PENNY.
“Writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”—Mary Heaton Vorse.
Penny got up at five fifteen a.m. No matter when she closed her eyes, they snapped open before six. These days it was a blessing, seeing as she needed a quiet moment to write. She hadn’t had to do that before—find time. And she wondered lately if tapping out little blue bubbles to Sam was somehow sucking her inspiration well dry. Penny feared that she’d used up her best stuff on him, and her mind wandered constantly. It didn’t help that a pert little antenna stayed vigilantly trained on her phone, scanning the airwaves to see if he needed company or was having a mini crisis.
Penny threw on a sweatshirt and cracked open her laptop.
Henry Miller, whose middle name was Valentine and who when he died was married to a Japanese woman, said, “Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterward.” Penny wondered where marrying came in, considering Miller had five wives. She also wondered where workshopping Sam’s drama fell in terms of priorities. For Penny, it was sizing up to be “text first and always.”
SAM HOUSE
Sunday 4:14 PM
What do you love about your writing class
Nothing. I hate it
Also i love it
Obvs
Say more
OK
Penny cracked her knuckles. She’d hooked up iMessage to her laptop so she could type as much as she wanted without her fingers falling off.
It’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to feeling like a writer
A real one
You sit there and you have to do it
Everyone is capable of putting words down
Or telling a story
But not everyone will actually do it
This class is about the doing
And getting better
feels professional
Not like a normal college class
Where you learn things you’ll never apply
Sam didn’t say anything.
No thought bubble, no interruption, no nothing. Penny went on:
You know how you can make a sound on a piano
Anyone with fingers can do it
Intuitive
You hit keys
they make noise
Writing and reading then rewriting and then
editing is how you make a melody
It’s the same for everyone
It’s not about raw talent
Or having such a big ego that you think what you have to say is so important
Or who your parents are
And what they do
It’s the practice of it
Doing it until you’re good
And then because she felt self-conscious:
Does that make sense?
Totally
And I get it
What do you hate about it?
Penny started writing back. And then stopped.
She took another stab at it.
It’s so haaaaaaaaaaard
It hurts my feelings it’s so hard
And it’s scary
ahaha
WELL YEAH
Guess that’s what makes it worth doing?
It’s as scary as you can get
Writers die trying
Do you call yourself a writer?
Ew no
Why ew?
I feel like a fraud
Yeah imposter syndrome
Penny Googled “imposter syndrome.”
Informally used to describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments despite external evidence of their competence.
It can mess you up
for sure
It undoubtedly applied to her.
I just . . .
. . .
She tried again.
I haven’t ever seen a writer
A big deal writer
who looks like me
And sometimes when I write
I imagine the hero as white
Like automatically
How fucked is that
Penny stopped. She’d never told anyone that before. She wondered how that worked in movies.
She wrote back:
Why do you want to make movies?
UGH IDK
Ever think you’ll jinx it when you talk about it?
YES
Def have imposter syndrome
Making movies is for rich people
It’s so ridic to say you want to be a director
May as well say you want to be in the NBA
Or famous
Or the inventor of an app
Right. The app that invents apps!
Penny smiled.
So you want to be a writer
And I want to make movies
Feels corny to say out loud
But that’s OK
It’s important to at least admit it to yourself
And to a few trusted people
Your emergency contact for example
Lol exactly
Then you make it real
Penny loved how unselfconsciously he said that. From anyone else it would sound self-helpy.
PS: I want to read your work someday
Only if I get to see your movie
Fat chance
Penny laughed. There was no way she was going to let Sam read anything she wrote. J.A. didn’t count since she was her professor, and neither did the kids in class. Everyone’s guts were splayed out on the table. It was mutually assured destruction.
One time Jude tried to read over Penny’s shoulder and she’d been apoplectic.
“ ‘The terrors lay cold and caged at the bottom of the deep’?”
“Jude!” Penny shrieked, slamming her laptop shut. “You can’t do that. It’s a gross invasion of privacy.” Penny sprang up out of her chair, clutching her computer to her chest.
