Craft Notes: “Goodbye to All That,” by Eula Biss from Notes from No Man’s La

a.     Voice: Story-telling. Opening up. “I remember” a lot. “I need to tell you,” very informal, like she’s sitting across from me telling me about her life. Destroys fourth wall. Occasionally talks about herself in third person as “the heroine.”

b.      Structure: Chronology—keeps resetting to the beginning and telling the story in a different way. Like she doesn’t know what story to tell yet.

c.       Images: The refrigerator too heavy to carry upstairs, the rank apartment with terrible smells, the ice skating on dull spoons and slush. Threatened by a guy with a lighter. Sexually harassed by an 8-year-old. Leaving New York with not even a bed, no more plants, or snapshots of family.

d.      Phrases: “the myth of New York,” “Just go home/ Do it again.” The apathy and repetition. “I remember the moment when I realized exactly what it had already cost me.” “It’s difficult for me to separate my experience in New York from my sensation of finding the limits of my own independence.” ‘By the time I left New York, I knew that success and failure are silly terms in which to speak of living a life.” “the heroine is not convinced she in the heroine.”

e.      I will take from this the voice of writing like I’m telling an informal story, just searching for ways to say it.

f.        Questions: What was Joan Didion’s essay about (I suppose I find out when I read that one)? Was this story before or after she got her Master’s degree? Or her bachelor’s? 

Craft Notes: “Land Mines” by Eula Biss from "Notes from No Man’s Land"

a.      Images: The first paragraph gives several images of undesired child behavior.

b.      Poignant quotes: “and established public education in America as the method we use to manage large populations of our own people who frighten us.” – suddenly relating to separated ideas. “universal, tax supported, free, compulsory, bureaucratic, racist, and class-biased,” describing the school systems.

c.       Voice: Authority position (having worked as a teacher). Compassionate voice. She wants to help; she wants to figure this out. Critical voice. She has an opinion and wants to prove it.

d.      Techniques: Juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas (fear of children with fear of African Americans, creation of school system with controlling the African American population, “universal” and “bureaucratic”). Examples of children’s writing to show harsh themes of their world. Personal anecdote and personal interpretation of what it means.

e.      Structure: Somewhere between 8 and 10 sections. Each section mixes the personal and historical (unlike other works by her that switch sections as she switches from historical to personal).

f.        Is the reference at the end to 911? Does she mean her role as a teacher in the end was to keep kids there? I feel like that cuts it short. 

Hug-it-out

 I                I had something for her. Finally, something to give. Kayla was waiting for me when I got home. I started handing out presents: a fuzzy hat for mom, a leather cap for dad, a knitted Spiderman beanie for Brandon—authentic sheep’s wool—and then Kayla. The glass turtle was beautiful. She had collected turtles for as long as I could remember, and this one would top them all. Hand crafted in Colombia, and proof that I had thought of her on this trip. Proof that I cared.

            I began unraveling the carefully stored present, but then I saw it, the prefect glass turtle slipping from its packaging. It fell to the ground and shattered at Kayla’s feet. We just stared at it for a solid minute. We both knew what it was. It was a peace offering. It was a way of forgetting the past and moving on, trying to become friends again. She almost cried. She just looked down at the pieces—I saw her heart breaking. And I felt my own do the same.

a.      [Second Try, Same exercise] Kayla is my little sister by two years. When we were kids, she’d follow me around everywhere, watch Batman with me instead of Barney, be my side-kick on neighborhood adventures. And she was my backbone. I would stick up for a bug’s right to live on the playground, but I wouldn’t stick up for my own right to not get beat up. That’s when Kayla came out swinging for me. When I came home crying because I’d try to sell our garden tomatoes to the neighbor for a dollar a piece and he’d taken the whole lot for that dollar, it was Kayla who went with mom to get them back.

      Kayla was stubborn, sassy, and sarcastic. She was blunt. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her when she came home from work. She was mean sometimes. I couldn’t stand mean people, so slowly, we edged out of each others’ lives. But now I had a gift. I wanted our relationship back. It would start with this gift: the glass turtle handcrafted in Colombia. We would hug-it-out like we did when we were four and six.

