Last night, a friend took me on a midnight bike ride through the Loop. “The skyscrapers reflect the moon,” he said. “No bankers crowd the streets. You have to see it.”
The air was warm and my bike creaked as we rode down Wells. The feeling of emptiness was pervasive: the only signs of movement were a few cabs, some drunk Cubs fans, and a ninety year old woman outside Panera with her arms crossed across her chest.
The image gave me pause. Why is a woman her age up past midnight, let alone by herself, in the middle of downtown, outside a deserted sandwich shop?
Like any writer, I can only pen my way to an answer.
Maybe she is waiting for the first Cuban Chicken Panini of the morning.
Maybe she wants a cop to pass so she can ask for help to collapse a broken ironing board.
Maybe she is a new generation of Hipster Grandma, stepping out from an Indie show to smoke a cigarette and look for trouble.
Or maybe I should take Fiction I, so I can really write myself closer to her truth.
I was one of those babies who would only let my mother hold me. Sorry Dad, sorry Grandma, sorry Sensitive Family Friend, I will whimper and upchuck until passed back to maternal arms. While some called it colic, I called it shyness.
My introversion continued while growing up. I preferred playing with Madame Alexander dolls and attempting to kidnap neighborhood cats than spending time with friends. Having an outgoing twin brother only fed my soft spoken nature—why speak up when he could represent the both of us?
One evening in high school I stopped being happy in the background. At the dinner table I watched my father regale friends with travel stories—the stomach “issues” that forced him off a bus and into the Iranian countryside, the taxi driver who purposefully dropped him at a harlem instead of a hostel. Guests sat back in their seats and rolled with laughter. At that moment I craved to shed my shyness so I could be as effortlessly funny as my father.
Although I’m no longer shy, I still have a persistent itch to impress people with humor. While trying to be funny is a sure way to not be funny, how else can I accomplish this goal? For this reason, I’ve been eying the Comic Essay Class. If funny has rules, if funny takes practice, if funny has a guru, please sign me up. I promise not to upchuck on anyone’s shoulder.
In my perfect world, I could summon soy lattes faster than Harry Potter summons Hedwig, my dad wouldn’t get migraines, and I could take more StoryStudio one-nighters.
Since I’m Jewish, I figure it’s okay to write my wishlist for Santa Claus in May. I’ll leave some rugelach on the mantle.
My perfect playlist of StoryStudio courses would include:
Big Projects (June 8): If a graphic novel chronicling 22 years of being a twin doesn’t qualify as a big project, I need more help than my therapist.
Making Room (July 13): As previously mentioned, I have too many excuses for not writing and not enough practical strategies for setting aside time.
That’s Not Funny (June 29th): Every time I watch Glee I want to write wittier dialogue. Perhaps this course could help?
Although I’ve been salivating over StoryStudio courses since I moved to Chicago nine months ago, I only recently got to sit in a classroom.
Since graduating in creative writing from Oberlin College, I’ve thought a lot about writing. Wouldn’t my trip to El Salvador during a heated election season make a great investigative piece? Although I’m not enjoying watching this girl lick her boyfriend’s neck on the bus, wouldn’t that work well in a short story? Couldn’t there be a poem about that man who’s carrying a fighting chicken on his Honda Wave?
Although I’ve had plenty of ideas, none of them have made it to the page. I’ve made plenty of excuses: having a full time job is tiring, it’s a crime to put clean silverware into a dirty drawer, friends will forget my name unless I update my Facebook status. How better to fix this problem than the public humiliation of showing up to a workshop without a piece in hand? Enter StoryStudio.
On Monday night I arrived eager to start the Writing the Personal Essay class with Ellen Blum Barish. Although I was most excited to be held accountable for producing work, I also looked forward to being in a community of writers again. I missed hanging out with people who make jokes about semi colons and know what it means to spend 13 hours in a empty bathtub with a bag of marshmallows while hammering out a revision.
