Reading 

• “Rebecca” by Marya Hornbacher
• “Jump” by Lia Purpura
• “Hateful Things” by Sei Shonagon
• “I Re-Watched Titanic So You Don’t Have To. You’re Welcome.” By Lindy West 

Discussion

The writer’s job is not to force the reader into feeling a certain way about a piece of writing, but instead should aim towards providing the reader a chance to have her own reaction. There is never a correct emotional response to any piece of writing. What the reader needs is not to be told how to feel about a certain event or character but to be able to have a feeling about it, regardless of the author’s intentions. The key here is to get the reader emotionally involved with a text, which can only happen if you give her the space to consider the story and the language used to tell it. 

When you edit a piece of your writing or read someone else’s writing, start recognizing how you feel towards each scene. Where do you get bored? Where do you start laughing? Where do you get confused? Where do you feel on edge? Where do you feel safe? Where do you feel a connection to the narrator? By constantly being aware of your emotional reaction to a piece of writing you will be able to recognize how and when the tone and feel of a piece succeeds, and when it starts to stumble, as well. 

Aside from the many different word choices an author can use in order to set the tone for a piece that will keep the reader reading, there are also a variety of sentence structures that can help to do this. Through the technical aspects of writing (sentence structure, punctuation, description, tense, point of view, etc) the author’s voice and established tone can be fully developed. Short sentences for serious statements. Run on sentences for an extended emotional description. Sentences with many commas to make that easy, flowing sort of a feel. A paragraph with a different structure for each sentence can create a sense of confusion or indecisiveness. Past tense can be reflective while present tense can feel urgent. First person for vulnerability, or perhaps third person for an empowering, “communal” feel. There are thousands of ways in which tone can be set through the actual structure of a sentence and word choice, too. What all of this creates is a reader who connects with the text.

 

Sometimes tone can be creepy, too.

 

Questions 

1. What sort of tone do you think Hornbacher conveys in “Rebecca?” What word choices did Hornbacher make in order to set this tone? Are there any turns of phrases or transitions that urge you to continue to read? Why or why not? 

2. In what ways does Purpura use the setting, the landscape, the actual location of a scene as a way to compliment and emphasize the overall feel? What was your reaction to the piece while you read it? What “feel” did you get from it? 

3. As Sei Shonagon describes more of those “hateful things,” how does her tone and approach to these things shift? At which points in the essay are you unsure if she is being sarcastic or judgmental? And does this matter? Finally, how would you describe Shonagon’s tone, as well as the word choices she uses in order to create this specific tone? 

4. In what ways does Lindy West’s biting article about the Titanic mirror Shonagon’s craft techniques? In what ways do they differ? As a reader, did either of these essays feel more accessible/welcoming of the reader than the other? 

 

Writing Exercises

1. Find a picture that is symbolic for a big event in your life. Looking at the picture, describe its importance to your life, what was going on that day, who was in your life at the time, and what you were thinking that day about what the future would hold for you. Write all of these things down for 10 minutes, but write in the second person. 

2. Think of a place that holds a lot of meaning for you. Is it a place where you cried or one where you felt safe? Use your emotional response to this place in order to set the tone of the landscape. Use the actual description of the setting instead of reflections on how you feel about that place when you write about it. 

3. Write about what happened to you yesterday for 20 minutes. For the first 10 minutes use run-on sentences. For the second 10 minutes tell the exact some story but use very short sentences. Compare these two pieces of writing. Does the tone change? Which one feels more urgent? Was your word choice different? 

4. For ten minutes, make your own list of hateful things. Allow yourself to have a bit of an attitude as you compose this in-depth list. Also, let your thoughts jump around, and just follow along. Give yourself some unrestricted space within your mind to explore. 

 

Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola University Chicago and MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop program. She has been published in The Rumpus, Atticus Review, and The Nervous Breakdown among many others. She is an award-winning and Pushcart Prize nominated essayist. 

 

 

 

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 Readings

• “The Empathy Exams” by Leslie Jamison
• “Torch Song” by Charles Bowden

Discussion

There are many ways in which we understand ourselves as people living in this world. We can see who we are in relation to social constructions of how people should act, through a challenging personal experience, and even through the relationships we have with other people. All of these factors create our identities, create who it is we think we are. Once we are able to identify these parts of ourselves, we can then begin to write about them.

