Afterward & Some Analysis

I wanted to include a brief analysis of a few ideas I played with in this story, partially to guide my own thoughts as I was writing, but also to allow myself to build my thinking on this project over time. I do hope that, eventually, I can develop the ideas and characters in both the story and the analysis to a satisfactory point; however, I also think there is beauty in leaving some things unwritten and allowing the reader to fill in the blanks to their liking.

As I write this, I am supremely out of practice as a creative writer. One of my greatest struggles as I penned the story itself was the language. I felt that writing from the perspective of an angry teenager of divorced parents wouldn’t be too difficult (I was one, once), but I had difficulty maintaining a plausible vernacular for Margaret. She’s smart and independent, yes, but I do feel her youth must somehow impact her narrative voice.

Margaret is, after all, a seventeen-year-old girl; she interprets most things to dramatic excess, and it’s likely she exaggerates at least some of her parents’ faults. Her contempt for them is clear in her use of  one’s first name and the cruel–although likely accurate–nickname she has given the other. She also reduces her parents to the poorest decisions they make, as she fails to recognize their efforts to make an awful situation work. Alex still funds their ex’s rehab, despite being divorced for a significant amount of time. We could assume Alex does this to have a “break” from their children, but it’s also very possible Alex wants the children to have a relationship with the Drunk, despite their obvious shortcomings as a parent.

Enter the gender roles. It’s clear Alex is quite successful as an attorney, but they are also the more distant parent. The Drunk’s more nurturing attitude towards their children is more consistent with a maternal stereotype, while Alex’s commitment to their career and lack of interest in their children is reminiscent of an aging but nonetheless extant male stereotype.

However, if we paint Alex as a powerful woman, her coldness towards her children is not consistent with a maternal figure. Yet, as an attorney “breaking down barriers” at a law firm, there are a litany of reasons she could cling to her job more than her children. It’s entirely possible she doesn’t know how to be close with her kids because her ex did so for her and she was too successful to care. After all, Margaret does make Alex out to be somewhat of a narcissist. The only inconsistency with Alex would be the unusual, matriarchal sense of care she shows her broken family. She provides for both her former spouse and children, seemingly beyond necessary (ex. the Drunk’s rehab). But how differently might this situation be interpreted if Alex were a man? Perhaps a male Alex might feel a patriarchal sense of responsibility for his family, even for his ex, and does this anyway.

This analysis is far from fully developed, but I did want to include it, as it was an exercise that eased writing and thinking about my goals for this story.

Project 2: The Switch

The bright LED screen of Simon’s phone was a strangely welcome guide as I threw the BMW door open into the night. He was normally on the damn thing too often for his own good, but the streetlight had gone out sometime between this month and the last, and it was enough to navigate the parking lot.

“Margaret Anne–please–”

Alex is the only one who deigns to call me Margaret, even though it was the inebriated decision of both Alex and the Drunk to give me a stupid name to begin with. I don’t know how most parents say their kids’ names when they’re tucking them into bed at night, or bidding them farewell as they board a school bus, but I’m sure it’s not how mine do. When Alex calls me by my full name, every bit of disdain and regret for my existence spills out with it.

Alex is an civil litigator, having spent years devoted to a firm where breaking down barriers was more important than being home for dinner. Simon doesn’t know what that means yet; he only knows it means Alex doesn’t have time for us. Alex has–on more than one occasion–brought Simon to the store or a “work event” while I was in school, only to leave him there and forget all about him. Once the cops were called and they had to bring Simon home. I think they yelled at Alex for a while and said if it happened again, we’d have to go and live with our other parent. Alex just laughed in the cops’ faces. What other parent? My ex? Please.

Alex is a piece of work, but sometimes the Drunk manages to be even worse. Every time the Drunk gets out of rehab, Simon and I get to spend a week with “the other parent,” who isn’t much of an improvement. I found out last year that Alex keeps paying for it, which is kind of stupid because it doesn’t seem to be working. Without fail, the addiction always cycles back to reclaim its victim.

I grab Simon’s free hand and hoist him, in a well-practiced maneuver, out of the vehicle and onto the pavement. He doesn’t react much. He’s still staring at his phone.

“Call me if things get out of hand. If–”

“We’ll be fine,” I respond flatly, slamming the door shut. Alex was never good at goodbyes; I wasn’t, either. Why waste time on conventional farewells we don’t mean?

