Yes, Who should be telling the story.

No, who is it that’s telling us the story?

Right. Who.

The style of writing we’re doing here in the writing track at Salt falls somewhere in the realm of creative non-fiction, narrative non-fiction, and documentary journalism. What we write is meant to tell a true story on an up close an intimate level, while also maintaining a level of craft and artistry. We approach our subjects with the idea that their stories and experiences are inherently valuable, and that they need to be told. But how should that figure into our craft?

For my approaches and issues archive project, I read a piece about a Shaker Community in a Salt magazine from 1984. The article included the stories and voices of quite a few members of that community, creating almost a montage. The tension in the story came from the discoveries the writer made as she navigated her way through this community. On her first visit, she arrives with a non-electric tape recorder, unsure whether Shakers use electricity. Her interviewee kindly calls her out on this assumption, and the reader comes to realize with her that we have lots of incorrect assumptions about what Shakers are all about.

I really appreciated this about her piece, in particular because I think the alternative would have been to impose a narrative structure on the community, which might have limited the breadth of the article, and created a tension in places where there wasn’t any.  I guess I am just dealing with my desire to document things that I think are inherently interesting, with the need to wrap all that information around a through-line or conflict. But at what point does that kind of structure impose on reality? And can introducing a first person perspective enhance a piece or be a vehicle to connect with readers or create immediacy? Or does it take away from the sense letting our subjects speak? Or can it be a way to actively listen?

So I just want to know, what’s the point of view?

What? No, uh What’s dramatic irony.

Who?

No! Who’s telling the story.

That’s what I want to know!

She writes:

“You set out to tell a story of some sort, to the tell truth as you feel it, because something is calling you do so.  It calls you like the beckoning finger of smoke in cartoons that rises off the pie cooling on the windowsill, slides under doors and into mouse holes or into the nostrils of the sleeping man or woman in the easy chair…But some days the smoke is faint and you just have to follow it as best as you can, sniffing away.  Still, even on those days, you might notice how great perseverance feels.  And the next day the scent may seem stronger—or it may just be that you are developing a quiet doggedness.  This is priceless.  Perfectionism will make you go mad” (31).

Writing is messy.  Every part of is like a huge flood.  And you have to figure out how you are going to fix the little cities and people you’ve made when it all overflows.  It seems broken and unfixable.  The brokenness is the beauty of the process.  Because if I can fix what ultimately feels broken, than I have succeed in giving my people a home on paper.

As the girls run, their shin-length dresses flounce to reveal uniform black socks and black, laced shoes. All of the dresses have the same cut, fitted waists, long sleeves, and collars, even Joy’s. One of the boy’s button-down shirts is coming un-tucked from his black pants. As Joy fields one of the younger girl’s hits, she stops the ball with her feet and a dusty thud. Woods border both sides of the lawn, and the children crunch through branches and reddening leaves to find the ball when someone hits a foul. When someone misses a catch, one of the boys runs across the street to retrieve it, barely concerned for cars on such a quiet street. Besides the principal, whose eggplant colored minivan crawled up the gravelly driveway mid-game, no one is here besides Joy and her fourteen students. Other houses peek through the thinning leaves, but the school seems to float in a place and time of its own.

-Kristen Hewitt, Writing