The Rule of Two
My new job, like all my old jobs, involves event planning; morale boosting; memory making; opportunities for connections making.
I had this idea to host a solstice soirée and turn out the lights and hold a candle under my chin and share the ghost story my dad used to tell us around the campfire, about the water ghost of the sad drowned girl who appeared every New Year’s Eve, and how she wrecked parties by making the wallpaper peel and the carpets squishy and everything smell like swamp, and how the young owner of the house, tired of having his parties wrecked, eventually bundled up with a scarf and a wool hat and persuaded her to walk outside by the lake and then refused to return to the warmth of his home as she begged and plead and then finally froze, becoming a ghost ice-sculpture, and then he stored her in a powerful freezer forever and started hosting New Year’s Eve’s parties again that everyone loved and travelled far and wide to attend.
It was the first ghost story I told my daughter, when she was young, and needed to be pushed on swings, and the first lesson she gave me on being wary of what stories I share, because you never knew which one she would request again and again and again and some stories maybe aren’t playground appropriate.
Do you know the story telling trick - that if you mention something twice, you create unresolved tension? We’re used to a list of threes being complete, but that’s for essays. For fiction, it’s better to say “dark and stormy” than “dark and stormy and cold.”
This holiday season was particularly horrible for my family and if that’s all I say about it, most of the time, your readers will imagine something much worse than what you meant. Plus, you avoid the trap of suffering comparisons, which always feels obscene, what kind of person wants to win that contest? (Sadly, usually, based on how frequent get togethers with people you haven’t seen in a while turn dark - almost all of us). I once told my aunt that I had trouble sleeping. She asked if I worried I would lose my job, like she did. Her sister asked if she worried that a rapist would crawl through her window again, like what happened to her. I said, I think it’s just because I’m drinking too much coffee. Because, how could you respond? Sure, there’s words, but eventually all that talk only confirms that each of us by virtue of our own unshared experiences, can never really know or be known by another.
Honestly, I feel filthy confessing these feelings. I must be wrong. Are we all really that isolated from one another? We all love hot showers, don’t we? Milk duds during movies? Listening to the Cure’s Disintegration on repeat when sad or happy or neither?
Another idea I had for an event was to do a taste test of all the Belgian beer at the local beer store, because I forgot if I liked Maredsous better than Chimay and didn’t want to drink alone. Now? I’m no longer in the mood to drink at all. In fact, if I can, I’m going to give up drinking completely, become that lone teetotaler again that all my friends mistake for a priest.
I got this story idea about a year ago, following the original Wolfman movie, that werewolf stories should be ‘how far will dad go to save his son?’ parables. A son being the repetition with variation of his mom and dad. Repetition with variation being another story-telling trick we all know.
At the end of last year, I wrote a post of all the stories I had written since I began writing in earnest again. I added the word counts up and shared the total, which was impressive if you weren’t writing, but rather embarrassing if you were.
I remember when I got to college on my leadership scholarship and sat at the banquet for all of us scholarshipees, how proud I was to say I had been Senior Class President. The girl beside me, she was Class President, too, and also Volley Ball Captain and Yearbook Editor. The guy across from us, he too, was Class President and also Lacrosse Captain and Homecoming King and had started a nonprofit to fund well-digging in Africa. Beside me, yes, another Class President, Free Tibet Concert organizer, and Olympic Gymnast.
Really, I’ve learned the only contests you can win are the ones you make for yourself. Did you beat your high-score for minutes spent with your kids without checking your phone? Did your kids eat more healthy planned meals this week than take-out ordered? Did you quit crying in the shower before the hot water ran out?
This year I mostly continued writing a story a month. But since moving and restarting professional work last September, I’ve only written two complete short stories and the start of an unfinished novella!! That’s 30,000 words at most. I have so many unfinished works in progress.
For example, last year this time, I meant to write a quick and dirty Christmas slasher flash fiction and a sweet ‘son comes home to adoring mom, the only one who recognizes how great he is’ tale; two stories I hoped to pair on either side of a Christmas card as a kind of writerly “naughty or nice” story sharing gift. Currently both ideas are unwritten, unfinished, languishing in outline stage.
Recently, I’ve begun reading
’s Substack and I really like his advice to protect your reading time, that to be a good writer you must be a good reader.Yet… there’s a lot of novels I’ve started and failed to finish. For example, for months I have been only three chapters in Not Forever But For Now,
’s latest novel, which I hear has an afterward that reveals the whole preceding story is actually a metaphor about addiction, written for everyone who has suffered the pain of addiction and for those close to them. That was going to be the big reveal at the end of my werewolf father/son story!I’ve found that some themes you can’t resist revisiting. Monsters as metaphors for our own wicked impulses? That’s one of mine. Hell, isn’t it all of ours?