“Whoa,” said Jude, big-eyed. “Holy shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d wig. Don’t you think you should get used to someone reading it, since the eventual goal is public consumption?”
She had a point.
But Penny was scared of what her stories revealed. The constructive criticism from class—even on the tiniest points—ruined her day, and Jude was enough in her business without getting access to Penny’s thoughts as well.
For her final she was plotting out a story inspired by the true events of a Korean couple that accidentally neglected their baby to death. It was all over the papers in Korea and the sad part was that it happened because the parents were obsessively playing a video game where the whole point—of all things—was to raise a child. Their real-life baby’s name was Sa-Rang, which means “love” in Korean. Everything about the story was tragic and fascinating, and for class Penny wanted to write two narratives, story A from the viewpoint of the mom and B from the perspective of the baby in the video game. It was a story within a story, the way Watchman contained Tales of the Black Freighter, a comic about pirates. Penny was enthralled by the origami of the form except she couldn’t figure it out. Write one first? Or both at the same time?
In class, the story confused everyone.
“Is the main character the Tamagotchi baby or the mom?” asked Maya. Maya was the mixed girl who’d talked about Kardashian hair on the first day and was writing a ghost story about the Santa Ana winds.
“Both,” Penny said. “And it’s not a Tamagotchi. It’s a Sims baby or a clan in Clash of Clans.”
“Whatever,” said Maya. “They’re both wicked unlikable.”
“Oh, because a weather phenomenon that’s on a murder spree is so likable,” retorted Andy, the British-Chinese kid. Penny shot him a grateful look. He smiled.
Penny didn’t know what was so hard about sympathizing with a computer-generated video game character or a Korean woman, but that seemed to be the general consensus.
Penny started out with the mother talking to her lawyer. That much she felt was solid. It was a secure, accessible place from which to world-build. She figured she’d lull the reader into a false sense of security—begin as Law & Order that transmogrifies into The Matrix without warning.
She made herself a cup of tea, sat back down, and tried to imagine the woman’s appearance. Penny began by picturing her hair. Did Korean women get soccer-mom haircuts? Penny settled on giving the mom a bob and dressed her in a gray maternity dress. According to the papers, she was pregnant again by the time she and her husband were sentenced.
What did this woman want? Did she feel bad? How bad? As bad as you should if you ignore your baby to death? How engrossing can a video game be that you forget your baby?
“I am not a bad mother,” said the wife. Mrs. Kim was subdued, with no makeup, and her lips were chapped. Her hand shook as she drank from the white paper cup. She was diminutive and of indeterminate age. As he flipped through her file, he saw she was younger than her husband by twenty years. She’d gone to a good school yet had never held down a job. Mrs. Kim met her husband at an Internet café, and according to witnesses, they were affectionate and companionable.
“I’m not a bad mother,” she repeated in a daze. “I loved my babies more than anything.” She took a sharp intake of breath and corrected herself. “Baby.”
The lawyer glanced up from his notes. The wife’s chin trembled. He jotted down that she still considered the video game baby to be real.
J.A. advised the class on “voice” and how a good way to work through a story was to make it sound as if you were explaining it to a friend over e-mail.
Penny figured texting was as good.
SAM HOUSE
Yesterday 1:13 AM
Wait
Hold on
I want to ask you something
Don’t be offended
Haha does that ever work?
Nope!
Fine
Say it
Be nice though
Writers are sensitive
How does your story count as fiction?
This woman exists
The couple’s real
Sam found a documentary on the couple and they’d watched it together. Not in the same room. Just at the same time, while texting. Every article and TV segment treated them as though they were Internet oddities or space aliens. The documentary, in particular, may as well have been about talking dogs the way they presented the parents. Penny wondered if the perverse fascination would have been as extreme if it had happened in America. A country, by the way, where a guy in Minnesota tried to raise his kid to speak Klingon.
That’s why I want to write about the baby in the
video game as well
That’s the fiction part
The fantasy
Does the baby inside know that the real baby is dying?
IDK if the video game baby cares
Collateral damage etc
Jesus that’s dark
Is it though?
