It’s a strange thing, but as I wait to find my next job — after being ushered out the door in the last round of Postmedia layoffs — I find myself as busy as I’ve ever been, dealing with huge long lists of work that still has to be done.
Building a flight of stairs to get the house potentially ready for sale, dealing with rebuilding the exercise routine I let slide while working 70-plus hours a week, writing now on Substack to reach an audience that seems more attuned to what I do than any I’ve dealt with before, and the list just goes on and on.
And in the middle of it, writing a short story collection that I think is important, but that I can’t guarantee will be.
Writing is an odd kind of work.
You do it all like a satellite shot out into space, ensconced in the company of a collection of odd and haphazard Earth-artifacts, hoping to eventually reach an alert and receptive audience of some kind. Somewhere.
You don’t have any contact with the Earth you’ve left, except the straight-line, easily-followed trail you leave behind yourself. Like peanuts left in a line on a park trail, a line being scrambled by something as simple as squirrels.
And you hope that the message you carry — the message you send — will eventually reach some kind of ear.
I picture it the way you get to see a shooting star, if you’re lucky. Lie on your back on cold ground of an early summer night, look up at the purple-white roiling mass of the Milky Way in the true black dark, in a place where you’re surrounded by the uncountable of stars, and let your eyes go big and wide to take in the most possible overarching area.
And then, just for the briefest of moments, you might get to see a thin bright line and focus on it, followed by a sudden bright spark at the end. You can’t help but have a feeling that perhaps you’re the only person to have seen it.
And now that it’s gone, the only person who might ever see it.
It makes you feel oddly, gratifyingly unique. I know — I have felt that way.
Flat on my back on the cold ground in August in Adam’s Cove, holding tight to the hand of the woman I love, while around us, the dew coalesces and falls, and the shooting stars pick us as special witnesses.
Often, I think I’m trying to be that instantaneous spark.
Just for an instant.
I don’t want to take anyone from their day, or from the endless complications of their night.
All I want is to share one small sharp thing, one straight-line connection between two people.
Me, to you.
I know that short story collections are not exactly the gold standard for what’s likely to catch the reading public’s attention, let alone anything broader than that. And what I’m working on is not straightforward.
It’s a sort of trail guide of hurt. And even that doesn’t capture it.
We’ve all experienced violence in our lives, of one kind or another. Big or small, it all has the ability to mark us up in one way or another. Wounds don’t have to be significant to become septic.
But to me, the interesting thing is that it can come so unexpectedly. Sometimes, it’s focussed particularly on you. Other times, it’s unbelievably random, someone taking the wrong turn and the wrong time and changing your entire world forever. Even something as simple as cells inside you deciding to divide in unfortunate ways and knot themselves into a tumour.
As banal, other times, as the failure of an overstressed extension cord in an old house on a winter’s night.
I’ve seen a lot, an awful lot, for a long time now. I can’t make anything better, though my shoulders are used to carrying things for others.
I can tell you one simple thing: you’re not alone. That’s what I’m trying to write. And alone or not, it’s not always easy.
I’ll stop this tonight, put it aside, and look at it again tomorrow.
And if you end up seeing it, you’ll know that I felt comfortable letting it out in the world.
I liked the piece, thank you, I'm so sorry that you were laid off, it totally sucks, but it's their loss, not yours.
I still buy short story books, short story collections and enjoy reading them, too. Right now I'm reading a short story, as a matter of fact, "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes.
It's true, short story collections sell less than novels perhaps, but I encourage you to write it anyway. Many authors started with short stories...
Great one Russell. I can definitely relate to what I think you're trying to say. Lol.
But
But
Laid off? Holy sh*t.