Actually, I take that back. It doesn’t have to be experience funneled into writing. Because sometimes it is the writing that opens up our perceptions of not only the people in our live, but—and perhaps most importantly—ourselves. It’s not just what we write about that helps to understand and reveal any character or narrator in any piece of writing, but it is how we do this. A story about a wonderful bath you took can be very enlightening if the reader is able to really hear the your thoughts, but at some point the you have to get out of the bathtub. This is when the narrative can really start to build.

The beginning of an essay sets up what the theme(s) and topic(s) will be in the rest of the piece. Beginnings are vital, then, as they are the first images the reader sees and experiences. These are the ideas and images that stick with the reader throughout the piece. So, if you put a gun in the opening scene, then by the end of the piece, the gun has to go off (or miss-fire or back-fire or fall or growl or do something other than just sit there or else the reader will feel like she’s been keeping her eye on a dead ant while some fantastic essay has been going on around her). Use the beginning as a sort of nudge into the essay. Or, and this option can make just as an important impression as subtlety, shove the reader into the story, make her feel like she is right there, experiencing the events along with the narrator. And then guide her through it. Regardless if the beginning is loud or subtle, it must eventually lead to an ending, and that ending has to eventually (whether directly or not) say something about the beginning. 

Shall we begin?

Questions

1. In “Torch Song,” Charles Bowden starts with the narrator deciding to cross a border to enter into a new world, and ends with a sense of being an outcast. What occurs between those two scenes are a series of reflections, detailed explanations. Bowden does this by connecting past stories with the overall arc of the essay. What are some of the key moments in the essay that incite the overall shift in the narrator’s characterization?
2. As part of the shift the narrator progresses through, what are some examples of the events in this piece that make that shift happen? Does the plot stand on its own, or do the emotional aspects of the piece bolster the significance of the events? Why or why not?
3. In “The Empathy Exams,” Leslie Jamison also begins with a very vivid story that is drawn upon in various places throughout the essay. How does entering into the essay through a scene about the empathy exams function as a way to move the narrative along?
4. Jamison juxtaposes brief “case notes” with the actual narrative of the essay. What purpose does this serve? How does the juxtaposition influence the rest of the essay? And what why do you think she decided to put these “note” in the second person point of view? 

Writing Exercises

1. Take three events from three different time periods in your life. Write for 10 minutes and bring an element of/moment in each event into the story. How do you shift from one element to the next? Do you see that these elements relate to each other now? 
2. Describe someone in your life who you know fairly well. Don’t focus on what the person looks like, but what type of person she is. Use these details to compare what your personality is like in relation to this other person. 
3. Think about how you connect with other people or how you act in a social situation. Now imagine that you are in social situation and describe how you feel while at it. Don’t, however, write a reflective narrative, but write the exercise in present tense from the first person point of view. 
4. Describe a situation in which you needed (or still need) to forgive yourself. Make every other sentence a question. 

 

Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola University Chicago and MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop program. She has been published in The Rumpus, Atticus Review, and The Nervous Breakdown among many others. She is an award-winning and Pushcart Prize nominated essayist.

 

Readings

• “Playing with Form” by Brenda Miller
• “Time and Distance Overcome” by Eula Biss
• “Why Some Hybrids Work and Others Don’t” by Lia Purpura
• “Department of Homeland Security Traveler Inquiry Form | I Was Denied Boarding for Carrying a Breast Pump, Check” by Mickey Darr Shae
• “An Index for Bi the Book: How to become Bisexual In Less than a Month” by Chelsey Clammer 

Discussion

Oh, lyric essays! How I love thee! Seriously. The lyric essay can be very freeing.

Or not.

Hermit crab essays, found essays, and acrostic essays all contain within them a certain form that the writer must work with in order to make the writing, well, work. The forms and “rules” can help to guide us in our thoughts, or perhaps even push us into trying to figure out our unknowns in different ways. All of that said, lyric essays might at times feel confining. Towards the end of the “Playing with Form” chapter, Miller comments that the wide variety of other forms/structures of writing allow us to find just the right structure that can fit our lyric essay. Of the different forms she says, “all these speak with recognizable voices that might work as the right container for your elusive material” (117). But how do we know if we have found the right container?

