Jo-Ann Mapson

Rewriting the Fence and Other Stories

From where I sit at my makeshift writer's desk-an old table, many cardboard boxes, four file cabinets-my husband looks not at all like an artist. We moved into this house a month ago, and there's still so much to be done that we're operating in sort of a camp mode-we don't unpack a box until we need it--since the shelves aren't installed. The to-do list is endless: new kitchen cupboards, sink, and floor; remove dining room wall. Finish paneling my office, install bookshelves, fill files, and complete expense report for book tour. Replace toilet, shower and sink, and floor in mid-level bath. Driveway. New lawn. And the fence. My husband's stringing yellow lines between birches and spruce trees, trying to pace out a yard. His handsome face is serious, focused. Were I to lean out my open window and call to him, he'd only hear me the second time. When he works, whether it's at a canvas with paint and brush, or juggling receipts over a tax form, or imagining a fence, he gives the task his full attention.

I suppose that when I write I do that, too, but you probably wouldn't guess from looking at me. I stare at the screen but don't type. I get up and pace around the house. (I once heard Sandra Dallas say that the idea for The Persian Pickle Club came to her on a walk from the office to the kitchen in a very short hallway and so I am always hopeful as I walk in the hall.) I look inside the fridge, but don't take anything out except maybe a diet Coke. I pet the dogs, but not too much or they'll pester me forever. Sometimes I lie down on the floor in my office and stare at my bead board ceiling. I count the knots, and remember summers in Cape Cod-Wood's Hole Marine Institute, the carousel on Martha's Vineyard, just about anywhere on Nantucket, where I sometimes fantasize I could live alone with a typewriter and a cat.

I get this way when I'm past page 200, but page 500 feels so far away I might as well have just started. Page 200 is when I know I have to buckle down and write hard in order to make it to the ending. To one by one, tie all the threads of story that I have thrown out into a kind of sense, a close that will feel inevitable, but also surprising. To bring my characters to their just rewards, or to explain why they have missed them, and what they learned in the process. But mostly I have to write hard because only when I'm done can I begin the reward of rewriting.

My students whine, "I hate rewriting! Show me how to get it right the first time."

Oh, only that small miracle! I wish. Or do I?

The emotions that rise in me when I think about the act of writing are many. There's the terror and possibility of the blank page, page one, or every new page. There's finding a first line within a lot of junk, and extracting it as carefully as a pick-up-stick, and that golden moment when I think, okay, I might not ever win the National Book Award, but I can just tell this one little story, and if a few readers get it, I've succeeded. Or when I discover a character's voice, get her dialogue just right, know that her idiosyncrasies of speech come from her Aunt Flora who married the cad from Decatur.. Those pure moments when the story is moving along so wonderfully I feel as if I am on a train going cross-country, and want to cry out, Oh, look, mountains, trees, ocean, a city, lake, flowers, but I am too awe-struck to say one single word, so I just take it all in and hold it to my heart like a love letter. Then there's the stuck feeling of knowing something is terribly wrong with my story, but not what that terrible something is. Followed closely by the grave self-doubts that creep up and choke words from me entirely. That make me certain I've lost my chops, and maybe it's time to fill out an application for the paint department at Home Depot. (I love the paint department. I know I'd be good at mixing colors. Plus, the idea of a regular paycheck, paid vacation, and health benefits sounds awfully good.) Times when I'd rather clean an oven than try to write. Times when I simply don't write. I sit on the couch and look out the window and wonder how in the world I ended up where I did and shouldn't a woman who is almost fifty years old be more settled than this?

And then there is the rewrite itself.

You won't believe me when I say this is the best part. You think I'm lying, that I'm saying this because I want to torture you, the unpublished writer, that I'm loath to share my writing secrets. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love scything away the thick prose to reveal one tiny dogwood in bloom on the forest floor. I love seeing the moose path emerge-the other story, the one that always seems to create itself-the counterpoint to what it was I was initially trying to explore. I love the feeling of finding the right line to end the book, which generally sends me back to the start to finesse those first words I once found so brilliant, so necessary. And I especially love it when I get to fooling around with commas and I know that it's time to quit. That I'm "done," at least until my agent and editor read it. That brief time between projects when I pretend I am free, but am really gathering the next story to me.

My husband's down in the garage now. I can hear him rustling around in there, probably trying to find some tool that didn't get unpacked. He might be affixing a Band-aid to a scratch; he gets lots of those. Who knows what is going through his mind? He might be thinking of the painting he's working on, that sits upstairs in his easel. Or listening to NPR, or the classical station, or dreaming up his own watercolor version of The Persian Pickle Club in the space behind the wall heater. As for the fence, he knows its parameters: The fence has to be large enough for Cricket, who is fixated on pelota, to play ball, so it needs throwing distance. It mustn't encroach on the moose path, because we love them tromping through the property, decimating the trees. This summer on Father's Day a cow showed up with twins. Last week they returned. Her babies had grown at least a foot in height. Because we live in a housing tract that has an association, our neighbors have to approve the fence. So far, one objected, necessitating a slight change; hence the husband with the yellow string, rewriting the fence. That's okay. We're flexible. There are a dozen new ways to look at it: It has to be tall enough that the dogs stay in, and tall enough that the wildlife stays out, but it has to be unobtrusive, so we can see the forest through it.

Just like a story.

More later,
Jo-Ann

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