Jill Malone

We tell ourselves stories. Stories of our own achievement, of our limitations, of our potential. Stories to keep the monsters in the shadows on the walk home at night. Stories of love and devotion, stories of the winner in a particular argument, stories of our parents’ betrayal, stories of our cowardice. I’m too inexperienced. I’m too old. I’m not ready. I’m not good enough. We have myths of a garden, of spring, of a flood, of harvest and death. We have myths for the birds and horses, for snakes and spiders. We have myths for ourselves, a past of heartache and disappointment, or acclaim long forgotten. 

The stir of it—of story—is everywhere. Pregnancy and physiology exams, grant awards and experimentations in the second person. It’s a time of incongruity: Percy Jackson, modern demigod, grappling with a Cyclops on an island off the coast of Florida; the crew of the spaceship Serenity, 500 years in the future, riding horses on an outpost planet.

The past, lifting you in its weary arms, and trudging forward, whispering a tale of what is to come.

This month on the New Yorker podcast, A.M. Homes reads The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Homes calls Jackson’s piece an iconic American story. Why American? Because the writer’s American? Because the work is read prevalently in America? 

I read The Lottery in junior high, high school, and college. Like Wuthering Heights, it was part of the curriculum of each new school. Unlike Wuthering Heights—a pubescent, overblown work—I’ve always found The Lottery deeply unsettling. And hearing Homes read it, I found it particularly creepy. In spite of the fact that I know how it will end, what each masterful detail builds to, in spite of that, I hear it in a new way each time. As a teenager, the rage and hypocrisy were the most striking elements. In the story I saw the dangerous girls in the hallways, the ones who yanked out chunks of one another’s hair, or tore skin from each other’s faces in fights it took several boys to break up. I saw every church my dad had ever pastored. The twisted lies of inclusiveness and neighbors.

Now I’m struck by the use of the word “village” and the youngest son being given a handful of pebbles so that he, too, can participate in the ritual. But why American? It’s a human story, surely. And when I was a teenager, I saw each of us in it: Romans, conquistadors, Puritans, townships and community centers, every sailor who screwed a Tahitian woman in exchange for a nail.

I hope to be other, but I know better. There is no other. Only this. A black box with scraps of paper. A drawing. An army of boys with machetes. Another rape camp. Female circumcision. Rituals we call archaic, but allow to be perpetuated.

There is no other. As a kid, I had nothing but conviction that I would never participate in such brutality. Never join. 

On the trail as I listened to Homes read the story, I found myself thinking, improbably, of high school basketball. The coach who made us run suicides on the court for an hour, and then, when two of the girls fell and stayed down, she let us drink water, walk for three minutes, and then sent us around the court for another hour. The last girl having to race to the front of the line lap after lap. How, at sixteen, I hated that woman. Cursed her under my breath at practice, and loudly anywhere else. How we despised the weak ones among us, who couldn’t keep up, who made mistakes that drew out the laps. How we all returned, day after day, for every brutal four-hour session. How we took it as discipline, as purposeful hardship, as a team.

Val McDermid said that characters don’t tell stories, writers do. And, of course, this is true. The characters are a writer’s creation, after all. But, my impulse to bicker with this statement comes from a difference in writer brain. I’m going to divide writers neatly into two categories: those who write to plot/structure, and those whose work is character-driven. McDermid, a mystery writer of intricate, layered plots, is the first. I’m the second. Is there overlap? Of course. Mysteries don’t matter if you’re not interested in the character, and character-stories die without a good plot. I’m simplifying matters to get to my point.

My point: my characters surprise me. They’re mine, I invented them, they are a product of my imagination, but they surprise me. During the re-write, one of my characters relayed a memory that startled me. I just sat there, staring at the monitor, re-reading her confession. I typed it, and so it came from my brain, but still, I wasn’t conscious of it. I didn’t deliberately set out to relay this memory. I’ll be sweeping, or booking bank statements or walking the dogs when I hear a conversation between two of them. That’s how it feels, like eavesdropping, like they have lives beyond what I have created for them. And isn’t that art? Shouldn’t the creation exist beyond the scope of the creator? Even, perhaps, from its inception. 

A couple of years ago, I had an idea I was excited about, and a character with a fascinating back story, and tension, and conflict, etc. I sat down to write her and she just wanted to sit in her living room reading magazines and smoking. It took weeks before I gave up on her. She wouldn’t budge. 

For me, writing is less like being god, and more like being mom. I hope the best for you, I nurture and love you. But, in the end, your choices are as important as mine are.