Sounds like it’s time for a Tupperware party!

Lyric essays encourage us to, in a way, shop around all of the influences and instances of forms of writing that surround us every day. Once we find that container, then we can just go with it—explore all of its turns and walls and perhaps even challenges that are presented to us. One thing to be aware of, however, is that there might be times when you want to make a point or tell a scene or shift the thoughts this way, but that way is outside of the perimeter of your container. If you find that your container is no longer allowing you to discover the essay in a way that would feel best, then leave the container and go somewhere else with the thought, your concept. You can always go back and edit the essay into that container. It’s quite frustrating when we keep trying to write a great essay by using an intriguing form, and that form is confining us instead of holding us. Freeing us. Switch containers if needed, or disregard containers all together—for now.

An important aspect of lyric essays is that the reader is engaged with what’s going on in the essay. This is important. The writer must engage with reader through the writing. She needs to be right there on the page, ready to guide us while also finding her own new attitudes.

All of this is to say that form can encourage more writing, or writing may encourage less form. Most of the time, though, it’s a symbiotic relationship: I give you words, you give me a structure. Then everyone’s happy. The end. So just keep writing, nudging at boundaries and fearlessly trying to find a whacky form to contain your complicated thoughts and memories. Writing is what brings us back to ourselves, and so perhaps the forms we use for a lyric essay will also bring us into a new understanding of ourselves and our stories. A different perspective. Who knows what will come of it. Either way, keep writing.

Questions

1. Miller mentions juxtaposition a good number of times in her chapter. How juxtaposition is putting a puzzle together, or finding the right two paint chips perfectly compliment and enrich one another. The corner piece can exist on its own, and purple doesn’t need green to be complete. But then that quandary comes along, how the sum total is greater than its parts. In “Time and Distance Overcome,” Eula Biss uses a type of juxtaposition that brings the two different strands of the essay into a conversation with one another. Thinking about elements of both strands, which images stick with you the most after you are done reading it? What was your immediate response when Biss shifted focus away from telephones?
2. Miller states “As a reader, we are invited to interact with this essay, creating it as we go along, since there is no one way to read it. This, too, is one of the joys of lyric forms: they often invite the reader in as cocreator” (114). In what ways did you have to interact with the text when “reading” both Shea and Clammer’s hybrid pieces? Thinking about the ways in which Purpura thinks some hybrids fail while others succeed, do you think Mickey Darr Shea’s hybrid “essay” was a success?
3. If the lyric essay can be used as a way to express what you don’t know, what are some of your “not knowings” you can try to figure out through a lyric essay?
4. How are you hybridized? 

Writing Exercises

1. Collage: Make a list of your ten most favorite words. Write two or three sentences for how you came to love each of those words. Then, cut up each section and sit on the floor with the strips of words and their personal meanings. Rearrange the paragraphs as best as you can so that one thought/section naturally leads into the next. If you have any spots where this isn’t working for you, then keeping going. Trust the process. Something will find and fit into its space.
2. Juxtaposition:
   1. You can approach this exercise in a couple of ways:
      1. Go back and forth with the two topics as you write them
      2. Write each topic separately than get them tape and scissors and put them to work. Do whatever works for you!
   2. Ok, now about the two topics
      1. Write for at least 15 minutes describing what you do for your normal wake-up routine. Starting from when you wake up, describe the actions that you are performing right when you get out of bed. Give the reader a sense of who you are through these actions.
      2. Now, write for at least another 15 minutes describing what your nightly routine is. Give us the images and actions that really show who you are.
   3. Now spend some time weaving them together. Whether through theme or images or words or sound, find a way to have these two different routines speak to each other through juxtaposition.

1. Hybrid: Think about a situation from your past in which you had a very strong and emotionally negative response. Fill out THIS WORKSHEET as if the questions asked are referring to that tough situation.
2. Hybrid, again: Think of a person with whom you have been in relationship with (good or bad). Label the parts of THIS WORKSHEET in context of that relationship. Metaphors are your friends in this exercise. You can label the parts with one word or four paragraphs or whatever you feel inspired to do.