Writing

A Million Little Pieces, Memoir, and Honesty

/ Ashley / 9 Comments

I was up at 6am today. Not as terrible as 5am, but on labor day, that’s still a pretty crappy time to be awake. I went for another run, followed by some yoga. Then I sat on my patio for a nice breakfast and reading session. I finished The Marriage Plot and was pretty disappointed. I had such high expectations after Middlesex, so my disappointment was inevitable.

I’m trying to find something to read next, which is sort of funny all on its own. About a quarter of the books on my shelf haven’t been read. A customer from the coffee shop I used to work at gave me the The Letters of Anton Chekhov. That seems like a nice thing to read, right? Meh. I went through a phase a few years ago when I was obsessed with Chekhov. I ripped through a collection of his short stories in a week (probably the same week the customer gave me the book), and haven’t picked up a story or play of his since. Had I read his letters right after those short stories, I probably would have gotten some insight into his life and personality, and I probably really would have appreciated it. Now? Nah. I also have the Norton Collection of Personal Essays that I found at a used book store for $7, but I’m trying to stay away from shorter works.

I wandered over to Carissa’s shelves today and found A Million Little Pieces. I don’t know much about the book other than it claimed to be a memoir and ended up being false. Also, something about drugs. And Oprah.

When this book blew up, I wasn’t interested in memoir. I sort of regarded it as a lame fad: just uncreative and self-indulgent people who wanted to write but couldn’t write fiction. I was a Fiction Writer, interested in the construction of character and plot. Then I took a memoir-writing class at UW-Milwaukee and that changed. I realized that my fiction elitism was unwarranted since I was an unrealized memoirist at heart, what with my incessant journaling (I did more digging, my journaling slowed most during my junior and senior years of college). Then I started reading memoirs and essays and found that I loved how truth could be stranger than fiction.

So I have mixed feelings about A Million Little Pieces. Now that I write memoir I’m aware that I have an obligation to be honest. I had a few autobiographical fiction assignments in college, and I was so confused about them. I allowed myself fictional retribution – ending a relationship when I should have, dumping beer on his belongings, wildly advertising his infidelity, slapping him more than just the one time, etc – but it felt sort of dirty. I was telling a story that had its roots in reality, but then ended it falsely. If my ex were to read it, he would surely point out all the fiction, expose me as a fraud, humiliate me, etc. And I would know he was right.  I would face similar consequences if I paraded the story as fiction, only in a weirder inverted way.

If I were to ever share those pieces, I think I would need to preface them with a disclaimer: “The following events are based in reality, though I’ve taken the liberty of replacing certain details and/or the ending with ones preferable to me.” And really, who cares then? The truth probably offers a better story than the one I give anyway. Maybe I’ll clean one up and share it later this week, then you can tell me what you think.

Anyway, reading a fictionalized memoir is going to be an interesting experience. I’m going to have to tell myself it’s a novel if I don’t to feel completely cheated by the end of it.

Serendipity

/ Ashley / 5 Comments

After a boring and unnecessarily long day at work, I came home with the intention of getting some good work done. By good work, I mean get through a few chapters of The Marriage Plot. I’ve been reading that book since November. Every time I pick it up, it flies by. It’s the sort of book I want to savor. I’ve restarted the book three times now, just to make sure I remember everything that happened previously.  I did the same thing with The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. I know it’s redudant, but I’ll say it anyway: I really like Jeffrey Eugenides novels. Anyway, before reading, I wanted to get something written in my journal.

I did what I used to – I flung off my shoes and cardigan and lay stomach-down across my bed with my journal and pen. My bed used to be a creative hotspot. When I was growing up, that was what I did: I just came home and wrote for hours on my bed, taking breaks for dinner and violin practice. It was a sanctuary. When I got to college, that all changed. My bed was used for sleeping and the occasional makeout session. The few times I did write there, it felt like a novelty – a sort of quaint encore performance.

Today, after twenty minutes of writing, I got melancholic and nostalgic for better days. I got all teary eyed and felt incredibly lonely. I was about to curl up into a ball for maximum sobbing potential when I heard a key in the door and Carissa walk in.

