CommComm #1

Section One: Pages 197-198

So, as I said, this will be an experiment. 

Having worked on this post for a few days now, I have to laugh at the folly of trying to explain how a story gets written. As you will all know, for me, it’s a million small decisions, made for reasons I am not trying to articulate at the time. The process is full of mystery. So, trying to recollect it runs the risk of reducing an ineffable process, and thereby getting it wrong - like having a wonderful love affair and then trying to convey it in a few brisk bullet points.

There’s also the fear that, in yapping about your story, you’ll somehow violate it. I have this feeling when I teach any story, really.

But in this case, here’s how I figure it: I worked on this one in a mode of great intuitive focus for about two years, on and off. It is what it is, sitting there with a million other stories in the Museum of Finished Stories. Like a mummy or a 1922 Packard or Ty Cobb’s actual baseball glove, it doesn’t care if a crowd comes in and starts poking at it while surmising. It’s already done its main work, which was to get finished, and whatever light or amusement or happiness comes off it is going to keep coming off it no matter what.

So…over the next few weeks, I’m going to step through the story a section or two at a time.