Hello friends!
I decided to do a bonus post this month, a holiday gift to anyone curious about this Substack. Also, if you’ve been thinking you’d like to study writing, but lack the bandwidth or time or funds, here’s a free mini writing class.
I teach my students to critique their own drafts by asking themselves, “So what?” The question isn’t meant to be flippant or self-defeating; rather, it’s a way to interrogate the work, to drill down into its center: Why should the reader care about this? What’s in it for the reader? What does it really mean?
A story without meaning is an anecdote.
Summary of an anecdote: I got stuck in traffic.
Summary of a story: Getting stuck in traffic made me confront how stuck I feel in life.
The traffic jam is the surface layer. The feeling of stuckness roils beneath.
To unearth the layers in your own writing, you’ll first want to study successful layering. In A Short Essay on Being, Jenny Boully writes about her relationship with Pad Thai, but really she’s writing about identity. In the iconic Goodbye To All That, Joan Didion writes about her decision to leave New York, but really she’s speaking to a common experience: outgrowing what we once loved. In Fuck The Bread. The Bread Is Over, Sabrina Orah Mark writes about getting passed over for a job, but really she’s exploring an existential question: What matters?
The layer beneath the surface lends an essay its universal resonance; it grabs the reader’s hand, communicating not just “here’s something I went through” but “here’s something we’ve all been through.” The reader might not care about Pad Thai, but because she has pondered her own identity, she’ll care about Pad Thai as a symbol. She might not care about New York, but because she knows the agony of falling out of love, she’ll care about Didion’s journey.
Layers make the reader care.
Here’s a writing prompt: Think about something dramatic that happened to you (triumphing unexpectedly, getting mugged, working as a celebrity assistant). Find the “So what?”
I’ll give you an example from my own life: In 2020, I moved to Texas.
So what?
Well…I had pre-conceived notions of the place that impacted my relationship with it. Once I discovered that there was more to it than I’d assumed, I fell in love.
That’s universally resonant. Not everyone can relate to moving to Texas, or falling in love with Texas, but everyone can relate to misjudging someone or something, and later learning the truth.
Texas can be hard to love. It puffs its chest, won’t be messed with. It insists, to anyone who will listen, that God blesses its immensity. It open-carries, flashes belt buckle, broadcasts crotch. But bravado is merely a stratum. To conceal the fear that we’re hard to love, we all tend toward bluster—or shrinking or fawning. In time, I saw beyond the self-aggrandizing. For every town claiming it’s the Cowboy Capital of The World or the Death Penalty Capital or the birthplace of the hamburger, there’s another town blanketed in blue bonnets, a whole region that identifies as “piney”, the second largest canyon in America, an entire beloved cuisine, a pretend Prada store in the desert, a city whose most important art is splashed across public walls. There’s a town called Uncertain and another called Fate. On Route 66 in Amarillo, the owner of a curio shop I was browsing suddenly remembered he had to run an errand, showed me where the guns were, and told me to watch the store. Texas is complicated and funny and surprising. I love the characters, the tension, the sky.
To find your “So what?”, ask yourself, “What else was going on in my life back then?”
Example:
Years ago, I got hit by a car in Seattle.
Ok, so what?
Simultaneously, my marriage was failing.
That’s the layering Christine Hyung-Oak Lee employs in her essay Date and Time of Loss. She makes meaning of her near-death experience by connecting it to her husband’s betrayal.
What else was going on in my life as I fell in love with Texas?
A global pandemic, for one. Loneliness, for another.
I loved a man who would read his phone screen while I talked.
I could have left anytime. He certainly wouldn’t have stood in my path. And yet. Nothing makes me feel more trapped than loving someone who doesn’t love me.
Do you know the difference betweeen a maze and a labyrinth? The goal in a maze is to get out. The goal in a labyrinth is to reach the center. I was in a maze, convinced I was in a labyrinth. I grew hyper-focused on reaching his center.
I took long walks through the streets of Austin, my thoughts racing. I fantasized about the perfect thing I could say or do to open his heart. I imagined the unlocking, the relief, the rest. I walked in ankle weights, which sounds like a metaphor. The memory of the Velcro sound makes me cringe.
On one of my walks, I stood before a picture window as a dog inside leapt to hind legs, pressed his paws to the glass. He was so cute and he wanted to love me. I took his picture. Later, in the image, I saw only my reflection. In real life, I’d seen only him.
Unrequited love is a kind of narcissism, but it’s also the opposite—a shedding of self. For a year, I spent my energy pressing walls, feeling for soft spots.
I took Covid-safe road trips to keep my foot in the world of travel writing. My boyfriend was often the driver. When he wasn’t driving, he worked a lot. I took in the landscape—the Spanish moss draping Lake Caddo, the infinite sky of West Texas. The soft spots were here, outside, in the world. I glimpsed a life beyond quarantine, beyond him.
And one day, the walls of the maze came down and I drove and drove and drove through Texas. So much beauty I’d once overlooked.
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Twenty years ago—another big move: I knew nothing about Montana, but I was going to study writing there. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I drove from Colorado. The sky widened. The mountains grew. Beside the highway, antelope dotted the plains, but I didn’t know it. When you’re not from Montana, your eye doesn’t scan your surroundings for antelope, but spot them once and you’ll never stop looking, see one antelope and you’ll never stop seeing.
Until 2022,
Diana
I get so excited when I see Dispatches in my mail. This inspired me. I wrote an essay (with layers) in my mind. Now I have to write it.
So great to read your writing, and thanks especially for the link to the essay about the car wreck-slash-betrayal.