“Ashley, did you put this package outside our door?” She called.

I pulled myself up and wiped my face. I met her in the living room. “What?”

“Oh – to Miss Ashley E. Otto!” She said, handing me the package. “Oooh, are you okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m just feeling lonely and sorry for myself,” I said.

I sat on the couch to open it up. There were about four layers of tape and I decided to not use a knife. I was in one of those modes that made everything more difficult. I could be more sullen and exasperated if everything was cumbersome.

It was from Joelle, a girl I had met my freshman year. She was my mentor for a single credit one-on -one writing seminar. She was the first person to give me valuable feedback and ideas for revising my writing. We sort of fell out of touch over the years, but I followed her blog when she traveled to Poland and she followed my life via facebook pictures. Every once in a while we would exchange a few messages, but nothing very intimate.

A few months ago, when Bill and I broke up, she asked if she could send me a care package – one without wine or chocolate even though that was probably all I wanted, it wasn’t what I needed. Of course I accepted. Her life must have gotten busy because she wasn’t able to send it until now. But it was the absolute perfect thing for me to see tonight.

It contained Shel Silverstein’s The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, a small box of truffles (chocolates ftw!), a journal, novelty gum, and flower pin. I read through the Silverstein book and promptly had a very cathartic cry. It was fantastic.

You know. I’ve said before that I don’t believe in a god, but beautiful coincidences like this make me think twice. Sometimes it’s comforting to believe that there’s some big orchestration I don’t understand yet. My logic overcomes my whimsical side. Circumstances on Joelle’s end prevented her from sending it till now (according to her card, the package saw three living rooms before reaching mine). I created my own perfect storm by recovering from last week’s bout of extroversion (I was occupied every night other than Thursday) by working overtime and spending the last five evenings with books and a box of old journals, but it all culminated to a single moment in which I was reminded I was not alone and people still do wonderful things for each other.

[also, these are the cutest truffles ever]

ATTENTION LITERARY JOURNALS: Best Luv Story EVAH.

/ Ashley / 10 Comments

While searching for my letters yesterday, I came across my box of journals and diaries. The earliest I could find was 1998. I spent the evening reading through them and laughing at myself and the things I felt I needed to document. When I was growing up , my mother used to ask why I wanted to keep a journal. “What will your kids think? Do you really want them to see everything you did and thought?”

I think I shrugged, not feeling strongly enough about it to articulate my thoughts. If I had been able to, I think I would have said something like, “Yes, I want them to see that I went through the same crappy feelings they go through.” Of course, at 13, I didn’t have that foresight. Or any foresight, for that fact.

Because I’m in the habit of publicly displaying my complete lack of perfection, I thought I’d share a diary entry from fifth grade, complete with commentary.

12-2-1998

Dear Genna: (I addressed this to my cousin when she moved to South Carolina. I’m not exactly sure if I had the intention of sending these to her.)

I hate this time of life. I’m so fat. I’m having hormones. (Hah, yes, just “having hormones:” that was how my mom explained my violent moodswings which went from weeping on my parents’ waterbed to smiling and watching tv in a half hour) Yesterday I was feeling great. Today I was fine until Mee (Malee’s cousin) gave Ashley A a note. <<<smear from a tear (yeah, I actually wrote that) A LOVE NOTE. Why couldn’t Nick K. do that to me? I feel so out of place. I a lot fatter than other girls. I hate myself! Even though I lost 3 pounds I feel fat. I have a headache. I’m crying this must be the worst day of my life. (It truly was the worst day of my life. Worse than the day than  the day my two-year relationship ended with an e-mail.) My mom says “it’s part of growing up” “Part of becoming a teen.” I don’t wanna be a teen, boys don’t want a fat stupid girl like me. (My 20-something version of this is something like “Men don’t want girl a who blogs and laughs at NPR podcasts.”)

An hour later…

I’m not so mad anymore. I took a shower, shaved my legs, and brushed my hair. I feel great! (Funny. This still works for me today. TRUST ME, LADIES. Shave your legs and you’ll feel like a new woman.)
 

