Stories are questions, not answers...

As I sit to write a narrative I believe will be about the tragedy of 9/11, I am drawn first by the details of the day. Crystal clear blue sky. Crisp autumn air. Brilliant sunshine.  I return to where I was when I heard the news.  School. Third graders. Laughter, chatting, jostling.  I think about smells. The fresh air, not a hint of humidity. Clean, September school smell. So I sit and write believing I have the answer – the point. But as the story unfolds new details come to my brain. Details I can’t leave out. It was Cory’s birthday. The kids were jostling because they were giving Cory his birthday punches. Now the story takes a twist. I continue to write but include more about the students. Writing workshop. It’s quiet when I receive the first bit of news; a plane has crashed into the pentagon. I wince but don’t yet understand the enormity of this news until the principal comes in and tells me about New York. I want to turn on my radio but there are 22 little faces looking at me, wondering if we will share our morning writing, wondering why there is so much activity in our classroom.Is this what I want to say? Why does this matter? Why do I remember these details?

My writing stops. More questions. How do I explain the enormity of this issue? How do I relate how this day changed my worldview? How do I express the raw feelings I had and still have when I consider this event? More questions, not answers. How to continue? Where will this lead?

In his book What a Writer Needs, Ralph Fletcher quotes novelist Richard Price, “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.”  Price suggests you don’t write about the horrors of war, but instead you tell about the burnt socks lying on the road.  What telling detail can I use that will exemplify the loss I felt that day? What will show the fear and anguish I witnessed on the faces of colleagues?

A few years ago I worked with a student whose father had committed suicide. She wrote in her notebook about the morning he was discovered. I feared what she would write. Her words still echo in my brain. “The first thing I noticed were his shoes, still at the door, where they shouldn’t have been at this time of day.”  She reminds me to look for the small telling detail.

I return to my story and begin redrafting noticing the small details; the sky, the birthday necklace, and loss. I wonder if these details will leave my reader with more questions, and I hope so.