor of Renaissance magic and after-death journeys at the University of Chicago. Nothing was taken. He was shot once in the back of the head on the campus. The real life murder was like something out of a novel, and he wrote lots of similar scenarios himself.

It’s fascinating because he believed that writing could change the world, and he wrote stories about real-life events before they happened. He wrote about politics in his native Romania and about his students and colleagues and figures from the Renaissance in Italy. He was also very funny.

It is fascinating to me to see this team of young documentary makers go back to the same people I interviewed thirty years ago and hear what has changed in their opinions. It is difficult because his death caused such pain to people who loved him. He was engaged to a former student and many people’s lives have never been the same in the thirty years since he was killed.  I have to go back and read my own book and try to understand what happened. The new documentary makers have a theory about who killed him. To hear what it is, we all have to listen to the podcast.

What’s new to me about podcasts is that the interviews are different than they are in a book. They are more like conversations where you interrupt each other, change each other’s mind, and interact on a deep and sometimes humorous level. I am learning as much from this team about ways of doing research as I am teaching them.

So that is my life as a writer—one ending, of the science book, and one new beginning, of the podcast, and writing every day about things on my mind, much like the cool Blue Book blog.  I hope you write some 200 words every day.  I hope you send me some of your pages. I would love to comment. I wish you all all my very best.  It is not an easy life, but it is super fun to be a writer.

Ted

Professor Rebecca Johns-Trissler

On December 31, 1994, I made myself a New Year’s resolution that by the end of 1995 I would have a completed first draft of a novel. I was newly married, working at a magazine in New York, and paying my own rent, if barely, on a fourth-floor walkup in Brooklyn with the constant noise of the BQE in the background. (Even back then rent in NYC was expensive and publishing salaries were alarmingly low.) I’d always wanted to write a novel and thought, at the ripe old age of 23, that it was about time I got busy and actually did it.

I broke down my overwhelming novel-writing task into a series of smaller and much more manageable tasks: I would write two pages a day, every day, until it was finished, taking Fridays off for my own sanity. I would write on my lunch hour or after work, but I had to write those two pages every day. As Anne Lamott would write that same year in her book of the same title, I was taking it bird by bird.

Looking back on that task now, I realize I had no idea how to write a good novel. The story was basically glorified fan fic because that’s what I was interested in at the time. I didn’t understand how to control point of view or balance summary and scene or create fantastic characters or write thrilling dialogue. I didn’t know I didn’t know how to do those things. But I knew how to type clear sentences in chronological order in which exciting things happened, so that’s what I did instead.

For a whole year, I typed those sentences in which exciting things happened in chronological order. And at the end of 1995, I had a full and complete draft of a first novel. I’m embarrassed to say that at one point, I did give it to some friends at Penguin books and a high-powered agent or two and got their feedback, which was exceedingly kind given the quality of the work. I put the book away, and, in 1996, wrote a second one, marginally less terrible than the first but meeting the same fate.

I put it too away, but not in sadness or anger. I put it away because it had already taught me something I badly needed to know: I could write a novel. I could even write more than one. I would spend the next few years learning all the other aspects of craft that a novel needed to become good: point of view, characterization, dialogue, scene. But those two first practice novels taught me to trust the process and myself, that even the most enormous tasks are doable if you tackle them a little at a time.

Here’s Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird talking about this very concept:

1. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.

I agree with Anne: this is very wise advice, for writing and for life. Keep the headlights on. You won’t see your destination, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Which brings me to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

My graduate novel-writing students know I’ve never been a fan of holding this event in November, a short month that ends with a holiday week that often includes a lot of travel. Why isn’t NaNoWriMo in January, a long month with no holidays when we’re stuck inside because of crummy weather? Why isn’t it in the month of New Year’s resolutions? It’s certainly more interesting than resolving to lose fifty pounds or exercise every day.

But I do think NaNoWriMo is good for learning the process of novel writing. I do it’s taught a whole lot of people they can write a novel by breaking it down into manageable chunks. You might learn, like I did, that you can tackle any big project a little at a time, and that it’s okay if it isn’t perfect, if it’s embarrassing, if you decide to put it away later. You just need to keep those headlights on.

