Whose Year? Whose Story?

As we end this year—another profoundly strange, unsettling year—I’ve just finished reading Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses. It made me want to weep and cheer in turn, sometimes at the same time. It spoke to so many memories I have of my own experiences with fellow writers, agents, and editors, and of having to push back for too many years against common expectations of what a story is and what shape it should take.

I was reminded of the agent at some SCBWI event who said, of my manuscript for what became The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, “It’s charming and well written, but whose story is it?”

That was in 2009, when no one, it appeared, was publishing stories with multiple moving pieces that didn’t place one individual character at the center. Stories where community was at the heart and coincidence was a cause for celebration.

To her, Salesses might say:

Craft is part of the history of western empire that goes back even to the ancient Greek and Roman empires, upon which American democratic values are based. We still talk about plot the way Aristotle wrote about it over 2000 years ago, when he argued that plot should be driven by character. When we continue to teach plot this way, we ignore…the many other kinds of plot found in literatures around the world….

I was reminded of craft v. culture debates.

Then there were my run-ins with Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey, of which I’ve also written before. I’m hoping we’ve finally scuttled that monomyth idea for good but then, hey, I thought democracy was something I could count on as well, so maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath.

Still, I’m hoping to claim as my own this year to come, 2022, by:

• centering what matters to me in my writing

• nurturing the stories my students are seeking to clarify

• hearing the hidden resonances in drafts

• refusing to cave in to thoughtless assumptions about craft, character, story, and yes, “the reader.”

It was gratifying to have my many hard-won perceptions and instincts confirmed in this book. It was also past time.