      I walked in my door, and she was there waiting for me. I started handing out gifts: a wool hat for mom, a leather hat for dad, a Spiderman beanie for Brandon. As I was unwrapping Kayla’s turtle, her eyes got wide. She would love it. Then it fell—plummeted to the ground right in between my feet and hers. We both watched it shatter. We just stared at it for a minute. I felt like crying. Kayla’s eyes betrayed her for the first time, showed her devastation. I went upstairs to try to fix it. We never hugged-it-out. 

First Draft: The Cubby Hole

1.      I wiggled my way into the tiny, square hole in the wall. She followed. A “cubby hole” mom would call it. It used to be the base of our upstairs gas fireplace, but they didn’t like it. So they carved it out and coated the red-brick walls with the same pink carpet from the upstairs living room. There wasn’t enough, so the brick was showing on all the corners.

            The entire wall containing the hole was bare brick. Above the hole on this brick wall, Mom’s small wooden shelf was perched. On it laid a bi-fold wedding photo, a big, white, unused candle, a golden goose with a small bowl for a body, and a pair of massive toe-nail clippers sitting sideways inside the bowl-body of the golden goose. The hole was plenty big enough to fit my 8-year old body through—barely capable of allowing a full adult passage into its domain.  The room inside the hole was a strange shape—like a rectangle with a trapezoid on top of it and extra squares off of the sides. Despite being a tiny room, it was about eight feet tall (all the way up to the next floor). It was a secret place. A spying place.

            When Dad got home from winning another “3 on 3” tournament with Feeba, Ryan would follow me down into the cubby hole. I could put my arms and legs on the sides of the trapezoid part and Spiderman-climb all the way to the top, where the leftover metal tubes from the fireplace still dangled down on my head. Through the holes and tubes above me that led to the living room (which still appeared to have a fireplace in it), I heard every word Mom and Dad and Feeba would say to each other. I would climb down to my enamored friend and report the topics of discussion.

            They talked about Dad’s 3-point shot. They called him Dr. Nay. He almost never lost. They said he could have gone pro when he was younger. Dad was silent after that. They talked about us kids. They tapped on the fireplace when they knew I was listening. Mom never said much. She was glad he was home. Glad they had won. Sometimes, after Mom left to make supper or wash dishes, Dad and Feeba would talk about wives. I guess Feeba wasn’t very happy with his wife, and Dad would say encouraging things. He would say “be patient,” “they’re all the same,” “you got to learn to deal with it.” He would suggest they go out for a drink to let off steam.

            When they came for us, I climbed to the top and hid. Ryan curled into a tight ball in the right or left square, but parents’ hands could reach the squares. Feeba would drag her out and tickle her on the ground outside our oasis. I stayed hidden. No one could reach me there. I was safe. I had control. I would listen for the screen door to click closed from upstairs, still listening through the metal tubes and vent holes.

            One day, Ryan came running down to the basement yelling about Mommy and Daddy kissing. We were suddenly perplexed by this. We’d seen it a million times, but just now we thought of it. We thought of ourselves—a boy and girl just like Mommy and Daddy. We climbed into our secret space. We looked at each other, and we kissed. We were very proud. “Daddy! Me and Kolton kissed!” she exclaimed while voluntarily venturing out of the dark cubby hole. They weren’t quite sure what to say.

            A few years later, Mom thought the basement was too cold to do anything in. They installed a small furnace over the opening of the cubby hole. I tried to squeeze through once. I didn’t fit anymore.

Craft Notes: “Three Songs of Salvage” by Eula Biss from Notes From No Man’s Land

a.      Techniques: Starts in the middle of a scene. Uses “the escalator” and “the Fifty-first Street station” opposed to “an escalator” (generic escalator). It gives immediacy and specificity to the opening image.

b.      Tone: Blunt. Recounts sad story after sad story, doesn’t reveal the connection between. “God bless you” repeated over and over. We don’t know how she feels about religion at the beginning. Admittive (saying sothing for the first time out loud feel) “And this is hard for me to admit”. “Born Again.”

c.       Structure: Numbered Sections. Different chapters starting with her experience and morphing to other family members. Section 2 in kind of a full flashback, but not really. It’s an abstract flashback.

d.      Important points, phrases: ‘I haven’t spoken yet,” describes an interesting fact that we seldom think about but always take part in: when do we say our first word each day? “God bless you, sweetheart”: we start to establish her feelings toward religion, as complex. “Obatala, is the father of both insanity and wisdom,” creating connections between the two. “Save” so many meanings.

e.      I will take the technique of creating immediacy by usinf “the” instead of “a” as articles. Also open-ended questions throughout. It’s intriguing and hinting.

f.        What does it mean?  I still feel ambiguous. She thinks we must be born again, but how does that apply to the specifics in her life? She feels new beginnings are good for us. New directions. 

