Is it a Scene or a Sentence?
The difficult work of making commitments, in fiction and in life
My counselor’s waiting room is small, with several chairs, a leather couch, and a coffee table littered with old copies of The New Yorker. I’m usually running late, with only a few minutes to spare before the clock starts on my 50-minute session, so when I sit down, I immediately grab the most recent issue and begin to thumb its pages. There are the cartoons, of course — always smart and relevant and biting. But I really enjoy reading some bite-sized fiction. Inevitably, I’ve devoured the first few paragraphs of a gripping short story when the door opens to a small interior office. My counselor steps out, smiles and says, “come on in.”
And so, I fold the magazine in half, slip it in my purse, and hope she doesn’t notice.
I know, I know. I shouldn’t steal. An annual New Yorker subscription (I’ve just learned) would only cost me $50.00, and I’ve decided (just this second, actually) to ask for one for my birthday. But in the meantime, I have to admit, I’ve hidden two or three issues in my purse, and I’m not proud of it, but let’s be honest, is anyone else in that office actually reading The New Yorker? Because honestly, who reads short stories anymore?
My appetite for short fiction has grown recently because I’ve learned to appreciate just how difficult it is to write a short story that works. (The same goes for running. Run a 9-minute mile pace, and you’ll realize just how difficult it is to run a 4-minute mile pace.) The sheer economy of words requires a high level of confidence in every single tiny decision. From the first few sentences of a short story, readers have to understand the narrator, setting, conflict, and stakes. Short story writers must pack into 30 words what a novelist must accomplish in 30 pages. To do this well, short story writers have to trust their instincts.
And here’s the thing. Lately, in fiction and in life, I don't really trust my instincts.
The other day, our youngest son got his fingers slammed in a bathroom door at a restaurant. He started wailing. I started wailing. Our older son started using the automatic hand dryer as a simulation rollercoaster. Amid the echoing noise, our younger son’s fingers turned black and blue. There was an indention in the form of a straight line across his knuckles where the door tried to shut. I tried to decide what to do next: do I stay in this bathroom, huddled and screaming, or do we go get in the car and drive to the Emergency Room? Stay or go? Stay or go?
Oh God, I thought to myself, he will lose function in his fingers, forever. He will never get to play football. That’s an odd thought, I thought, because I’ve never wanted my kids to play football. Concussions and injuries are so common. And anyway, I kept on thinking, surely there is something else he would need to do with his fingers.
That’s what went through my head in about three seconds. And then I called my husband, asked what I should do, and he said to get our injured son a chocolate chip cookie and see if he felt better in a few minutes.
And guess what? He felt better in a few minutes. (Not our older son, though. He wanted a chocolate chip cookie.)
My anxiety went haywire, but the situation demanded decisiveness.
The choices we are forced to make in life — where to live, where to go to church, whether or not to head to the emergency room — can seem overwhelming in the moment. We live in an “Ask Alexa” generation, and it’s easy to believe at every turn that there is a right answer, if only we knew the correct terms to plug into the search engine. But sometimes there isn’t a right decision. Sometimes there are a host of medium-to-fine, or horrible-to-mediocre choices in front of you, and you have to act and hope for the best. You go to the ER, or you don’t.
Back to The New Yorker. Short stories are a masterclass in how a person can make a million tiny confident decisions. In 11th grade English class, I read stories like The Tale Tell Heart, and The Lottery, and The Gift of the Magi. I read these stories in a thick textbook as if that’s the only place they ever lived. And then, I left high school and went back to reading novels. Like a normal person.
But then, a few years ago, an editor asked me to review a compilation of short stories by Dantiel Moniz called Milk Blood Heat. For months afterward, her stories haunted me with their intense reflections on girlhood. After that, I picked up George Saunders’ bestseller, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, his exposition of how to read and decode seven Russian short stories, including a few by Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev. Lately, I’ve been enjoying The New Yorker fiction podcast — (my favorite episode is Ann Patchett reading Maile Meloy, a story called The Proxy Marriage, set in early 2000s against the backdrop of the Iraq War.)
I have never attempted to write a short story. At least not yet. But one thing I’ve noticed is that writers of short fiction can drop a significant element of back-story all in one sentence.
Take this example from Nicole Krauss’s recently published short story, Shelter. In the first few sentences, we’re introduced to Cohen, a middle-aged man renting an Airbnb in Tel Aviv. He’s grieving the dissolution of his marriage after his wife had an affair with a doctor. That’s all you know. But then the narrator drops in this sentence.
