One story four ways: An exercise in reduction
If September feels like its own New Year, then, for me, October feels like my own "new lease on life" anniversary. Because twenty-one years ago on October 1, I was let go from the corporate world and, unplanned by me, was pushed down a path that opened a whole new world to me — the world of graduate studies, freelance work and, eventually, teaching.
Being ushered out of the corporate world and into my own brave new world was, in retrospect, a very good thing because I had to learn how to set my own terms and make my own way in the world of earning a living. Which I did.
This summer, my writing group took on the challenge of writing one story four ways: start with a 900-word version, then pare it down to 500 words, then 250 and, finally, just 100 words. I decided to write about my exit from the corporate world and my subsequent career path.
As I worked my way through the four different story versions, it was interesting to see what I had to take out, could leave in, and had to change entirely over the course of this ‘reduction’ exercise from 900 down to 100 words. Each version opens with the same words but proceeds in its own way to address the core story, and each version has a different title that signals the content.
I chose to write from the third person point of view ('she'), without naming myself, as a way of freeing myself up from being too tight with the details; somehow, writing about "a woman" made it easier to tell the story as truth.
The 900-word version is below. (Click the link at the end to read the three successively shorter versions.)
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A TELLING TALE: Spidey senses, ducks, and big changes
Once upon a time there was a woman who thought she just needed to try harder and do more in order to succeed in the workplace where she had landed eleven years earlier. It had been a good run, but she was growing bored and she wanted more. More seniority, more responsibility, more respect. More money would have been nice, but money was not the driver.
By this point, she had an office with a door though no window. She liked the door for what it gave her — a closed and quiet space in which to do her work: almost worthy of the quality she produced. Though the lack of window really said it all; the very important and genuinely valued senior ‘players’ had not only doors but also windows. Oh well.
In what turned out to be her final year of employment in that setting, the laying off in January of one hundred employees told the tale of change coming. Never before had so many people lost their jobs in this company, but this woman was part of it — not the losing her job part, but the planning it and the communicating about it.
It was big. It was challenging. It was heartbreaking.
Seeing her colleagues called into an office, not knowing why, then coming out clutching a large white envelope, a stunned look on their face, wandering back to their desk and then out the front door, holding a box with what they could take home.
That was hard to witness.
First up, stock options. A nice way to have been recognized for work well done, but now it was time to figure out when to sell them. That day came late in February. Step one of taking charge of her future executed.
Next up, get serious about finding a master’s program that would enhance her educational credentials and put her in a better position for her next promotion up the corporate ladder. When the woman landed on Royal Roads University, it seemed perfect — a university on the west coast with hybrid programs designed especially for mid-career professionals. This woman fit that bill.
Preparing the application was a good process of reflection and refinement. Update the resume, describe professional strengths, craft a vision for learning, write the personal statement, put it all together and upload it. Done. Then wait.
By this stage, the woman knew she needed to get the ok from her boss, as the program would require an absence of three weeks in October for the first on-site residency. Royal Roads was an innovator in online education, bolstered by on-site learning at the beginning of each of the two years of the master’s program.
The woman was courageous with, though not confident about, her request. It was met with silence from the big boss. When, eventually, he was persuaded to talk to her, he was non-committal. The woman’s spidey senses woke up. She realized that her in-tray was no longer overflowing; her calendar held only sparse entries; and she was no longer being called in to meetings to work with the executive. Her spidey senses were now on high alert. Change had happened suddenly for her 100 colleagues in January, and she knew that she, herself, was not immune to similar change. When she was called to meet the vice-president in his office on Friday, October 1st, she had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen.
When she walked into the office and saw not only the VP there but also the HR woman, she knew her spidey senses had been accurate, and she was grateful to have prepared herself mentally if not emotionally. (Anger simmered for a long time.)
When she walked out of the building’s front door with her own white envelope and box of items to take home, she could not possibly have known that, years later, she would bump into a student in the airport who thanked her for the knowledge she had imparted to him that had helped set him up for a successful career.
No. On that Friday morning, she simply walked out, shocked though not surprised, went home and figured out her next step. Though the corporate ladder had been pulled out from under her, she would stand tall and firm.
First up, sort out the termination agreement and the financial payout. Second, confirm her trip out west to attend the first residency in her master’s program. Third, tell everyone in her network that she was available for new opportunities. The future was open, wide open. It was exciting and terrifying.
The residency on campus was the perfect ramp off her former life and into her new life. She would be a grad student and she would find contract writing and editing work. That would be something before the next bigger something else.
Two years passed and she put not only food but also wine on the family’s table with her contract work. When her friend Lawrence suggested she apply for a fill-in summer teaching contract, she demurred, but then, with his persistent encouragement, submitted her application.
And that is how the woman found herself in a college classroom.
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Read the three successively shorter versions here.
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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.
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