Craft Notes: “Relations” by Eula Biss from "Notes from No Man’s Land"

a.      Tone/voice: Personal and informative. Court Cases, history lessons, like a newspaper story in its beginning—telling us what happened like a newscaster. Interesting flair to the piece: “epic tale of blood and belonging.” Changes to personal tone, uses first person.

b.      Structure: Starts out as a news story. Moves into the personal with the doll stories. To the general with Black/white doll stats. Back to the personal story with her doll. A short section broadening it back to the general again. Staying with Cousins. Back to the original news story, but in a personal way now. It’s a braid of many different elements, none of which come to a real conclusion until the end, so it keeps us interested.

c.       I will take the suspense from this for my own writing. The idea of broadening a personal story with elements of world news or historical fact and leaving each part of the story open-ended until the end. I will use that to make my pieces more interesting.

d.      Words that bring in the focus: “It isn’t easy to accept a legacy of whiteness as an identity.” “Topsy-turvy doll” “refused to be white.”

e.      Style: it’s like a mix genre between historical non-fiction, news writing, and personal essay. The beginning seems like the news writing, and the facts and history of the dolls seems like historical non-fiction. Then she adds in the personal essay throughout.

f.        Q’s: I wonder whether she started with the personal essay idea and expanded the historical and news-y pieces around it, or if she thought the news story was interesting and then as a second thought was able to connect it to her own life. Was the piece heavily research-based, or just knowledge she kept somewhere in her brain and later used?

Craft Notes: “Introduction” by Ira Glass from "The New Kings of Nonfiction"

a.      Telling: “I don’t see anything wrong with a piece of reporting turning into a fable.” “They either find a new angle on something we all know about already, or—more often—they take on subjects that nobody else has figured out are worthy of reporting.” “I think you’ve really only got two basic building blocks. You’ve got the plot of the story, and you’ve got the ideas the plot is driving at.”

b.      Images: photocopies of photocopies, piles of old stories. “Random issues of a Canadian magazine a friend edited for a while.” “You can knock your head against a wall for days,”

c.       Tone: Very informal and friendly. Cusses, informal vocabulary, talks to us like we’re talking over coffee. “trying his damndest.” “I say Phooey to that. This book says phooey to that.” “trots”, “hokum”, “this passage just kills me,” to introduce a quoted text. “I think it’s for losers.” Very comedic and entertaining. Tells us how she feels.

d.      Structure: Her opinion and images, a passage from a story, “telling” the importance of the passage or of that person. Stars to separate sections of more specific focus.

e.      Questions: Are all the passages from the intro later in the book? I hope so. Also, What would Ira consider a line between news features and larger non-fiction stories, if there even is one?

First Draft of "Looking for an Upgrade"

There’s always something newer. In 8^th grade, I traded in my first cell phone—a brown old Motorola flip-phone—for a shiny new Razr. A year later, I got a blue slider-phone with a full keyboard. Junior Year of high school, Mom bought us all iPhones, and I kept that for years. I thought I had something substantial, something that could change how I lived a little. I utilized every aspect of the phone: I used it to keep my schedule, to wake me up, to document important moments, and even to shop cheaply. Sitting on the toilet was no longer wasted time—l could be productive at any moment. I sunk into the iPhone as it sunk into me. Wasn’t it good? Everyone else was moving onto the iPhone 4s, but I was still content with my 4. I was proud of that. It wasn’t the newest, but it was still the best.