Steven Ramirez

Steven Ramirez teaches creative writing classes at DePaul University. His short fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, PANK, Lumina, Blue Mesa Review, Puerto Del Sol, Huizache, and The North American Review, among other publications. Steven is so close to finishing his first novel, Night Stalkers. He shows up on weekdays from five to seven AM.

Show Up!

I have this friend.

Let’s call him Mario, because that’s his name.

I’ve known Mario most of my life, and though we no longer live in the same city, we’ll see each other two, maybe three times a year. Pretty good for a couple of friends living in different places, leading different lives.

Anyway, whenever I visit Mario, and we’re out—dinner, drinks, whatever—this thing happens. People, lots and lots of people, will go out of their ways to say hello to him. Hugs, kisses, fist bumps, you name it. I joke that if any of these dopes were carrying babies, they might ask Mario to hold the squirmy little things.

Pope Mario! I laugh. Mayor of the bottomless mimosa!

But that’s not even the strange part. (People know people. So what?) No, the strange part, the thing that’s got me all thinky brainy, is that Mario, Mr. Popularity, has got to be the quietest, most passive, most poker-faced, most blink-and-you’ll-miss-him dude I know. Seriously. The guy doesn’t talk. I mean yeah, he talks—Hey how’s it going, Mario? Good. Hey what’s new, Mario? Not much. Hey how’s work, Mario? Work’s work.—but like Mario doesn’t talk talk, you know? Hold court, crack jokes, regale his audience with tales of heroics and heartbreak, or any of those things you expect from the guy who can’t walk ten paces without somebody leaping across traffic just to plant a fat one on those silent cheeks.

Don’t ask why it took me so long.

I really don’t know.

But one night at a restaurant or a bar or a barebecue or something, after the usual dozen or so fans had stopped by to pay their respects, I asked him about it.

Hey Mario, I said. How do you know all these people? How do all these people know you?

Maybe he picked up on what I was implying. Or maybe he didn’t so much as give it a second thought. But his answer is something I’ll never forget. It’s what brings me here.

I dunno, Mario shrugged. I guess I just show up.

Shows up?

Mario shows up?

 I turned the words over in my head, once, maybe two times, and soon understood exactly what he was talking about. Mario shows up. Yes he does. However last minute, however large or small or excruciating the event (my Catholic mother once gushed about having coffee with Mario at a church potluck—yikes!), it seemed that while the rest of us busied ourselves with finding new reasons to postpone, cancel, or just flake out altogether, Mario was there each time. No words. No punchlines. No tales of conquest and glory. Just present. Only present.

 Mario shows up.

So what am I saying?

Is writing, then, a popularity contest?

No. Thank God. Writing is not.

But when I think of writers—beginner writers especially, my classrooms full of journal keepers, dream transcribers, jotter downers of life’s biggest (but mostly tiny) questions—I can’t help but notice how we all too often go about this thing backwards. We put ourselves at the fancy pants table, drumming our fingers, bouncing our feet, wondering where everybody is, why nobody is lining up to say hello.

Mario will tell you why.

We don’t show up.

We must show up.

As writers, it’s the only non-negotiable.

Forget brilliance. Forget daring. Forget experience, world travel, or even having the slightest thing to say.

Show up.

Show up to your sunken couch at five AM—no, not the sexiest hour (hello, bedhead! what’s new, eye crust!)—but the only time you have to devote to your writing before the emails ding and the texts dong.

Show up.

Show up at ten, eleven, midnight, to the chipped end of that second-hand coffee table, the one with the sticky soda rings, but your kids are asleep, and the neighbors are done playing music, and you’ve tucked your phone away for just these next thirty minutes.

Show up.

Show up on that city bus, squeezed between grumpy passengers sharing this cold morning commute, but hey, a pen and notepad don’t require too much space, certainly no outlets, so here you go, chapter one, the first stanza, pot holes and all.

And maybe you write a page. Maybe you write ten. But be warned, dear writer, most times you’ll write nothing at all. Which is fine. No words, remember? No punchlines. No great tales of whatchamacallit. You’re there. Present. You showed up. And tomorrow, when your head aches, and the coffee’s weak, and your boss sucks, and Jennifer and Ben have called it quits, you’re gonna do it again. And again. And again.