Needless to say, Alex and the Drunk don’t get on well. I always wonder how they ever managed marriage. When Simon and I have to go from one parent to the other, they park on either side of a McDonald’s in the ‘burbs and we walk from the BMW to the Drunk’s ’92 Corolla, which is parked strategically out of the BMW’s view. If they even see each other, the only calm I know would be interrupted by an onslaught of bickering.

Simon’s palm is sweaty as I begin dragging him to the other side of the lot. He used to ask if we could get an ice cream before we switched, but he’s stopped asking. He doesn’t talk at all, now, because he knows not to associate the switch with things he enjoys. I, on the other hand, have come to appreciate the lonely walk from one disaster to the next. I feel strong, and I’m strong for Simon, too.

The light from the phone nearly blinds me as it moves off the pavement and reflects off the old Corolla, which still manages to maintain a shine. It looks like it was just washed, which is odd, because I know the drunk can’t afford a car wash. The driver’s door swings open with more force than necessary and the Drunk steps out, the old vehicle’s frame groaning at the loss of its only passenger. That car was held together by prayers and the years of mud caked between its organs, nothing more. If we took it through a car wash, it’d fall apart.

“How are my babies?” the Drunk exclaims loudly. Simon is embraced first, then me. I don’t smell alcohol like I sometimes do, just cigarette smoke and cheap fragrance.

As long as the support checks from Alex clear, the Drunk somehow manages to stay on their feet. Despite the endless periods of joblessness, the Drunk has it pretty well for someone who can’t resist a bottle. We pile into the car as the Drunk babbles on and on about wonderful life is and how they’re so excited we’re there. When I was younger, I liked to believe this meant they would get sober, but I know better than that. Every time the switch occurs is a momentous opportunity for great change, and every time it ends with a return trip across the parking lot.

“So, you kids are going to love this–I got us a new place now. It’s in a good part of town, not like the last one. And you’re going to have your own rooms!”

I know the Drunk is trying, but I can’t get excited. We’ll be out of there in a few weeks, tops.

I look over to Simon to gauge his reaction, to see if the Drunk’s promises registered with him. Like before, he only stared at his phone.

Precis

My creative project will take the form of a short story in which a teenaged girl and her younger sibling traverse the parking lot of a fast food restaurant from one parent’s vehicle to another’s. My main character, the angry daughter of divorced, discordant parents, tells the story through her eyes as she laments her upbringing (as angry teenagers tend to do) while she walks. Through her sarcasm and self-pity, however, her complaints of her parents omit one important detail: which parent is her mother, and which is her father. While my story will not reveal the gender of either parent, it will seek to test the ideas readers have about gender roles and parenting.

The creative process I have used to develop this project so far has largely been to draw on my own experiences and mold them around Morrison’s storytelling strategies used in “Recitatif.” While I have successfully developed the main character and her younger sibling to a point where I can begin writing, I still need to consider how problematic the parents should truly be in the lives of their children and which parent will exhibit which of these “poor parenting” traits. I also need to consider how I will go about assigning attributes to each parent. A classmate asked if I would have an idea in my mind of which parent is which gender as I do this, but I’m not sure I will. I think the success of the story hinges on my own lack of knowledge, as well as my readers’.

My goal for this project is to achieve greater insight into the storytelling methods Morrison uses in “Recitatif” through employing a similar technique in a short story of my own. I want to explore how withholding even one important character trait creates enough ambiguity to encourage multiple readings and meanings of a text, especially where readers’ assumptions about society’s perceived gender roles are tried. How could a misguided parent’s behavior denote their gender, and how can I twist those behaviors through writing to challenge my audience’s ideas about the gender roles of parents?

Assignment 2: Journal 5

My next journal, or “Discovery Draft,” was more of a consolidated effort to establish a clear direction for project 2. After spending some time thinking through writing on this topic, I was successful in designing a short story inspired by “Recitatif” that would allow me to meet the creative criteria of the project.

My initial inspiration from “Recitatif” was to write a story in which an important (and potentially plot-relevant) aspect of their identity was withheld from the reader. My first thought was to write a love story in which the characters are known to be male and female, but I would never disclose which character is which gender. I could give my reader an anecdote of a seemingly innocuous situation in the lives of two ordinary people where the genders of both significant others has massive social implications. Perhaps an individual who works from home brings lunch to their spouse, whose powerful job places them in an impressive corner office. Or a struggling couple attending a parent-teacher conference for their poorly-behaved child. Upon further consideration, however, I felt it would be more appropriate to write from a more personal experience. After all, I have never had a serious relationship, and I’m not completely confident in my ability to create a plausible one through writing.

