Privileging Language Over Story
I’m getting frustrated over reader feedback on my stream-of-consciousness stories. Some readers would rather that this sentence:
“She wrote down how Carol Sue’d spanked her when she found her taking Christmas gingerbread from the cooling rack, spanked her when she’d forgotten to shine her shoes before Sunday school, spanked her when she forgot to gather the eggs three days in a row, spanked her when she was four years old and had said "damnit" in Sunday School, spanked her when she’d hid in the carriage house during Christmas dinner and refused to come out after her boy cousins ripped the arms off her new doll, spanked her when she’d broken the butter dish that had belonged to her great-great-great grandmother Lydia May Louisa Marston.”
read something like “She wrote down all the times she could remember when Carol Sue spanked her, like when she stole gingerbread from the cooling rack, something she did whenever she got the chance.”
These readers just don’t get what I’m trying to do with language, with the sound and rhythm. Generally, when readers ask for cuts, they want me to cut what they consider excess language which is what I consider the very point. Take this passage for an instance:
“She knows her mind’s slipping away from her and she wants to record it all, to get everything down in words before it’s gone forever, so that it won’t be gone, so it will be kept like all her playbills and wine corks have been kept, like her broken China cups and newspaper clippings have been kept. And the baby book and the photographs, the ticket stubs and thirty years of bank statements. Like all the other evidence of her life that has been kept stored in hat boxes and old suitcases, in cigar boxes and plastic baggies stuffed into the knee-wall storage in the attic, stuffed into the closet under the back stairs, piled up in the back bedroom on the first floor.”
One reader/reviewer feels that all of these details are too much, that they distract from the story. But for me, these details are the story, these details, these words and rhythm are the whole point—this story is about a woman who is losing her mind to Alzheimer’s, who can feel everything slipping away and she’s trying to write it all down before it’s too late, so that she can leave it behind, so it will be read by those who survive her. The words are the story, just as much as the story is the story.
I think at a certain point, whether or not a reader likes a story is strictly a matter of preference—it has nothing to do with the writer’s skill or success with the story. It is becoming obvious to me that some readers do not/will not ever like my voice/style, and there is little I can do about that. I will just write what I write, I know it’s good, I know it. I know it.
But I am learning from all of this reviewing. I am learning that frank, straightforward reviews don’t just bother me, they bother everybody. I don’t try to be “nice” in my reviews unless I know the writer is a novice and needs encouragement. I’m not mean, just honest. However I do try to always say something encouraging, if there is anything to say. Perhaps I need to soften negative reviews, even for those writers participating in my “serious-as-hell-office” over at Zoe. I could be a bit more sensitive with writers, a bit more soft.
And I have to get used to my stuff being disliked. My writing is often hard to read, very difficult to stick with. So be it. That is the point. I’ll just keep writing.
~r.
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