Looking back, I’m glad I decided not to host a solstice ghost story party. I'm too new and it’s too weird, I reasoned, and as events unveiled, I haven’t felt particularly jolly all this holiday.
A few days before Christmas, we attended a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer’s potluck, the first of hopefully many to come. The hostess’ daughter had red splotches on her hands and around her mouth and we assumed she must have had an allergic reaction to something. Now my boys got Hand Foot and Mouth disease, which sounds and looks worse than it is: mild fevers, lack of appetite, gross looking dots on hands. Grandma is visiting, so she’s getting lots of cuddles. But we aren’t sight-seeing while she’s here and are avoiding playgrounds.
“Oh no!” my colleagues said when they heard.
“There are worse things,” I answered.
I’m going to go make myself an espresso now, with steamed oat milk and chocolate sauce, and crushed candy cane sprinkled on top. We all love that, right? It’s our favorite holiday drink? Then I’m going to open the box of sugar cookies in the shapes of camels that I bought at the mall under the mosque. Those are the best, right?
My kids love them, at least. My little repetitions with variation. I should enjoy our shared pleasures while I can.
And as I was wondering how to finish this post, my son came in and asked to play catch. He sat on my bed and threw his raccoon at me, and every time it missed my catch and slid across the floor, he burst out in joyous laughter. He began throwing short just to hear me groan as his raccoon slipped out of my fingers. He laughed and laughed and laughed. My boy, like all boys, like all kids everywhere, has a beautiful laugh. He laughed so much I started to cry.
I’ve been hugging them every chance I can this winter break. So many cuddles and kisses and prayers they grow older than me.
And as for story tricks? I’m still trying to accept that some stories take years to write and some stories you can never finish.
We were sick this Christmas, too. And it’s been a hard one in more ways than that.
I think you’re right that we can never really know or be known by one another, but I also think you’re wrong. It’s something that swings in and out of being true, like a pendulum, based mostly on the tenor of our mood.
Whether you know it (or feel it, or believe it) or not, writing and sharing stuff like this connects us to that knowing.
Hi Wil.
I felt all of this with you in the limited way I could from my place of not really knowing. But I sort of know. I've had a weird year behind-the-scenes. At times it has been very dark and even as I write this comment, I'm getting emotional because such a huge part of me wants to write about all of it but a bigger part of me knows I'm too afraid to do that. Or not skilled enough to do it well. And it's MY shit we're talking about. I mean, who can write it better than ME? But doubt is a "MOFO", and fear is a "B", and I have scores of unfinished works, some of them only titles and first lines, sitting on my computer, in notebooks, and rattling around in my brain. I get that part big time. I'm not producing new fiction the way I was a year ago. The drive is dwindling, along with the confidence. And there are pressures now that weren't there before that I'm trying, with some difficulty, to remove.
I've just started reading novels again, and that feels good. BTW, you're allowed to skip ahead to the afterward in Chuck's book. There are no rules about how you consume a work of literature and I think C.P. would tell you the same thing. Skip ahead, skip around. Accept that not every story is going to pull us in and carry us through kicking and screaming in that way we want it to. And it's okay to put it down and try another.
Here's something fun for you - because I never got around to writing about the new tradition my family invented this Christmas. Because... life. It's not holiday specific, so feel free to play it anytime with your wife and kids. Or co-workers!
It's called Secret Sandwich.
It works much like Secret Santa in that each member of the group draws the name of another group member and keeps it to themselves. A capable person (adult) goes out and purchases all the necessary sandwich making accouterments: bread, deli meats, cheeses, pickles, condiments, toppings, etc. and sets them out, assembly line style shortly before mealtime. The participants must gather in a separate room and one at a time, they can enter the sandwich area, put together a sandwich for their recipient, and deliver it to a common eating area for display and eventual adjudication and consumption.
We played it "nice" so the goal was to make a "good" sandwich we knew our person would want to eat based on what we already knew about their sandwich preferences. But you could certainly play it "naughty" by making gross out sandwiches. That's up to you. 😉
Once all the sandwiches are made, the group convenes in the common area and attempts to guess A) which sandwich is meant for them and B) which person made it for them. In the end, everyone wins, because SANDWICHES. We also left time for constructive critiques of our sandwiches so that next round we'd all know a little bit more about each other and what we like.
There are countless ways this game could be adjusted to incorporate other foods. Secret smoothie. Secret Salad. Secret Sundae. Secret Omelet. Secret Sushi.
If you play it with your lovies, let me know how it goes. 🥪
And I won't tell you not to fret about your writing stuff, cuz it's your right to fret as much as you want. And I personally hate it when people tell me not to fret.
I know I've officially written more in this comment than I have on my year-end or year-begin post (which I technically haven't started and may not bother starting at all.) I'm happy the words are here for you. Even if you're the only one who reads them.
Knowingly,
Meg O.