Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

When the story opens we understand almost immediately that this is about identity. Paul stands there grinning with the flowers behind his back, and our first assumption is that he's come for the narrator, Lilly. We do not feel cheated, however, when we realize he's here for someone else; that moment of confusion sets up for us exactly what's going to happen. Paul does — beautiful irony here — put the make on her, and the irony is repeated and twisted at the end, where her sister invents the story of Paul being Lilly's boyfriend. So beginning, middle, and end are tied up brilliantly in that way.

And the issue of identity recurs, recomposes. "I was getting the baby dressed to go when Sheila…" Again, we don't realize at first that it's not Lilly's baby, and then we do. Oh, it's her baby. Then we find that Lilly is covering for the sister, Sheila, who's fucking her boyfriend behind her husband's back, and Lilly is taking care of the child in ways her sister doesn't. Paul follows Sheila, commenting on her beauty and her ass, and Lilly just shrugs. Sheila's always been beautiful. Then come the wonderful scenes in which Lilly examines her own body, carrying a stepladder into the bathroom and looking in the mirror, and we see she has quite a different kind of body from Sheila's. We already know that she has compared herself unfavorably to Sheila, and also that she used to borrow Sheila's clothes — pretending to be Sheila, maybe? And the baby looks like Lilly. She's having to be mother to the baby, and the boyfriend's after her, and yet she's not what she feels Sheila is. These are wonderful issues of identity.

Rita's poetic sense is quite clear here too. When you're really working well, a single word choice can reveal your motif. "And I sit on the couch, capturing one of Gracie's feet at a time" — brilliant verb—"and screwing the little sneakers down onto each" — another great verb.

Notice that Lilly likes to "pretend I'm shopping for my own home. I'll have a beautiful home and Gracie will come over in the afternoons when she's a teenager like I am now and ask me for advice and tell me about how she can't get along with her mom and I'll listen but of course I won't say a word against my sister." That complexity of relationship is fabulous. "Gracie won't talk about killing herself because she'll know she always has my house to come to and me to listen to her." How many writers of less serious talent would try to get at Lilly's dark side in some direct way—"Oh, I feel like killing myself sometimes," blah blah blah — but we know she's talking about herself here. Who else would she be talking about? Why otherwise would she want her own place to be a refuge for Gracie? We know that she's talking about her own distress, and at the same time the lines subtly convey Lilly's personal strength. These abstractions I'm using are woefully inadequate.

There's subtext in all the dialogue. There's not a line of dialogue that isn't working on more than one level. Here's a good montage for you: "He leans closer and says, his voice thick now, 'You're a virgin, aren't you?'" How many inexperienced writers would follow that line with: "Oh. " and whatever reactions she has to follow. But here it's "I get up and lock myself up in the bathroom." Cut.

Plot too plays itself out subtly, deftly. Because of Paul's line, Lilly locks herself in the bathroom, which means Sheila can't take her shower, so she douses herself with perfume, and feels compelled to make up a story about the flowers, and now Lilly has the confidence to take advantage of that, and so forth. It all fits beautifully together.

Consider the flashback with Lilly sitting in the bathroom while Sheila's in the tub. Again, it's all about bodies. Sheila's just ripping into Lilly for talking small talk.".. stupid shit. You talk and talk and talk about fucking nothing. Just like everyone else." It's a vivid, unexpected moment, and that scene ends in the present time in the tub when Lilly looks at her own hand in this clinically close way, again pulling it back to a consciousness of her own self, an identity in her own body.

And yet again: evoking identity in a weird transposition of roles — Gracie is saying, "Iddy Diddy Diddy Diddy" and Jack and Sheila try to convince themselves that she's trying to say "Daddy," whereas we all know that she's trying to say "Lilly." A brilliant stroke, consistent with yearning as the center of gravity for this story.

I do have a problem with the very ending. The story does not resolve itself in the terms it's been set up in. This is really about who Lilly is, not about who Sheila is. And we have this little burst of abstract, very reductive analysis that she hands over to Sheila. The gesture, "I'm not going to play this fucking game anymore," is fine, but the abrupt assertion of the reason is not really the core of the story.

The last paragraph offers a lovely tableau, which might work with some other preparation, but — I'm not sure here. You need to let go of it and it'll come back if it needs to. The problem is in the penultimate paragraph. The narrator says, '"You're too good for him,' I stage whisper to Sheila, meaning Paul. 'I'm not taking the baby out anymore. I'm staying here. We don't need him.'" I don't feel the irony there. We need to get to it much more simply, maybe as simply as having Lilly lean down to Sheila and whisper, "I'm not taking Gracie anymore." I honestly think the fewer words the better. The rest of it is so beautifully indirect.

Don't get freaked by it, just work it out. Redream the ending and see if there's some other way. What I need, even if it's revealed in retrospect, is a sense of the moment in which she makes this decision. As it stands, I believe the decision, but looking back to see when she made it, I must go all the way back to the beginning of the scene. Even if she doesn't say, "You're too good for him," that's essentially the decision she has made, to be her own person, to dissociate herself from Sheila in this way. But the moment when this decision was actually made — it happened offstage somewhere. It's not just a matter of thinking Paul's an asshole and having an opportunity to say so to Sheila in this ironic, public way. It's more important than that, it has to do with her identity, so we also need a moment in which the decision is made. And indeed, such a decision, the simpler you make it, the more complex it becomes.

All the beats have to be there. This is where craft comes in. Once you get into your unconscious and are working from there, then you need to be sensitive to the rhythm of how things play out, the emotional logic, if you will. And at the end of this wonderful story, there's a step in the emotional logic that has been left out.

Rita: I had a lot of trouble with the first scene because I kept trying to put everything out of my head that I wanted to get into it, just let it go and let it come to me..

ROB: You know, that's a lesson of the universe… I call it sumo zen — did I tell you I'm a big sumo wrestling fan? I've got a second satellite just so I can get the sumo tournaments from TV Japan. And when the sumo wrestlers are interviewed, they always say the same thing — they barely move their lips— no matter what they're asked, it all boils down to "I'm going to do my brand of sumo, and I'm going to do my best." That's

it, folks. That's the lesson of the universe. You do your brand of sumo, and you do your best. And implicit in that concept is: you just let it go. And you let go to it, which in writing this story, Rita, you did. Whenever you try to take control, whenever you impose your will, whenever you start thinking your way into this stuff of fiction, not only do you not get control, you lose touch with the very things that are the most important to you and your work. But, you got it. You understood, you assimilated. [Applause.]