February 3rd, 2020 - Things We Worried About When I Was Ten

Dear TNY,

“Things We Worried About When I Was Ten” is not your usual fare.

That being said, it didn’t break my heart.  This type of story is reminiscent of shorts from 30 or 40 years ago.  It’s not minimalist, though.  Just, it’s got the traditional Americana storytelling vibe.  I don’t actually have that much to say about it.  The narrative was clean.  Although there were a million characters, the author made it apparent which ones I needed to know more about and which I did not.  Although the story was pushing 7k words, I didn’t find it burdensome. It was…this was the kind of story you’d read in an MFA program from a fellow student, and you wouldn’t be mad at them for wasting your time, but you also wouldn’t be excited about them as a writer.

I did like that he called the one woman who was naked…pudding. That’s, man I get it. So good.

The best way I can describe where this story fails is through comparison with “Tenth of December”.  Both stories leverage a younger voice and explore a coming of age trope.  But Tenth breaks your fucking heart.  I wasn’t even close to that level of connection with TWWAWIWT.  Actually, there’s a guy out there named Richard Chiappone and he wrote a story called “Water of An Undetermined Depth”.  I would say that’s an even closer fit to this story, but it provides aforementioned heartbreak.

Caveat to all of this is that if I knew how to break hearts, wouldn’t I be doing that?  It’s all hope, right?  When writers like Saunders sit down to write (and I know this is true because he and I talked about it), the words are coming out and the writer tries to get out of the way.  The writer should never know where it’s going.  So it’s a numbers game, at best.  Do you best, write often, remove yourself from the story and watch it’s natural progression, and hope that one of the things you write in your life breaks hearts.

Also, I do know how it works, the heartbreak.  I did my thesis on it.  But, even still, it cannot be forced or manufactured.  It’s still just hope that one day you’ll get it by luck.

Later.

Nick