My pin-striped Brooks Brothers pajamas, so Dagwood Bumstead from the Blondie comic strip, I wore those for two years of touring with fellow writers Chelsea Cain, Monica Drake, and Lidia Yuknavitch doing our evening of “Adult Bedtime Stories.” At the Ritz-Carlton in Houston and the Four Seasons in Baltimore, we’d drink in the hotel bar after each show, me in my snazzy pajamas and the women in gauzy negligees trimmed with hazy egret feathers. Our chests glittered with huge rhinestone brooches I’d found in Wichita, in an antiques store run by two ninety-year-old drag queens who were aging out of the drag queen business. Lidia and Monica and Chelsea wore retired drag queen necklaces that fanned as wide as peacock tails. At The Peninsula in Chicago, a diamond-studded and tuxedoed elderly couple, fresh from the opera, stood and glared. Loud, for our benefit and for the entire bar to savor, the man declared, “That is not appropriate attire for The Peninsula!”
If you were my student I’d tell you about the first writing exercise Tom Spanbauer typically assigned his writers. He’d tell them, “Write about something you can hardly remember.” They’d start with a scent. A taste. One tangible physical detail would elicit another. It was as if their bodies were recording devices far more effective than their minds.
To repeat: Your body is a recording device more effective than your mind.
After I recognized the magic of the fitting room, it seemed less powerful. The tailor went back to being a guy with a cloth tape measure looped over his shoulders. From here my brain took over. The reason I’d always avoided buying clothes, even after I could afford to shop at places like Brooks Brothers and Barneys, was because it felt like an insult to wear anything nicer than what our mother could sew. Late nights, she’d baste and hem, calling a kid upstairs to test the size of a waistband. But despite her efforts—one night she fainted from heatstroke and our father found her sprawled between the ironing board and the Singer sewing machine—our clothes looked homemade. The fabric had been on sale because it was garish. The buttons had been recycled from a wedding gown or whatever. But to wear anything nicer we risked hurting her feelings.
So my clothes, even after my success, came from thrift stores.
So did my language. Store-bought clothes and ten-dollar words felt pretentious and show-offy so we bought what we could find secondhand, my siblings and I, and we talked about the weather.
And realizing that autopilot tendency set me free. My mother was dead. I could dress up a little. My ideas could grow because my vocabulary could.
So if you were my student, I’d tell you to listen to your body as you write. Take note how your hand knows how much coffee is left by the weight of the cup. Tell your stories not simply through your readers’ eyes and minds, but through their skin, their noses, their guts, the bottoms of their feet. Authority: Hew to Your Archetype
Chelsea Cain and I both have huge suitcases we only use for long book tours. When I’d retrieve mine from storage the sight of it would make my dogs begin to cry. Chelsea’s dogs, as she opened the suitcase across a bed and began to pack it, her dogs would climb into it and fall asleep among her folded clothes.
This prompted a story idea. In so many families a parent is compelled to make long work-related trips…so, what about a story where the family cat climbed into the suitcase? The departing traveler boarded an overnight flight to Europe, and when he landed he found a text or voicemail from his spouse saying the cat was missing. Dread mounts. He gets to his hotel and can’t bring himself to open the suitcase. Most likely, the beloved cat is inside. He doesn’t want to find out if it’s alive or dead.
The story resonated with me because it demonstrates the philosophical paradox of Schrödinger’s cat. Look it up.
The cat story could be the entire story—ending with the man weeping beside a locked suitcase. Or pressing his ear to the side. Or forlornly petting the side of the suitcase. Or, being merciful, he finds the dead cat and phones his wife to say the cat’s not there therefore it must be in the home, still. Or…?
Or the cat isn’t a cat. Their toddler loves her daddy so much that she climbs into the suitcase. The man is oblivious and disconnected while flying to Europe. In London he’s met by the police who demand to look in his suitcase. Or he finds a frantic voicemail from his wife—their child is missing.
Whether it’s a cat or a baby inside the suitcase, whether it’s dead or alive, the story is still a depiction of the Schrödinger’s cat paradox. That’s the archetype. And that’s why readers will readily engage with it.
The lesson is: if you can identify the archetype your story depicts, you can more effectively fulfill the unconscious expectations of the reader.
In the story “Phoenix,” I create the circumstance where a mother demands a father hurt their child to prove his love for her. She’s away on a business trip and their daughter refuses to speak to her over the phone. Fearing the child is actually dead, she demands her husband hurt the girl because a cry of pain would prove the girl is still alive. Ludicrous and horrible as it sounds, the story works because it’s a retelling of the story of Isaac and Abraham from
