Note: This post is older, and, therefore, some of the links may no longer be current.
How did you do in Week 1? Did you write a draft?
I played around a bit with what story to respond to. I love “The Enormous Radio” but couldn’t quite figure out an angle. I wanted to write something like “Stone Animals” because I love stories that center on houses, but I couldn’t figure that out either. In the end I wrote a draft in response to “Speaker” (the story where a human and hyena can hear each other’s thoughts). The story I wrote wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t bad.
The really important thing for me was that I wrote an entire draft. Here’s why:
I’ve been working on a new picture book. We’ll call it, I don’t know, Teakettle. I like Teakettle. I’m into the story. But every time I work on it, I think, “oh, this sounds too much like an allegory for something, and I can’t figure out how to make it just a story.” I was putting way too much pressure on it.
The story I wrote for The Short Story Project, which I’ll call Duckpants, was silly and a little simple. It could probably also be an allegory for something, but I didn’t worry about that. I just wrote it. There was no pressure. I was just goofing around (which, I’ll remind you, is the whole point of The Short Story Project).
I realized I’d been getting in my own way with Teakettle and I’d never be able to fix the potentially overwrought symbolism if I didn’t write the story in the first place. So I sat down and finished it, with an air of “just play around and see what happens.” It went in a fairly weird direction once I let it loose, and that’s fine. Now my job is to see what I can do with it in revision.
On to Week 2!
Who are you? This is such a fundamental element of stories (and life). Characters figuring out their identities end up helping readers on their own journeys of self.
When you are a little kid, you are often told how to be, and who you are. Sometimes what you are told feels correct, and perhaps other times it does not. Reading books where characters struggle with identity can show young readers that they don’t have to be exactly how other people tell them to be. We Are Definitely Human, Your Name is a Song, Frederick, I Talk Like a River, Neville, and Julián is a Mermaid are just a few picture books about identity. There are hundreds.
I find I am always riveted when there is a story where a character decides not to be who they were told to be. I love a story where a character realizes it’s possible to go in a different direction than they’ve been shown. It’s so relatable to watch their missteps and triumphs as they venture out in new terrain, and how extremely consequential it is, when they are not only walking down a path, but walking that path as a new person.
We have so many ways to write about identity, thanks to the structure of picture books. It can be about a massive realization (“I’m a blue crayon!”) or it can be something smaller, the first time a character says no thank you to the food they don’t like, or chooses sparkly socks.
One of my favorite books growing up was Dooly and the Snortsnoot by Jack Kent, which is about a giant who is not giant-sized. As an adult, I went on a bit of a Jack Kent collecting spree, and one of the ones I got is the 1968 book Just Only John. In it, a little boy named John “had been a little boy named John for over four years and he was getting tired of it.”
So he goes to the shop and buys a penny magic spell, so he can turn into something else. When he gets home, his mom says, “Where has my little lamb been?”
Every time someone tells him who he is or calls him something (a bunny, a pig, a little man) he turns into that thing, until he breaks down. It’s troubling to have the outside world so drastically shape your identity! In the end his parents tell him the trick is for him to remind himself who he is, and he remembers he is “just only John” and that breaks the spell.
For years I’ve said that the pitch for any of my books is: “a misunderstood character who is trying to find their place in the world,” which is why I think I’m so interested in these stories about identity. Let’s show kids that they have options, and that they don’t have to decide right now who they want to be. They can play around with identity.
The Stories
“Louisa Please Come Home” by Shirley Jackson (1960). I read this story years ago, and it really rattled me (Shirley Jackson is so good at this type of story!). Louisa leaves home and starts a new life, but finds she cannot return.
“Who Am I This Time” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (1961). When I was in high school, my mom and I repeatedly rented the hour-long PBS American Playhouse VHS production of this short story (that’s a YouTube link to the full video). It’s great. It stars Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon before they were huge stars, and is directed by Jonathan Demme. The short story is just as great! It’s about identity via acting in plays – and what if you don’t really have much of an identity when you’re offstage?
“Fish (in 13 Sections)” by Eric Ozawa (2001). During a breakup, a man is called “a fish” and spends the rest of the story systematically cataloging the facts and theories about what it means.
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1968). Is it still an angel, if what appears is face down in the mud in your courtyard, and is in fact a very old man with enormous wings?
“It Came from Cruden Farm” by Max Barry (2020). On his first day in office, the president finds out the old rumors are true, and the government does have an alien. The alien is not what he was expecting. “In my opinion, sir, the alien is simply kind of a dick.”
Have fun! There are so many directions to go in. Society and parents and other adults tell kids how to be, and what if they are something quite different?
How did last week go? Tell us in the comments!
Thank you for what you shared about allowing yourself to play until you reach the end. I decided on "The Enormous Radio," and had three attempts where I'd have a fairly solid start, reach the middle, run out of steam, and scratch it for something else. While I'm frustrated I didn't write a full draft start to finish, the ideas and attempts got better each time, so at least there's that. And sitting around to play also reminded me of an older idea that I had forgotten about and now realize still has pretty good potential So there's that!
I, too, landed on Ride as inspiration for my week 1 story attempt. I found my brain wanting to be very literal in translating elements of Ride for my own story, and it took a while for me to relax and get more playful with it. I eventually wrote a skeleton of a weird story about a scooter that takes a kid to another dimension, so I take that as a win. :) Excited to dive in to this next batch of stories--not sure what I'm going to do yet.