Songbird.

A writing prompt and self-reflection walk into a bar.

Dear Reader,

Everyone knows that sooner or later tonight, Emily is going to sing. Hold this. There’s a writing assignment at the end.

First – I’ve been stuck. During the last few weeks, I swam above water long enough to finish a big revision of my Dead Dads novel. I pulled a story I’ve been sending out in for repairs. I don’t know if I want to continue teaching where I’m teaching, or even if I want to continue teaching at all. It’s hard out there for an adjunct. I’d usually spend Saturday mornings picking at a scene or organizing revisions in my head, but I’m at a stopping point and starting anything new feels too hard, too exhausting.

Yesterday morning, I browsed teaching jobs at universities and became overwhelmed, then I made a sharp turn and thought hey, what if I get a Ph.D. in literature? I browsed Ph.D. applications and that was also overwhelming because do I want a Ph.D. in literature? Yes. Do I want to go to school to earn one? No. Then I pivoted to temp agencies in the area, then I pivoted to scanning indeed.com for office jobs, then I pivoted to wondering if this podcast I like is hiring remote people (they’re not), then I pivoted to wondering what sort of medication I need to take to stop me from being me and then when I was sufficiently consumed in sadness, I left my computer and ate some chips. They were delicious.

So. Still stuck. I’m questioning, and I’m reflecting, and making art means starting over all the time forever and ever, amen.

When I came back to the computer after the chips, I opened some old files I haven’t looked at in years. Files so old they are saved in a folder called “old computer” in lower case letters.

Everyone knows that sooner or later tonight, Emily is going to sing. It’s not a great line. It’s wordy with tense problems, but, imo, it has energy.

This line is from a 2003 story I wrote called Songbird that never went beyond a first draft. I don’t recall turning this in for workshop, so my guess is I was fucking around, not overthinking, just writing something out because in the early 2000s, phones didn’t exist, and I was free. I was looking for a story I wrote that I did turn in for workshop called Liminal Space about a young man and woman who meet at a grocery store, go out to dinner and get drunk, and then go back to her place where he misunderstands (perhaps on purpose) her intent and consent, and then they find out they work in the same building and have to see each other all the time. That story also never went out, but I liked the premise and wondered if I might do some revision to get it up to fighting weight but turns out I wrote it in third person, and it sounded inauthentic as I read it, which lead me to Songbird, the next file.

Emily was based on my ex-husband’s friend’s ex-girlfriend whose actual name I cannot recall. Her skin was porcelain. She was very pale. She had raven black, short hair cut in line with her chin that she pulled back from her face with a bow clip, and she wore short skirts and baby doll dresses in bold colors. She was younger than us, and she was eccentric and offbeat but not in a cute way. You could make an argument for manic pixie but you’d have to put an asterisk on it that said *also probably substance abuse. HOWEVER! Emily (not her real name) could sing. I don’t mean karaoke sing, I mean, like, sing in a jazz band sing, and I have a particularly clear memory of being in a restaurant where my ex-husband’s friend was playing with his band, and he called her up for a few songs. Once she took the mic, the whole restaurant stopped. Two male servers on their way to the kitchen paused in the middle of the floor to turn to her voice. Maybe it was that night or another night, but we were at my ex-husband’s house (he was my BF at the time) having drinks and partying and when it was time to go to bed, Emily laid down in the middle of the floor and closed her eyes and then in the morning when I was in the kitchen getting coffee, she opened her eyes, stood up and started moving around like she hadn’t been sleeping. You know those baby dolls with the blinking eyes? When you tilted them back, the eyes closed. When you sat them up, the eyes opened. Emily was like that. She often talked fast and couldn’t focus, and more than once when I was in conversation with her, she’d get distracted and wander off. Emily the character became Rebecca in my novel that comes out next year. Just for the record, Rebecca is now far removed from Emily the real person, but Songbird is where she began. After I read the story and thought about it, I did feel a bit more energized. That Liminal Space story (kind of bad) was for a workshop with a deadline, and Songbird (good voice and movement) was just because. Songbird happened spontaneously without the pressure of a deadline.

The fallow periods are necessary.

So now, I offer this prompt to you. Not my words! Yours. Can you dig up a line you wrote a thousand years ago? Can you remember where it came from? What you wanted from it? Can you remember who you were when you wrote it? Do you know what happened to the people inside of it?

Yours in I Can’t Sing But Damn I Wish I Could,

Stephanie

Reading: Year of the Buffalo by Aaron Burch

Listening: This episode of The Dream absolutely killed me: Babies Not Having Babies

ALSO! I will be at the AWP conference in L.A. March 26 – March 29.

I’m reading with WTAW Press from Something I Might Say at Shoo Shoo Baby on March 27 at 5:30 p.m. and then on Friday, March 28 at 4 p.m. with Cowboy Jamboree – this one requires an RSVP so if you are interested, I can send you info. Otherwise, I’ll be roaming the bookfair angry that my panel I submitted about how to do better live readings (with big writing names who had great tips and ideas!) was rejected.