            In 8^th grade, I broke up with Rachel, my first girlfriend—my first kiss. I dated the preacher’s daughter, and we had fun. A little better than last time, I thought. I dated one of the hottest girls in school. It was new and fresh and exciting. A few months later I wanted someone more substantial. I dated an older girl. A little better than last time, I thought. I dated a band geek. Almost, I thought. Almost. Junior year of high school, I dated a Mexican girl, and we stayed together for years. I thought I had someone substantial now. She changed the way I saw the world and how I lived. We were together at every moment. We utilized every second together: we studied Spanish together, watched kids’ cartoons, debated the theology of prayer, made out on old country roads. I had no time to waste—her problems were mine to fix. I sunk into her as she sunk into me. Wasn’t it good? Everyone else was moving on new loves, another crush, but I was still content with her. I was proud of that. She wasn’t new, but she was still the best.

            Everyone at college had iPads. They were new and fun and exciting—so much more useful! I held on to my iPhone 4 for a while. The screen cracked around the edges. The battery life dwindled. The camera stopped working. It was falling apart. I couldn’t stand to see so many people with great new technology while I was barely able to communicate with my iPhone. I bought an iPad. I used it for homework; I watched movies while I biked; it changed the way I lived in its own small way. It was new and exciting.

            Every girl I saw at college was brilliant. They were different and new and exciting—so unique compared to the girls I knew in high school! They had goals and passions and strong opinions. They were strong. My sweetheart and I, we stayed together for a while. We stopped talking to each other. Our energies dwindled dealing with each other. I couldn’t see her as beautiful anymore. We were falling apart. I couldn’t stand to see so many young women full of life and energy and love while I could barely communicate with her. We broke up. She dropped out of college. Three months later, I gently kissed a PJCS major. She wanted to help others, save the world, change the way we lived. She was passionate. She was new and beautiful and exciting.

            I’m running out of money. Looking for the next best thing takes a toll after a while. I want to live with what I enjoy, not what society tells me I’ll enjoy more. This habit still aches on me.

            It’s been two years. I cannot keep looking for the next best thing. I want to live with who I enjoy and love, not she who society tells me I could enjoy or love more. The habit still aches on me. 

Craft Notes - “On the Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting” by Lee Gutkind

a.      He uses techniques like sliding between scenes, sometimes tears apart, but they always have something related to join them together. He switches back and forth in time, not going straight chronologically. He weaves other people’s stories in with his own.

b.      The voice is conversational. He tells stories like he’s sitting across from me, reminiscing about the past. He uses informal words like “newish” and seems to trust the reader with the intimate details. He doesn’t make a big deal out of them, like he’s told it all before, and maybe he has.

c.       Every time he slides to a new topic or scene he creates the image of the scene. Like when he starts talking about living in Pittsburgh, “I walked around my neighborhood with my guard up.” He gives us an image to look at while he lays the big stuff on us, like the heavy amount of discrimination and violence there was toward him because of his Jewish religion.

d.      There are five sections: an intro, a section on getting started in journalism and the “newish” type of writing, a section about how creative non-fiction became a focus, a section about starting the literary journal, and then how he feels about the journal. The overall sections are chronological through his life, but the stories within them often aren’t.

e.      I will take with me the idea of having an overarching chronological work of non-fiction, but within the chronology, using different times and parts of my life to build on each other by theme rather than time-relation.

f.        Questions: How is this supposed to be a part of a memoir? It seems way too condensed to be part of a memoir. What was a defining nationwide occurrence that sparked the idea of Non-fiction being worthwhile?

Craft Notes on 'The Father" by Mary Jones

a.      The voice is matter of fact. There is no telling at all, just showing. Maybe the end is telling: “they did not see him on the first Sunday, or on any other day, any more.” That ending line doesn’t give us an image, but it creates an emotion. All through the piece, she is just letting us absorb all these images, and then BAM, at the end we have to feel something, and it germinates from the images we’d just absorbed.

b.       This quote and phrase, “I don’t care about my kids,” the father said. And he closed the door and ate the spaghetti,” show me the kind of man the father is in a very small space. It makes the whole piece. We catch glimpses of who the father is throughout, with the repetitiveness of the actions, the fact that they only saw him once a month, but that phrase shows what’s actually happening between him and his kids.

c.       The piece holds together because it is extremely short and to the point. It borders on matter-of-fact sometimes, and that’s what keeps it going. They do the same thing every month, ans it’s told in a fast-paced matter of fact way, and we are waiting for something to change. When it does change, it hits us hard because of what the meaning is, but also because the format changes from matter-of-fact showing to a final telling sentence.

