by Katey Schultz
I remember the
day in graduate school when the highly regarded author, who was also my thesis
advisor, looked at the 150 pages of creative nonfiction I had amassed and told
me I’d written “the perfect corpse.” It was the best thing she could have said
to me—a type A, beat-my-head-against-the-wall, determined, writer. I knew
I’d write for the rest of my life. I knew I’d find a way to make a
living as a writer, not a professor. But first, I had to learn a very hard
lesson. I smiled and trembled all at once, humbly accepting my pages back from my thesis advisor. I had six months to find the life in my memoir, and the only
thing I knew was that what I thought worked, didn’t even come close.
Hitting a wall
had never felt so good, because somehow—perhaps it was growing up in a house of
books, perhaps it was a high school English teacher who had made the work of
the writer sound honorable—whether or not I’d keep writing was never at risk. I
knew I was lucky in that regard, and finally, someone was going to help me see
what wasn’t lucky about all that determination I’d been carrying around.
Writing the
perfect corpse looked like this: I followed all the rules. I considered my
balance of scene, summary, and reflection. I applied metaphor and concrete
imagery at the line-level. Whenever possible, I also extended metaphors to
address the broader narrative themes that I thought my essays about
"growing up girl" in America addressed. I read deeply and
passionately, studying a wide spectrum of creative nonfiction.
But through all
my drafts, I’d never questioned the initial entry point into my memories. My
brain often latched onto a story through a startling, frozen, concrete image
locked in my mind’s eye. From there, I had my beginning. The rest was following
the rules—and I had fun, writing both beautiful and not-so-beautiful sentences,
thinking for sure I’d given it my all.
What I didn’t
know at the time was that the initial spark of a memory frozen in my mind’s
eye—that thing I’d become so dependent upon to get the work done—wasn’t always
the best place to begin. Furthermore, the image or memory itself didn’t always
signify the heart of the matter in a literal or direct way; that is, it wasn’t
necessarily the best way to say whatever it was I was actually trying to say.
I could write a
solid scene and stack several solid scenes in a row along a particular theme.
But could I get at the emotional pulse of the predicament I was portraying?
Could I articulate the stakes of the short-lived moments my memory kept telling
me I needed to write about?
I could, but not
through traditional memoir form. I’d written “the perfect corpse,” but it was a
corpse because the writing didn’t have a pulse. The writing didn’t have a pulse
because it wasn’t in the correct…body (to extend the metaphor). The initial
spark of memory that told me to write my scenes and balance things out with
summary and reflection did get me through to that 150 pages—but the
approach came up short in terms of determining the truly correct form for
future drafts. I ran my head into the same wall over and over again, making it
more and more real with each blow, until I’d built it up so high that I mistook
it for absolute. But the form (or body) I needed to tell my stories in wasn’t
even made of walls, so to speak. I needed something entirely fresh; something
that allowed for more pulse than a basic balance of scene, summary, and
reflection could provide.
I needed flash
nonfiction…that tiny, beautiful, little monster in the corner of the room that
I hadn’t even known had a name until push came to shove my 4th and final
semester of graduate school and someone finally suggested I “start writing
short.”
Like magic
words, this advice made that damn wall I’d been running into completely vanish.
The pulse of my stories resided in the moment, there and then gone—as fleeting
as the adolescence I was writing about. I wrote short and my own heart raced.
So did my thesis advisor’s. I never looked back.
Interestingly, I
never published a single piece of flash nonfiction from that final version of
my thesis. But “writing short” hooked me forever, and I’m now known as a flash
fiction author whose debut collection of short stories about the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan helped open multiple sides of the military and civilian
experience to average readers who “didn’t like to read about war.” They like to
read about people, and “writing short,” helped me offer readers digestible
glimpses into the lives of my realistic, fictional characters in ways that I’ve
been told have allowed them to experience the “human side” of war.
Writing short
didn’t prove to be enough, though. I became obsessed with helping others
delight in this fun, magnetic form. It’s both accessible and challenging. It forces
hard skills like word choice, imagery, repetition, and rhythm…but it doesn’t
require 200 pages for a universal payoff. It solidifies a writer’s attention to
scene, in particular, but also heightens a writer’s ability to trust the
reader, omit extraneous details and backstory, and cut to the chase. Today, I
offer a 5-day e-course in flash form writing, a 5-week
online live course in creative flow and flash form writing, and one-on-one
mentorships for writers also drawn to this form. Life is busy. Life
is full. Life is as alive and kicking as ever, and I’ve got the pulse to prove
it.
____________________________________
Katey
Schultz is the author of Flashes of War and editor of three fiction
anthologies. She is also the founder of Maximum
Impact: Precision Courses for Writers, Artists, & Trailblazers,
dedicated to the principle that the right word in the right context, can
change a life. Her novel, set in Afghanistan, is represented by Sobel Weber
Associates.
Purchase Flashes of War from my fave indie bookseller, Malaprop's!
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Visit website: www.kateyschultz.com
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