Savvy 19: Writing in circles

In college, John McPhee told us to think about the shape of our stories. My first thought was Concrete Poetry, you know, when you shape the letters into the thing you are creating... turning the C of car into a front bumper and the first part of the roof and then the sloping a into the back window and the r into the hatch? cAr.... vroom. But that's not what he meant. He meant something even more different-er than Roland Merullo (oh, yes, I am dropping names of teachers here ... this is very prestigious stuff. . . how many fantastic teachers can one person have before she starts to show a hint of talent by virtue of some sort of contagion?) Anyway, Roland talked differently about the shape of stories- arc and tension and so on. McPhee was talking, as McPhee is wont to do - about the geography of the story. What is it? Is it a circle? Is it a straight line? Is it (gasp) some other shape - a cube, say, or a Pentagon? The geographer in him could find shape in everything we read - everything that worked, that is.

And this week's trauma is that I realized (both suddenly and wretchedly belatedly) that I don't KNOW what the shape of my story is. Default: Circle. Because Harry Chapin said so. He said, to be precise, "All my life's a circle." His life is presumably what he meant. Not to be morose or anything, but it seems to me his life ended too quickly to be considered a circle. But then again, he died changing a tire... helping someone else go around... My mind procrastinates for me, you see, even while I am trying to sit and write.

A friend of mine here suggested that I just sit down and begin. And begin again. And I have done just that. I have written the first "chapter" of this story now four (4) times, and each time I start in our house in Maine and get to the end of the driveway. Except for one version in which I got through customs (with some effort) and then looped back to the driveway and back into the house. Begin again. Begin again.

I had the craziest idea yesterday about where this story begins... that it doesn't begin in Maine at all (maybe that's why I can't get out of the driveway). It begins in New Jersey, and then Taiwan. And then ... oh, sorry, I nodded off there for a moment... Maybe if I were Bill Clinton it would be interesting to note where I'd rested my head every night for the past 20 years.

New start. Maybe this story takes the shape of a pin drop. Vuop. That has drama. Speed. Tension even. (Where's the pin going to land? What if it lands on my toe?). But then I'd have to answer THIS prickly question: Where am I now?

I have this vision of a time line....certain dates, with loops back to certain other dates. The way kids learn math, drawing little arcs from the number ten... back three... to seven.... Or maybe (it will puzzle you how I could come up with this idea - this story should take the shape of many many crinkled up pieces of paper scattered on a floor....)

I will begin again, now. In a new place. No doubt with fresh, exciting ideas that lead... somewhere. I am writing, my dear mosquitoes. Writing in circles. Which is okay, you see, because I once had a teacher who instructed us to think about stories in terms of their shape, and I wondered whether maybe mine should take the shape of a tear drop in the Indian Ocean...