VG baby lives in constant violence
That’s why SF’s the greatest
You make the rules
San Francisco?
No dork
SCIENCE FICTION
SAID THE DORK WHO CAPS LOCKS science fiction
Hahahhahaha
Fair
I like this
I can’t wait to find out what video game baby wants
Penny couldn’t either.
J.A.’s homework schedule was no joke. Every week there was a new short story due, and for those Penny wrote about squirrel crime mobs, post-apocalyptic plagues that only took out people over nineteen, colleges in the future where the entrance exams were assassinations, and a Buddhist who died and came back as a toy. Building a world where you rappel in, set up some characters, and ejector seat your way out was a breeze.
J.A. had no patience for breezy, and when she called Penny in for office hours, she told her as much. Her teacher’s room was filled with succulents in rainbow-glass planters, and Penny halfway expected her teacher to extend an offer of friendship she was so pleased with her last story. It was about a crew of powerful moguls and politicians who were set adrift in a spaceship since the planet they were destined for wasn’t where they’d thought it would be. The astrophysicist eggheads they’d left behind had been wrong. These men were the 1 percent of the 1 percent who had abandoned the rest of civilization, and still their billions couldn’t save them. The universe had told them the first no of their lives, and the fight scene was hilarious.
“These are great,” said J.A. began, “but . . .”
Penny hadn’t been expecting a “but.” She braced herself.
“They’re rhythmically one-note,” J.A. continued. “You’re inventive and funny—that’s clear on the page. I want you to work on character motivation. I can’t invest in protagonists when I don’t know what they want, and just as important, why they want it.”
Penny felt color rising on her neck. That wasn’t fair. It was clear what the men in the spaceship wanted.
“They want their planet,” Penny said. She cringed at the whiny pitch she was taking.
“Well, yes,” continued J.A. “They all want that. Humans want to live, that’s a given. The issue is they want the same thing in the same way, and that’s a missed opportunity. You’ve got world leaders here. They’re captains of industry. They’re singular men, but look . . .” J.A. circled some passages. “They speak the same. I’m only picking on you because your excellent dialogue and glitter-bomb observations won’t save you for the final.”
It was clear Penny’s sweet spot was two or three pages. The last story they’d had to write was twenty thousand words. Longer than anything she’d ever written. Penny usually wrote to escape, so her worlds were fantastic and, well, apparently one-note.
Penny thought she knew what her characters wanted. It was trickier to deduce why they wanted anything. And a different proposition entirely to say how they’d get it. Hell, Penny had no idea what she wanted. Why would her inventions fare any better?
Plus, there were so many distractions. Ergo, getting up at five fifteen this morning.
Penny planned to hammer out her three acts, handwritten on note cards, so she could visualize scenes and move them around. Except that as she fanned out her color-coded three-by-fives, she realized that her nails were disgusting. The puny chips of lacquer were sad little archipelagos of poison that were probably falling into her food. She took out the nail kit her mom got her as a stocking stuffer every Christmas and removed the polish.
Penny didn’t want to admit how much she resembled her mother in these moments. It was classic Celeste, to do nails instead of what she was supposed to be doing. It struck Penny that she missed Celeste at the oddest times. Often the most baffling parts of her, too. The way her mom’s rib cage felt when she hugged her from behind. Or how the curly hair of her econ prof reminded her so much of Celeste during lectures. If only there were a way of seeing her mom without either of them having to talk. When Penny’s nails were bare she figured she should wash her hair. There was nothing worse than ruining a fresh manicure with an ill-timed shower.
While Penny stood under the spray she noticed that because their dorm bathroom didn’t have a window, a thin layer of mildew had formed in the caulk. That itself was tolerable, except then mold was a foregone conclusion and that stuff could kill you. An hour and a half later she was clean, the shower stall was spotless, her nails were a matte slate gray, and she was ready. She put pants on so she could apply the seat of them to the chair.
This is what she had so far:
The baby in the game was known as an Anima so she wrote down “Anima.”