I recognize that opting not to write about something I’m not well-acquainted with for a creative project is self-defeating in the sense that it would take a great deal of imagination regardless to compose an original story. The purpose of a creative project may very well be to explore something I’m unfamiliar with in an innovative way. However, I feel that my best stories are born of personal experience, and I feel that keeping part of this assignment within my comfort zone might ease the creative process.

I decided to explore writing a story about divorce. I am the child of divorced parents, and most of friends growing up had divorced parents, so it seems only natural that I could write a convincing tale about the difficulties facing a ruined marriage. Given the current social climate surrounding the discussions of gender roles in relationships, custody battles, and the stigmas of a broken family, it seems like an appropriate topic.

My idea was to write from the perspective of a personally familiar trope: an angry teenage girl struggling to navigate the chaotic world around her. I want to challenge gender stereotypes about parenting by creating a marriage so broken and volatile that either parent cannot be in the sights of the other without the eruption of massive conflict. Thus, during the child hand-off, they park on opposite sides of a building and their kids, the angry teenager and a younger brother, have to hike from one car to the other. I want to capture this walk during through the eyes of the daughter.

To prevent the reader from knowing which parent is the mother and which the is father, I felt my angry teenager might be snarky and audacious enough to call her parents by their first names, which will be conveniently gender-neutral (ex. “Sam” or “Alex). She might even have a nickname for one that does not disclose their gender. She pities herself and her circumstances above all else, and she wholly blames her “screw-up” parents for her woes.

Her agony isn’t completely misplaced; these parents are not great parents, and they are humans who encounter real problems that affect modern parenting. One parent might struggle with heavy substance abuse, while the other is a narcissistic workaholic with obvious attachment issues. Whatever their problems are, it will not be known to the reader who is who. Just as Morrison challenges the assumptions reader make about race in “Recitatif,” I want to challenge the assumptions readers make about gender roles and parenting.

Assignment 1: Journal 4

Our first assignment to commence the creative writing project was an open-ended journal that allowed us to explore what creativity means to us and how we can use it in unison with the text/media of our choice to design a unique project. I used this as an opportunity to begin thinking about the direction of my project, although I had no idea where it was going at the time.

Creativity is the ability to conceive or innovate. My impression of creativity is its fleeting nature; I cannot summon creativity when I need it, but it comes sporadically, often when I’m not intentionally trying to think creatively.

I do feel that my work requires a great deal of creativity. As a tutor who works with many Delta students, some regularly and others only once, I need to be prepared to adjust my explanations of a concept depending on who I’m working with. Sometimes, this necessitates creative thinking on the spot to conceive of new ways to describe something I’m very familiar with in a way I haven’t considered before. In this way, creativity becomes a tool I can use when I struggle to relate to a student’s lack of understanding of something I know well.

For this project, I have decided to work with Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif.” It is a dialogue between the lives of two women, Twyla and Roberta, who meet at young girls in an orphanage and whose radically different lives collide on several occasions after their childhood friendship. From the beginning of the story, the audience is made aware that one of these girls is black and the other is white, but we are given no clear indication as to which girl is which race. In doing so, “Recitatif” is an exploration of the portrayal of women in writing, and the assumptions readers make about race in literature.

One of the central themes of the story I’ve chosen, is the arbitrariness of race. Inspired by this concept as a whole, I wonder if I could use this explore the assignment of character identities in literature. What could withholding an important element of a character or characters do to the interpretations of a story? “Recitatif” reads like a totally different story if we assume either of the girls’ races, and in doing this, it tries many of the assumptions its readers have about race. Could I pull this off with other aspects of a character’s identity, such as their gender?

This assignment, which also included a double-entry log (not included) to further unpack the chosen text and provide ideas, was helpful in getting me started. I had the opportunity to spend more time with “Recitatif” and consider how it could inspire my second project for this class.

Introduction

Hello! My name is Megan and this blog is a continuing project for my ENG201H class, or Honors Colloquy. It contains the short story I composed for this project, as well as some reflections on my creative thinking and writing processes.

For me, Colloquy has been a wonderful opportunity to challenge myself as a writer and a thinker. While I initially intended to take the course simply because it is required in the honors curriculum, I have found great value in what it has offered me. In this final project, I hope to synthesize the knowledge and skills I have gained from this course and explore the medium of creative writing.