Opening introductions revealed that the class held a diversity of voices: from first-timers to bloggers to grad school applicants, we all had different reasons for being there. After discussing the nature of personal essays, we looked at a piece on sighing. During my first read I was skeptical: so what that we all sigh? Is this worth a whole page of pontification? However, as the group discussed the piece, I realized that I had missed the use of second person, the purposeful withhold of information, and the tone of longing. I remembered what it felt like to read with detail and attentiveness; something I hadn’t been practicing while scanning RSS feeds and tweets.
Next we worked on an in-class exercise: we had ten minutes to write in detail about how we woke up that morning, and then share our entries out loud. I started censoring my writing for reading: would people care that I spilled scrambled eggs on the counter and changed my skirt three times?After a few minutes I realized the exercise wasn’t about what people thought; but rather, about getting in the habit of remembering and recording details. And when my classmates read their pieces, these mundane small details (coriander tea, an alarm clock that said ‘thank you for arriving this morning’) were what resonated most.
As the class continues, I look forward to stretching my out-of-practice literary muscles. And, eventually, writing about a chicken on a motorcycle.
Written by member Diane O’Neill
I first met StoryStudio Chicago people at a table at the 2009 AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference, my very first writing conference. I’ve attended other conferences, but all related to my profession in the field of disability rights. The setting was similar: a hotel with vibrant plush carpeting and chandelier lightings, concurrent forums, tables with brochures aplenty, representatives of different organizations. But this time, instead of panels talking about independent living or provisions of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or how the Internet can be made more accessible to people who are deaf or blind, I squeezed into rooms to hear people with publishing credits that steal my breath away talk about YA fiction or the ramifications about writing about your family or literature as a force for social justice. I was in a candy store, and the rooms with tables upon tables of publishers and writing organizations was like stepping into a Fannie Mae or Hershey’s factory showroom.
Jill was the StoryStudio rep, and I idly picked up a flier. “Why, this is right in my neighborhood!” I exclaimed, noting that I was an addicted writer but how solitary the profession was.
“Then we’re right here for you!” was her reply.
Since then, I’ve attended writeathons and a couple of one-night classes and an Author Talk presentation by YA authors detailing their road to publication. (I bought and read Simone Elkeles’s Perfect Chemistry and found it to be just that--perfect!) I attended the Beaux Arts party and listened to Molly read the hilarious prologue of her YA novel. But I hadn’t shared any of my own writing and felt a little bit like an imposter--"Sure she haunts writeathons--but can she write?” As a writer with an impressive stack of rejections (including some “good” ones), I love sharing my work, so when Lisa (StoryStudio events coordinator) announced the potluck reading, I immediately signed up. 
On March 22, readers and audience gathered in a corner of the studio, sofa and comfy arm chairs arranged in a circle--with a special chair designated “the throne” for the on-the-spot reader. We munched on snacks, including my homemade Irish bread. Three members read fiction: a YA novel excerpt about a dysfunctional family being televised for reality TV; literary science fiction about a woman who realizes from a photograph that she’s lost a significant memory and consults a psychic/mechanic; and a poetic work, “I am Lane,” about a sociopath, hinting that all of us listeners and readers are, too, sociopaths. I read memoir excerpts about two best friends who have died, hoping to show how their light lives on. Reading about Jennie and Maggie was intense; I found myself shaking afterwards. But what a creative, encouraging group--what a positive experience! (And afterwards, my 18-year-old son celebrated with me at our neighborhood Mexican restaurant!)
It’s only a little more than a year, but I’m glad I attended that AWP conference and walked past that StoryStudio table. I’m hoping that StoryStudio hosts more potluck readings--I’ll bring the Irish bread--and I hope more members join the fun!
About Diane:
I am a curriculum designer and writer for the Hadley School for the Blind, and my six-word memoir ("The Bobbsey Twins Saved My Life") is in SMITH Magazine’s “It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.” I live blocks away from StoryStudio with my 18-year-old son (who’s getting ready to zoom off to college) and three feline muses. Currently, a friend and I are working on a comedy about hexing exes for Script Frenzy.