And one day I’m going to find the nerve to ask you, Hey how do you write that? Where do you find these ideas? Or better yet, how do these ideas find you?

And maybe you’ll pick up on what it is I’m implying. Or maybe you won’t so much as give it a second thought. It doesn’t matter. Because you don’t know. You really don’t.

You just show up.

– Steven Ramirez

Dr. Michael Gallaway

Dear Writer, You Are Not Alone (And Why You Shouldn’t Try to Be)

 The reason I wanted to become a writer was informed by myths from the beginning. My love for the written word came primarily from my grandfather on my mother’s side. When I was brought into this world, he was a history teacher, but his life had been a grand adventure before. He joined the Navy at 17 to fight in the Pacific Theater, and when he came back home, he utilized the G.I. Bill to attend college in Tennessee where he played on the football team at a time when the newest safety equipment were leather helmets and the best advice a sports medic could give was to “rub some dirt on it.” The authors that my grandfather read were of this same stripe: rugged individualists who seemingly expressed a God-given gift for the word with the greatest of ease, flowing from their subconscious to the paper without any deliberation or revision. Authors like Hemingway, who my grandfather met while stationed in Spain and inadvertently insulted by offering him tainted wine from an unseasoned leather bota. The problem was my admiration for the individual writer who wrote with the greatest of ease: a harmful myth that I, and many young writers wrongly aspire to.

 Carrying this unnecessary baggage into the university, I was determined to write the next great American novel, typing for days on-end, fueled by caffeine and nicotine, blessed by the muses to express a new understanding of existence in this country in the late 20^th Century. But this harmful conception had a few negative results. The first is that I could not write unless I was “in the mood.” When I was feeling angsty, sad, forlorn, or lovesick, I could write for days, but when I was in a good mood, I couldn’t find the inspiration. I had the misconception that I had to be inspired to write. The second negative result was that I never showed my writing to anyone. To be a truly individual artist, I needed to come up with every syllable, word, and sentence on my own. Needless to say, my writing became increasingly solipsistic and eventually slowed to a trickle. It was not until I reframed my attitude and discarded these harmful myths that I actually started to produce consistently.

Good writing comes from practice and collaboration. When I started taking workshop classes for writing, I learned that writing is a craft as much as it is an art. Your innate talent has likely led you to this pursuit, but there are very few writers (likely none) who can simply sit down and bang out a masterpiece. Even Jack Kerouac, who famously equated revision to lying, was not the improvisational genius that he purported to be. As Kerouac scholar Paul Marion stated in a 2007 NPR interview, he “was really a supreme craftsman, and devoted to writing and the writing process.” Collaboration is an essential element of writing as well. The input that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis offered one another is well known, but communities of artists like the Modernists in the early 20^th century created texts together that could not have been crafted alone. Plain and simple: the individual, blessed author does not exist.

To be the best author you can be, find a community of writers you trust and respect. Writing groups are great when they are open, honest, and without judgment. Take the advice to heart, don’t feel threatened or insufficient, and work on your writing until it is up to your (and your group’s) standards. You can get constructive feedback, improve your craft, and avoid idolizing traits that will ultimately harm your writing.

Professor Kathleen Rooney

Professor Rooney is a founding member of poetry group, Poems While You Wait, and a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. She has also published various works like her national best-seller Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin’s Press 2017/Picador 2018) and newly published poetry collection Where are the Snows (Texas Review Press 2022). Next week she will be sharing some insight on her love for prompts.  

In Praise of Prompts 

Constraints are often where I find my greatest freedom. I give a ton of prompts when I teach creative writing at DePaul, and my fellow typewriter poets and I receive a ton of prompts when we’re out writing for strangers at Poems While You Wait. My latest poetry book Where Are the Snows would not even exist were it not for prompts put together by my friend and fellow poet Kimberly Southwick’s National Poetry Month poem-a-day group in April 2020.  

There’s something attractive in discipline and dedication — committing to something that at first seems arbitrary, but that through attention and effort takes on deeper meaning. 

So my best tip is: give yourself or get your friends to give you prompts. Like this one:  

List ten mistakes you’ve made. 

Pick one and apologize to the person most hurt by your mistake – offer a penance.