Nothing original here

Today, a moment of silence to honour the 14 victims of the 1989 Montreal Massacre: Remember their names. Work to end violence against women. 

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I had such a good thought the other day on my walk that it was almost brilliant: Writing is like making sausages. What a perfect way to open this week’s post on the writing process. But then I googled the phrase, just to see what might come up, and discovered that, far from original, the idea of comparing some process with sausage making goes back two centuries and brings up more than two million hits — including countless ones relating writing to sausage-making. Oof.

And there, dear reader, you have the foundational fear of every writer: Our idea is un-original. Our other ideas have already been thought of, been written about. Go back to the drawing board. Start over. Again. Oof.

And so we do.

Precisely because no idea is wholly new, we dig deep to weave our own originality into it through the words we put on the page. We hope we can shape it, with every one of the 28 bones in our hands, into a fresh new story that will be worth our readers’ while. A Masterclass article suggests that, “while all writing is influenced in some way by the work that precedes it”, a different story can be told when it is infused with the writer’s own experience. Indeed, this is the essence of the creative non-fiction genre: the stories are based in truth, written from the author’s perspective, and incorporate the author’s reflection on the subject. Thus, the personal sparks the universal. That is my aim with this blog.

Sometimes the process is smooth, but usually it isn’t. The motivator is more often the deadline than the muse. And the process is exactly like making sausages: a bit messy, with some forcing required. Which is when I reach for the index cards — this writer’s friend. I use the old fashioned card stock kind and write my ideas on them with an equally old fashioned pen. Of course there is an app for that, but I like to see the cards physically spread out across my desk and I like to move them around until my thoughts scrawled on them line up in better order. I used a version of this technique recently when writing my 250-word micro fiction ghost story for the NYC Midnight Madness challenge.

I was new to the challenge, am new to fiction never mind micro fiction, am clueless about ghost stories, and had never before worked with three prompts: genre (ghost story); action (asking for forgiveness); and one word (skin). The photo (left) shows my sausage-making process laid out using bits and bobs of paper I had to hand, having run out of actual index cards. I had researched best practices for micro fiction and had itemized the elements that make up a ghost story. Those scraps of paper kept me on track as I captured ideas and wrestled them into as good a piece as I was able to under the circumstances. 

The result (the fifth and final draft) is below. The quality of the story will be assessed by the judges. But regardless of how they respond, I enjoyed the process — messy but rewarding; and I am really hoping that my story's character and plot are original. I invite you to be the judge of that. 

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The Match in the Elm

Killing the budgie had been easy. The pleasure not in the act but in the sense of power that arose from it. Now buried in the compost pile, the bird would decay, returning to nothing. Like it had never existed. 

Mara pulled up her socks, forcing them over her knees. She hated them, the skin mottled with little veins. She grabbed her backpack, ran out the door. As if the killing had never happened. As if the budgie had never lived. 

Mara dawdled her way to the bus stop, reviewing her morning’s achievement. No more noisy bird. No more pathetic imitations of her speech. She felt strangely light-headed. Maybe she should have eaten breakfast. 

Suddenly, a giant force of hot wind swept across her. She fell to the ground, then heard what sounded like her own voice from up above in the elm: ‘Up here, Mara. It’s you. I am the you that could be, and I know what you did. And so do you. As of this moment, it’s like you never existed. Your life never happened. The budgie will rise again. But you won’t.’ 

Struggling to raise her head, Mara looked up at what she knew shouldn’t be real but seemed like it might be — mottled knees, so ugly and familiar; that voice — and knew she’d met her match. 

She whispered, ‘I give up my power. Forgive me my sin,’ but Mara was talking to herself. Literally. And she had never been a good listener. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash