The Anatomy of a Story

Being raised by artists isn't always easy. Especially when they are really right all the stinking time.

My fiction MFA sample was done. Done as in DONE, slap a stamp on it done. It's already in some crazy esoteric prof's cold and soft fingers done. I gotta be honest: I wasn't worried at all. "I GOT this," I said, lulling myself to sleep this morning at 2. I felt really good about it. 

But tonight, when I offered my story up to my father, with his paint-stained hand, his spackle-bedazzled flannel and his opened sudoku book, I was nervous. And I had every reason to be. 

My father, much like John Wayne, has two facial expressions. John Wayne could play a character two ways: Hat on or hat off. My father reads my work wearing one of two faces: The first is eyebrows dancing and eyes laughing and his nose twitches ever so subtly. The other is head down, eyebrows wrinkled, mustache crumpled. There is always a pencil in his hand when he reads like this. 

Tonight, I received the furrowed reading. 

Shituh. 

When he's done reading like this, he looks at me like what he is about to say will hurt. I'm sure it's a shared sensation. 

"It's okay. The writing is nice, but it doesn't mean anything. What's the point?" 

Sunuhva. 

When you write, most say "write the bones." Write the outline. But that's not enough. Your story needs tendons and ligaments and muscle and flesh. And feet. 

I had forgotten the feet. 

I had forgotten the universal truth--the sole (sorry for the stupid pun) purpose for writing or reading a story. It grounds the entire piece so that it culminates in an "aha!" moment where shit all gets tied together. It's where the reader's heart gets tangled up in our story. In the reader's mind they are running naked through the streets shouting "eureka!!" The meaning sings to you. 

Yes, friends, the feet sing. 

This is not my first footless rodeo. In college, I'd write these lovely little vignettes for my writing instructors. One had a chronic problem where every time I'd see him he'd ask, "but what does this mean? What are you saying?"  

I felt voiceless in my professor's office. How can you be a writer if you have nothing to say? 

That same sensation washed across me today in front of my father. I tried not to let my disappointment show.

I took it like a man--a man that hasn't slept in days and has a tummy ache and a hangnail. 

So, I'm starting back at the beginning,or rather, the ground. Starting at zero words after a month of wrangling all the wrong ones. Starting at the feet and working into bones and flesh and pulsing veins and voluptuous thighs and big pouty lips. 

Here's to beginnings. Again and again.