“The doctor’s own wife had died, and after a sufficient period of mourning, he had joined a book club, run under the auspices of the 92nd Street Y, and there, where free bagels were served, he’d met Cohen’s wife.”
In the margins, I wrote in pen: “could have been a scene, but it is a sentence.” In fact, the information packed in that sentence could have been written in at least 10 scenes. Krauss made a thousand tiny, confident decisions while writing that sentence. Straight down to the bagels. And then the story moves forward, confident that you, the reader, can fill in everything else.
When I was young, I made decisions with that kind of swift confidence. Maybe this was a product of my youth — a product of feeling like I had all the time in the world to change course or re-do, or pivot. But at 35, I understand that pivots are costly. So I waste time. I worry. I waffle. I dwell on a decision, thinking about it from 1,000 different angles, imagining that doing so will save “Future Me” some pain. (Hint: Future Me will also worry about Future Me.)
In life: this looks like asking everyone and their brother where they think we should send our son to kindergarten. In fiction: this looks like editing and re-editing the same sentence over and over again, wondering if it’s better for the waitress to sit on an upturned bucket or an upturned milk crate in that opening scene where she’s pregnant and in a whole heap of trouble.
Perfectionism hides in good intentions.
What about you? What decision is staring you down right this second? What is keeping you up at night? Is it a scene? (Something you need to dwell on for a long period of time.) Or is it a sentence? (Something you decide and move on from.)
Reading short stories helps me to think more clearly. It encourages me to move forward — in my life and writing — with the confidence of a New Yorker writer. After all, what is life, but a series of a million tiny decisions?
But my stolen New Yorker is not all I read. I also read the Bible — often the Psalms and the Proverbs — begging for wisdom, trusting that God already has it all in His hand. He also, through abiding forgiveness, offers me the freedom to make blatant (even willful) mistakes.
Like stealing.
You received this email because at some point in the past, you expressed interest or signed up for email updates. I hope the words bring a bit of encouragement to keep entering into the (mostly) dark forest we call life.
Major congratulations are in order for our dear friend, Charlie Ellis, who learned last week that he is VALEDICTORIAN of Christ Presbyterian Academy’s class of 2023! We promptly ran to Baked on Eighth to grab a cake to celebrate. We’re so proud of you, Charlie!
Recent Favorites
BOOK:
Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson. Are you familiar with Kevin Wilson? His work is so inventive and weird and touching and redemptive. This book follows Frankie, dealing as an adult woman with the fallout from “The Coalfield Panic of 1996.” You don’t really know what the Panic was, only that she was sixteen at the time, and that she had something to do with it. The novel is all about weirdness and art and the intensity of young love and hope. I LOVED it! “And I know, in that moment, that my life is real, because there’s a line from this moment all the way back to that summer, when I was sixteen, when the whole world opened up and I walked through it.
WATCH:
Fleishman is in Trouble. (HULU) I went back and forth between wondering if I should recommend this show and wondering if I already had. Based on the novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, it follows the story of Toby Fleishman, his ex-wife Rachel, and his college best friend Libby. Claire Danes stars as Rachel, and in my mind Claire Danes can do no wrong. To be frank, the first few episodes are gratuitously sexual. If you can fast forward through that, then you are in for a treat — a story about middle age and marriage and life when it becomes what it is, rather than what we dreamed it would be when we were young. (If you want to skip watching the show and just read a great review, this one in the NYT is spot-on.)
READ:
Why is Everyone Suddenly Obsessed with Buccal Fat. NYT. You have got to be kidding me. Apparently, the cosmetic surgery du jour is “Buccal Fat Removal,” in which celebrities and the Uber-rich have their CHEEK SKIN removed to make their faces look emaciated, rather than healthy. Honestly, remember when we used to say a person’s cheeks looked gaunt? Yeah, well, now people are paying to have that look. The look of a skeleton. Give me a break. There are actual people starving in the world.
One Last Thing:
For those that asked, the switch to decaf has been going really well! I still have a strong cup in the morning, but no more afternoon Joe. I’ve been sleeping better and have felt a marked decrease in the heart-racing sensation of anxiety. I also have made a decision to write this newsletter every-other-week. For now, my greatest goal is to finish the draft of my novel-in-progress, and that will give me a bit of extra time to devote to those pages. Thanks to all that weighed in and gave encouragement and support. I appreciate you so much!
