Gloves Off: Auri Muir For Real

Plus a Word to the Wise

Ah, First the Word of Warning

Originally, I’d planned to edit yesterday’s post and repost it with today’s feedback. In order to activate the SpellCheck feature I’d need to toggle from the edited draft to the Dash, then back to my editing. That was my plan after a few hours of typeboarding about Auri’s great chapter, but the Edit function for existing posts does not save a draft copy. The moment I toggled, the day’s work was lost.

Such a nostalgic agony! It felt like the 90s “I forgot to hit SAVE” era.

Live and learn. It’s worth twice the effort because today’s submission demonstrates so many things we’ve discussed. Hats off. As usual, please read the chapter as originally posted here. For now, let’s get to work.

Chapter One

They always knock before dropping off the food because he tells them to. They wait for me to step out in my pajamas, nipples hard against the thinning fabric of my tank top, toes scraping against the doormat that still says ‘Tis The Season even though it’s April. Sometimes they hand it to me directly, but usually they’ve backed up a few feet, the tightly sealed bag with all of its contents waiting for me to bow in gratitude as I retrieve it, pretending not to notice my picture being taken. He insists that I am always in the frame, or they won’t receive a tip. Of course this makes me feel important, alive even. I’ve only ever felt like a real person when someone was watching. 

My Feedback: Let’s recognize that making the extraordinary seem ordinary is a gift. That is the goal. Right away, we can see that this is a sort-of “system story” like Fight Club and like so much of George Saunders. We’re going to see a system demonstrated, and we’ll watch a person doing something unusual as if it were run-of-the-mill. In Fight Club I refer to the rules of Project Mayhem as “the bureaucracy of anarchy” and the paradox inherent in that is always appealing. Madness that people accept as normal.

In the case of Saunders it might be a married couple who work as Stone Age people in an exhibition. Here it’s someone who’s working to monetize every spare moment of intimacy in a world where intimacy is bought and sold. A terrific theme.

First, let’s beware the gerund. Any time you catch yourself using the “ing” form of a verb you’re generalizing instead of depicting one specific event. Because this is an opening, crafted to lure us with specific movements we can follow, it might work better to avoid “always” and “dropping,” and instead to create this moment as if it’s unique. We’ll very quickly see that this is NOT unique. Especially if the narrator seems to anticipate the action — is waiting at the door’s peephole, for instance. Or we see the trash already heaped with duplicate take-out orders. Or, we see the narrator blase and enacting some tried-and-true method for getting erect nipples.

The point is: Can you stay in the specific moment? Make this morning seem fresh to us, while also making the narrator seem aware of what’s become a bankable ritual?

He follows up with some text message complimenting my hair or my outfit, real polite. There’s never anything vulgar or explicit, not with Leonard. I respond with a photo of the goods, and even though every morning I order the same full fat matcha latte with an egg and cheese bagel, he asks what I think. He wants me to describe the dairy to him specifically, some perversity he developed because he’s one of the over ninety percent Chinese who are naturally lactose intolerant. We all want something we can’t have. I tell him it’s delicious as always, refraining from putting any real effort into my description. He doesn’t push back. I like that about him, his deference.

My Feedback: Can we see the specific message from Leonard? Few things ground us in reality like a quote does. If the delivery person or Leonard says something specific it will help anchor this event in the real world. As it stands, everything is so heavily filtered through the narrator that an actual quote would explode off the page.

Please be careful about not dictating the causal relationships. If you simply drop in the fact that Asians tend to be lactose intolerant you allow the reader to connect the dots. So any time you catch yourself using a “thought” verb like because he’s one of check to make sure you’re not overtly stating a causative relationship you can allow your reader to determine. Insider tip: This will also avoid the minefield of generalizing based on race or other factors. If you just state details, and you allow your reader to decide the causative factors, you force them to make the iffy judgement.

So, STEER the judgement. Just butt details together. Avoid dictating their relationship.

Something important: Smell. If you just open that bag, sniff the food, depict the richness and allure… you can hook your reader as effectively as pornography hooks them. Can you give us the heat of that bag? The weight of it? The warm scent that rises from the top? Smell gets your story in under the reader’s radar. This is your excuse to go buy some glorious food and just smell it. Note every aspect of it — then throw it away.

First, you create the expectation. Then, you thwart it. Tease the reader. Promise this amazing food, then subvert the expectation. That tease will deeper the trance.

Consider that the take-out food is also your gun. We’ll revisit this soon.