d.      I take with me the idea of accompanying changes in the content of a story with format changes or style changes as well. By changing the format and the content and the style all at once, I can create a bigger impact on the reader, and it will be more noticeable. In this way, I could also call attention to certain aspects the reader should notice.

e.      The form is simply an intro of the repetitive happening with the father, a scene with the father and the man at the door, and the ending sentence. The children never have voices of their own, which is interesting. It almost seems like the story is told by the mother about her ex-husband. The father has his voice in the second part along with the salesman. The mother, if the author, would be the one telling of their activities in the narrative section. The kids never get a section. They are silent passive agents to the movements of their parents.

f.        I also read: “How to Fall in love For Real” by Kent Shaw, “Balancing Act” by Lisa Knopp.

Dear Dad,

            Do you remember when I jumped off the boat? I was probably four or five, just sprawled out on our inflatable green raft. I was playing with the nightcrawlers we’d picked up at the Turnabenie’s drive-thru. I think you and Mom were getting along—just there, fishing together.

            I remember looking out over the edge to see the water. It was dark green, almost black. I leaned—not at all cautiously—over the raft’s edge to touch it, and I plunged in head first. You told me later that I barely made a sound. That all you heard was curplunk, and I was gone. I remember it was peaceful down there. I saw only dark liquid everywhere; I didn’t move at all. I just sank deeper.  I let myself go. But do you remember when you grabbed me? You grabbed me around the waist. You tilted me up slowly and changed my path, until we both popped out of the water back into the air. You asked me if I had fun. Of course you would. With a big smile, I said yes, and I saw mom frantically flailing toward us from behind.

            Do you remember when you left? Because I don’t. I wasn’t there. Mom and Kayla started jumping off the boat. They went head first and didn’t move. They were sinking, and I had to catch them, guide them back to the air myself. But eventually, I jumped too. And this time, I just kept going. I kept falling further and further away from it all. I let myself go. Mom jumped in after me, thrashing around in the water hoping to find me. She’s still there, thrashing in the water. You’re still gone. I actually did pretty well underwater. I learned how to swim. But one of us is still sinking. Please catch her.

Love,

Kolton

Dad as a teenager

Dad was “Kev” growing up. He was short, slim, and scrawny with not a hair on his body save his dirty-blonde locks. He was a pretty-boy—one of those faces that made the girls swoon despite his height challenge. But at home, he was the runt of the guy, senior only to his little sister, Kim. When he was about 15, he came outside in his blue Cavs tank top and gym shorts looking for his older brother Vince. He had a plan. Together, they rigged an elaborate trap for their older brother Kyle in the barn. First came the bucket of tar, then the chicken feathers, fresh from the chickens in the back yard. By the end of the prank, they were all covered in tar, so their father, Norvel, threw them in the tub one by one and dumped gasoline on them. Doris rubbed them raw with a hard foam scrubber. Once their skin was raw, Norvel gave them each a few good slaps and sent them to the Hilltop Market to get some cigarettes. Dad ran down into the fields instead chasing deer. He promised himself he’d catch one someday.

My First Memory

I remember sitting in a green rubber raft. I was playing with big, fat nightcrawlers in a blue plastic container we’d picked up at Turnabenie’s, the drive-through market on our street. I remember putting down my wriggling worm and peering over the side of the inflated green sides of the raft to see us surrounded by shimmering dark water. My parents were both on the other side of the boat fishing, but I paid no mind to them. The darkness of the water beneath me was fascinating. I remembering reaching for it—I so wanted to touch it. I wanted to explore the new exciting expanse below my bobbing raft. I leaned a little farther over the edge of the raft, reached a little farther to that shimmering dark green. I remember slipping forward. My hand entered first, it was a rush of cold and wet and new and I loved it. I let my arm and head follow it into the new land. I remember my whole body being underwater, and I was just urging myself down deeper. I didn’t move my body, I just sank and observed. I remember feeling my dad’s hands come to rest softly around my waist. I knew they were meant to be there. He tiled me forward, then up, and then we both surfaced out of the water. I remember Dad turning me toward him and asking me if I liked it. I just smiled. I remember seeing Mom in the background frantically splashing her way through the water toward us. Dad pulled us back to the raft.