Where Do Our Essays Go? What Happens When They Return Back to Us?
Writing + Life = Magic.
Writers are persons obsessed with solving problems of their own creation. We generate material. Then we need to fix it. I assume this is the case for all artists, but my personal experience is limited to words and movement (writing and dance).
As we write and revise, attention is paid to where we begin and where we end. For those of us writing memoir and/or personal essay, our lived experience is always greater than the story at hand—narrative art demands limits; limits require choices; choices emerge from a mix of intentional and unconscious processes. The writer both knows and does not know herself. Every mark on the page is an attempt to learn who we are and what our material is about, but we never fully arrive at some final destination of divine wisdom. Even so, we need to start and stop somewhere.
This is more challenging than it sounds, especially for the writer of creative nonfiction. As she narrates, her story keeps expanding in real time. Plot twists in one’s actual life can impact a work in progress. This is one reason book length projects intimidate me.
I can imagine writing my way toward the final paragraphs when suddenly, life shifts with enough force to render all my previous meaning-making obsolete.
Essay-length work feels less risky in this way, which isn’t to say that a work of shorter length takes less time. I have a piece of flash memoir coming out in Hippocampus Magazine this month. It’s just 475 words, but it took me 35 years to write.
In any case, whether we decide to use compression or an expansive canvas for our words, we must decide on borders and perimeters. Where and when will the piece start? Where and when will it end?
Much can be said about where we draw the line between one story and the next, but for this post, I’m going to be talking beyond narrative structure. What I want to explore is how stories beget stories. I’ve always been fascinated how our essays, carved from personal history and illuminated by a narrative presence in the present, also carry potential for an infinite future. Once we start sharing our work, whether by publishing in literary magazines or mainstream media outlets or on Substack, our stories transcend us. They even move beyond themselves.
If you’ve done your job as an artist, then yes, your piece is held tight by the choices you’ve made. At the same time, once that story gets launched into the world—and this might happen prior to publication as well (perhaps you share it with a critique partner or its under submission somewhere)—the story attracts energy, gaining propulsion.
This is inevitable.
Our work will collide with other minds, triggering new ideas and feelings, but it’s not our business, and it’s not even possible to track everything that happens as a result of our artistic contributions. Will we influence a marital dispute somewhere across the country? Or motivate an adult child to reach out to a long-estranged parent? The potential is infinite.
Of course, some readers do reach out to us, and when that happens, we find ourselves in an extended tale—one that is not part of our original piece but that exists in direct connection to it. Then what?
Certainly, there’s no mandate to keep trailing a narrative thread that’s plucked from one’s already finished tapestry, but sometimes, the lure is irresistible.
In this month’s issue of The Sun, I have a piece of flash memoir published in the Readers Write section. The theme is “Chores.” It’s a tiny narrative about the year my husband replaced our daughter’s betta fish each time it died with an aquatic imposter. He got good at matching each new purchase to each former fish. He didn’t want her to suffer any grief.
I took an opposite parenting approach, and when the fish was gone for good, I came to a new realization. If you’d like to read it, I’ll post a link here. This is a picture of where my essay starts, so you can find it more easily while scrolling:
This itty bitty essay ended up launching a new personal story. It happened when the editor at The Sun first emailed me with the news that my piece was accepted.
I was at Mt. Sinai hospital in Manhattan where my husband, Tomer, was a patient in the cardiac ICU. Tomer had gone in for his second open heart surgery in two years. We’d hoped for a mitral valve repair, but he ended up with a replacement.
It’s a horrible procedure—but there we were again. This time, my husband was losing so much blood afterward, he required numerous transfusions. On the day following his surgery, the rounding physician told me that they were monitoring for a surgical bleed. That they might need to go back in again.
Then, the blood drains suddenly dried up, but he kept needing transfusions. I expressed concern. I questioned the nurses. They told me not to worry—I should be happy that his chest drains were no longer flowing. But he had gone from an above average amount of output to suddenly…nothing? And he kept needing transfusions. Tomer had an additional three or four after the blood stopped pouring out. Why?
His chest drains needed to be regularly “stripped” so that the outpouring blood would keep flowing. I never saw anyone working on him to prevent clotting. When I addressed my concerns to one nurse, she rolled her eyes and told me not to worry. “That's why we have him on blood thinners.”
On his third post-operative day, Tomer experienced a clinical emergency. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, his oxygen levels fell, and his blood pressure soared. He suffered what he would later describe as three hours of the most excruciating pain in his 51 years.
It turned out that he hadn’t stopped bleeding. The blood was clotted (as I’d feared) and building up inside the clogged drains. With nowhere to go, sheer force ultimately broke through the clot, causing the freed blood to move in two directions, simultaneously: Some came pouring down the tubes where the attached blood collection receptacle couldn’t hold the volume exploding out of him. The remaining blood backed up into one of his lungs. It was a clinical emergency, but it wasn’t the worst case scenario.
Later that evening, the rounding doctor told me how lucky he was. If the blood had backed up around his heart, instead of into his lung, he could’ve died.
I refused to leave that night. I didn’t trust the staff to keep him alive. I wanted to keep watch over him. When visiting hours ended, a hospital administrator was called to handle me. She told me to leave.
“No way,” I said. “You’ll have to get someone to drag me out in handcuffs.”
She told me that the danger had passed. I told her she didn’t understand the danger that remained. If not for him, then for me.
I had brain surgery in 2020 and now manage lingering seizure activity. I’m on medication, but I hadn’t slept for days. My nervous system was out of control. I couldn’t clam down, despite having kept calm during all our previous medical procedures, even my pandemic craniotomy.
I told the administrator that my head was about to explode, and if she didn’t let me sleep there, my devastating seizure was going to end up on her head as well.
That did it. She let me stay for the night.
I settled into the recliner. My husband was asleep. I must’ve had my own clogged up situation building up because when my tears finally erupted, I cried until I’d used up all the available moisture in my body. I also have an autoimmune disease that causes severe dryness, so I needed to hydrate. I was finally sleepy, but my eyes felt like sandpaper was scratching my pupils. How would I stay awake long enough to replenish? I used eye-drops and decided to check my email while I chugged some water.
I hadn’t checked my messages in days, but as soon as I opened my account, the first email I spotted was from an editor at The Sun. They’d accepted my itty bitty piece.
This felt like magic. Not because of the acceptance itself, but because of what the flash essay was about. If you read the piece (linked above), you know that it’s about my husband’s desire to protect our daughter from loss and grief.
I decided to interpret the acceptance as a sign. I didn’t care if I was guilty of magical thinking—I’d needed a miracle, and when it arrived, I believed it was there to comfort me. Surely, Tomer wasn’t about to die after that. He’d protected our daughter from the death of a fish. He couldn’t possibly leave me. At least, not yet.
If you’re a writer who has submitted to literary magazines, you know how long response times run—I hadn’t even been wondering about that particular submission anymore.
And so, my tiny fish story swam back to me when I most needed it. I finally fell asleep after that.
One might argue that I’m assigning all the meaning here, and to that charge, I would agree. Of course I am. But that is what we writers do all the time. We are taking our life and sculpting sense and meaning and beauty out of it. We claim our lives in ways that work for us.
I’d love to hear from other writers who’ve experienced a similar experience with a story already sent out into the world. Tell me about a time one came back to you. How did it return? And what meaning did you find in it?
Thanks for reading.
All the best,
Jen xoxo
The magic pours out when you write. You are an amazing writer, warrior and advocate.
Beautiful and heart wrenching and uplifting…a magical piece!