Summer 2010, I began another leg of my journey to become a fiction writer. I attended my first workshop ever, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.
After I was accepted, I read the work of all of that year’s fiction instructors. The stories by Nancy Zafris deeply resonated. When I asked be included in her section, I was warned that I should be prepared to work hard, that she was tough.
Kenyon is a generative workshop: you write to prompts, each morning blearily workshopping new work. That first day I was terrified. Not so much because of Nancy’s intensity, which she leavened with healthy dollops of dry humor, but because I didn’t even know what a prompt was.
Read about my experience that summer at this 49 Writers blog post.
Mention The Fish to any of Nancy’s students and you’ll illicit a smile. It’s her concept of the interplay between “top” story (sequenced actions) and “bottom or back” story (character aspiration and impediment).
A rite of passage for all her students is the Postcard Story. In five short sections, each representing a postcard to the same addressee, we had to reveal our bottom story as it slowly overtook the action.
As an example, I offer my Postcard Story from my final workshop with Nancy, the summer I was her fellow. I hope it will give you an idea how the interplay between top and bottom story can work.
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LETTERS FROM HIS WIFE REGARDING THE PROGRESS OF HER ENLIGHTENMENT
1.
How are the girls? How do you like schlepping them around for a change? Here it’s no picnic either. Bells, service, work period, tea ceremonies. Meditation ten times a day. The head monk is like that gruff ballet master who lived off Marlboros and Diet Coke. The one who would inch her lit cigarette close to my thigh to urge me deeper into the plié. At our first private interview, the monk says I’m a couple steps ahead of myself. Like being halfway out the door while reaching for the keys.
I trust you’re keeping an eye out on Crissy’s boyfriend. Remember how you were at that age. By the way, thanks for sending me off with flowers. I hate chrysanthemums, as you know—too ordinary—but it was a lovely gesture.
All in all: excellent progress! You’ll be glad to know, I haven’t blown up at a single person. There’s another bell. Got to go. Love to the girls.
2.
This is the first I’ve felt like writing you back. I know. Sounds harsh, but the senior monk suggested we sit with our attachments and not act. It seems to be working. We meditated for six days straight, the pain worse than being en pointe. The fifth day—it’s hard to explain—it was like the pain wasn’t me. I used to feel this kind of exhilaration at the end of a long day taking ballet class. That time in Brooklyn before we married keeps coming up; the walk-in closet we rented at that dumpy apartment! Impossible to believe we lived that way, that we had so much potential.
Already someone here quit. On the cushion next to mine in the meditation hall, she left a single flower. A chrysanthemum. This is crazy, but it felt like she was playing some kind of fuck-you joke on me. I hid the mum in the sleeve of my robe and threw it away first chance I got. I’ll write when I can. Forgive me in advance if I’m a laggard.
3.
Why did I think the senior monk was reprimanding me yesterday when he placed another mum on the empty seat next to mine? Why did I hide in my room for the rest of the day and say I was sick? Do you know how much it bugs me when you say y
ou don’t mind me getting angry, just me running away? Why have I never told you I failed my Joffrey audition? Why don’t you paint anymore? Shouldn’t I be calming down by now?
4.
I blew up at the question-and-answer ceremony yesterday. I was really yelling at you. Not that I don’t appreciate the things you do for me. Your many kindnesses. It’s just…we had such purpose, before the girls, your job. I shouted in the senior monk’s face, “Why do I want to hurt everyone I love?” The students looked at me in horror, like they’d seen a fatality on the side of the road. The senior monk put his hands together, bowed deeply and said, “There is no place the Buddha is not.” I told him to go fuck himself.
5.
Sorry I made you feel so low. I’m low too, thin, like a blade of grass when you hold it to the sun. At fifth period yesterday, I felt the ghost of your hand on the small of my back. That’s the first soft feeling I’ve had in weeks. I brought chrysanthemums from the garden to the missing woman’s seat. Made a small shrine to her failure: incense holder, candle. Not allowed, really, but the senior monk let me anyway. Wherever she is, she’s Buddha. That’s small consolation, but failure’s the only thing I have to hold on to. I can’t promise you when I’ll be back exactly, or that I won’t get mad, but when I do, try not to be so nice to me.
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Originally published in 2015 in Issue 6 of Jelly Bucket and cross-posted at the 49 Writers blog.
For another story generated from one of Nancy’s multi-part prompts, read “The Go-Between,” in Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry (The University of Alaska Press, 2016).