In my best dream ever, this is what would happen: 

I would be the most popular girl and Nick K would kiss me and we would go to a movie. (The sequence of those events makes sense, right?)

I still wish Nick would write a love note to me. (What? Never mind, we’ve moved to a different story entirely.)

We would be partners in math we’d both look up in each other’s eyes. Our lips move closer here’s what it’d look like:

“Omigosh! that was wonderful!” I’d say. “Ashley, I’ve been meaning to say this to you; I love you.” (Yeah, bitch, I used semicolons in fifth grade. *does Z finger snaps*) “Oh Nick I do too.” “Do you wanna meet at little lake Butte des mor?” (that spelling isn’t remotely close) “What time? Tell me and I’ll go!” “Ten o’clock” (Excellent organization of dialog, Ten-year old Ashley.)

“Math is over” says Mrs. Holso.

“Good bye, Ashley!” 

“Bye Nick”

(Well at least we parted graciously at the end of math.)

I love you he’d mouth. I stare completely transfixed. (Yeah, I was a 10 year old who used the word “transfixed”.) What do I wear? I panic. I don’t have anything! (This still happens to  me when I go on dates.)

I’d go shopping getting tips from Leo. (Yeah, Leonardo Dicaprio was my stylist. Ain’t no thang)  I get a beautiful cool dress: 

We meet exactly at ten…

“Nick!”

“Ashley! It seemed like the longest day in my whole life without you”

“I know.” 

We’d kiss and do all that good stuff.

I’m tired. See yah!

Ashley Otto

P.S. It’s safe to say I love him now.

Clearly, even at 10, I had an excellent sense of verb tense, dramatic pacing, and narrative. Also, my dialog is superb. It’s evident that I’m committed to telling the complete story, beginning to ending, sparing no detail. I also truly knew the meaning of love.

You can expect to see this in the next New Yorker.

Note to self:

/ Ashley / 2 Comments

I just spent the better part of two hours going through my apartment and the last five or six boxes I had in storage to find a stack of letters. For the last twenty minutes or so, I was furious. So many f-bombs. It’s a good thing my mother wasn’t present.

I was mad not because I couldn’t find them, but because I thought I threw them away. I thought I threw them away because about ten months ago, I was scaling my belongings down in preparation to move. I specifically remember going back and forth as to whether I should throw these letters away. I wanted to keep them because they were from a very good friend of mine and I thought they might come in handy for fiction writing someday (that day was today, thus the frantic search). I thought it might be a good idea to toss them because they held ties with my past and my boyfriend at the time wasn’t very comfortable with me still talking to him. When I weed things out, I spend about five seconds deciding what to toss and what to keep. After a couple hours of searching, I was nearly positive that I had gone with the latter.

So then I spent the last twenty minutes of the search composing an angry rant I would deliver to my ex (one that documented all the reasons my ex was stupid and why he needed to just get over it and accept that this guy is my friend and that whatever fragments of attraction or romance that may have existed years earlier were in the past  and we were just friends now who communicated solely through text messages twice a month and he just needed to trust that I was capable of controlling myself and that I would never do anything to compromise a relationship anyway and fuck him, why was I such a good girlfriend  even when he didn’t know anything about these letters because it never occurred to me to tell him because it happened years earlier and it wasn’t like it was something I went through and read every week just to reminisce or laugh at all his witty jokes and hijinks and so what if I kept them for sentimental reasons – they were funny and reminded me of the years I spent in Milwaukee and they also represented a period of growth and also documented the beginnings of my first serious relationship with a man who has psychopathic tendencies that ended disastrously because how else could it end and I wanted to see how my friend had reacted to  my news when I told him I thought it was best to stop exchanging letters because I thought it was best for my relationship and what the hell, why did I throw those letters away?!), never mind I deleted his number and can’t remember it anyway.

Then I found the letters. 

And then I realized that if I had thrown them away back then, it would have been my own fault, not my ex’s.

So, what did I learn? Never throw out material that may provide inspiration just to coddle a significant other’s insecurities, because inevitably, things will change and you will be furious at yourself. Also, your apartment will be a mess.