Then she Wikipedia’d it since that’s the first order of business when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
Anima meant “soul,” or “animating principle.” According to the psychologist Carl Jung, Anima also implied the unseen individual, the true inner self.
Penny didn’t have a ton of experience playing online role-playing games like the one in the story. She knew, though, that Overwatch and World of Warcraft were huge in Korea—PC games that were played so competitively and obsessively that tournaments filled arenas and people went into rehab for addiction.
Regardless, what was true of all games was that there had to be a task, a pursuit. So she wrote down “quest” in her favorite ultra-fine rollerball black pen.
God, she loved that word.
She underlined “quest.” Such a euphonic word. Quessssst.
Oooh, “odyssey” was a good word too, but she’d already underlined quest.
She added a question mark.
Then she took out another note card and simply wrote: How does the hero get what they want?
J.A.’s words nagged at her.
First, Penny had to set up the rules. The main part of the game was that the hero or the player character had to raise a baby, or the Anima. The Anima was the trusted sidekick and you could dress them up and give them weapons but most importantly you kept them safe from harm. The mom, Mrs. Kim, played as a Gunslinger. A ruthless sharpshooting outlaw. There were adventures and sieges and even a dragon slaying. The dragon battle was a real barn burner and at the very last second before all was lost, the Anima would make its greatest sacrifice—its life—to save the Gunslinger and beat their mortal enemy. That was the deal since time immemorial.
In Penny’s version, the baby changed its mind because it could.
That an Anima even had a mind to change was a miracle.
And the cost of the miracle had been the couple’s real-life baby. A digital tit for tat.
Okay, focus. So who’s the hero, the Anima or the mother? It was the Anima since she changes the most. But why?
Penny thought about the event that starts a story—the inciting incident—that they’d talked about in class. It’s the Big Bang (well, unless you’re a religious creationist type). It’s like how Katniss’s sister is picked for the Hunger Games but Katniss steps in for her. Or how Nitro exploding kills six hundred people, which leads to the Superhuman Registration Act that causes civil war in the Marvel U. The Anima needed a Eureka moment, a turning point.
“I’ll miss you.” The Gunslinger bent down on one knee and kissed the Anima on the cheek.
“I’ll miss you,” parroted the Anima back, smiling sweetly. The dutiful baby knew it was best to repeat whatever Mother said.
The Gunslinger chuckled, gathering up the Anima in her arms. “Do you know what that means, my sweet daughter? To miss?” The Gunslinger was feared in four kingdoms for her unflinching kills, but in private she spoiled her child.
The Anima shook her head.
“It means I’ll think about you all the time and wish you were close even when I’m not here.”
“I’ll miss you,” said the Anima again as she watched Mother go.
What did it mean, “here”? The Anima was always “here.” Where was not “here”? That there was such a thing as “un-here” bore a hole in the Anima’s head. She hated when Mother was in the “un-here.”
On the next evening, as Mother departed, the Anima followed her into the woods. It was forbidden to leave the Atrium without the Gunslinger’s say-so, but the Anima had to know. It was a moonless night and the Anima was afraid of the dark shapes and Mother’s wrath if she were caught, when suddenly, in the pitch black, the Anima heard voices. Loud ones from the sky. With a flash of white light the heavens opened and high above even the treetops, higher than all five peaks of Mount Meru, the Anima saw a face as big as the sun. Mother. This was the “un-here” that Mother went when she missed the Anima.
This spark of curiosity and the pursuit of answers was the Anima’s quest. This altered her fate and intertwined it with the Mother’s real-life child beyond the computer. The Anima could see the “un-here” from the PC camera and speakers. And the more she realized about herself, the more she became curious about the world she inhabited. This was enlightenment. Sentience. This was life.
Penny took notes, read everything over, and wondered if any of it constituted writing. Somehow it was seven forty. Twenty minutes to get to class, and Sam had texted good morning an hour ago. Maybe she should scribble out a story about an irresistible computer algorithm that haunted her phone and made her fall in love with it until she lost her mind and climbed into the shower hugging a still-plugged-in blow-dryer. Now, that would be believable.