Make Space for Your Creepy Crawly Things (Chauna Intro) (11/07/2020)

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Introduction by Chauna Craig.

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If you don’t like spiders, don’t visit my house. I never squish them or spray the corners of rooms with insecticide or smother them in wads of toilet paper to flush away. When I see one lurking in the shower, I redirect the shower nozzle away from it, let it scramble to higher, drier ground. 

I don’t spare arachnids out of any Buddhist ethic or practical purpose, though spiders do feast on other insects I don’t want hanging around. I’m not morally opposed to swatting pantry moths and houseflies and mosquitoes. In fact, I sometimes enjoy obliterating the parasites that infest my quinoa or help themselves to my blood. My “live and let live” approach to spiders is rooted in two principles: 1) do no harm to that which isn’t harming you, and 2) find space in your psyche for the things that creep (you out) and crawl (into your subconscious). The first of these is, in my opinion, simply a good principle for relating in this world. The second embraces the value of confronting and admitting whatever surprises us in our own minds as foreign, other, a little strange and creepy.

I write this as someone who is currently working on long-form memoir and always turning the corners in my mind to find something I think of as ugly scuttling past. My instinct is to squish it, cover it with a paper towel, and bury it in the garbage where no one else can see. But working through this difficult memoir is teaching me that the creepy crawlies in my own psyche belong there. They are part of my story, part of any story worth writing or reading. 

When I am writing and suddenly recognize my own multi-legged shame fleeing to a corner of the narrative, I know that to crush it or rapidly retreat to another room is a kind of lie. A bold claim that my house is under my total control, no rogue invaders, nothing uninvited or unnerving. Real people I’ve met whose lives are that fiercely defended leave no room for me and my vulnerability, and so I don’t want to hang out with them. Why should a reader feel any differently about time spent with a narrator?

Mary Karr, in her excellent craft book,

The Art of Memoir

, writes, “We can accept anything from a memoirist except deceit, which is—almost always—a shallow person’s lack of self-knowledge.” Few writers set out to lie to their readers, but every human being struggles with the need to be seen in the best possible light. We don’t want to see or even acknowledge our dark, creeping moments of selfish choices, judgement, pettiness, fear-driven reactivity. 

My first instinct when crafting a scene about harshly confronting someone was to show my motive as pure: the protection of someone else. It’s what I believed about the situation for many years. I rewrote that scene several times over several years of writing on this project because something wasn’t quite right, but I kept clamping down on my discomfort, redirecting my revision to sensory description, prettying up the place around me in this crucial narrative moment.

That was writer-me, killing and burying spiders the second I saw them marring the scene I wanted. After all my rewriting, the scene is vivid and real, faithful to the public location where the confrontation took place. You can live inside it like you’re there, but you can’t live inside me, the narrator, because I kept insisting on my righteous anger, even as deeper self-knowledge scuttled at the edges of my consciousness. True, I was protecting a loved one in that recalled moment, but also, I

wanted

to attack the person in this scene. I

enjoyed

feeling powerful, able to heap abuse on someone else for a change.

I don’t like admitting that. It feels ugly, it makes

me

feel ugly and all too human. But once I let that spider stay and nestle in whatever corner it chose, the whole scene became real on more than a superficial level. I opened a dimension in myself that could connect with the antagonist of my story, and I know this book will be better, more true for it.

Brave people admit their flaws, allow them in, give others the gift of connecting with their most vulnerable, human selves. And writing takes all kinds of bravery. I invite you to sweep out the old cobwebs, but let those spiders stay and find a home.

Thank you for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

Chauna Craig

Creative Nonfiction Editor

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONCOLLISIONSby Nicole VanderLinden"One way and then another, tossed like rain across the years, between their houses, and wherever I was, that’s who I was, too."READ ON

POETRYEATING, ONE YEAR LATERby Kian Rank"She keeps her butter on the counter. I too learn to love my body:soft, sitting in plush chairs. She asks if she can make me breakfast."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONAPOLLO 11by Jacey de la Torre"My eager hands tug at its sweetly-crusted edge, until it pulls away to reveal the white pillow-softness underneath, the bread melting on my tongue like forgiveness."READ ON

MIXED MEDIASMALL TOWN REMEDIES:  An Interview with Filmmaker R.W. PerkinsR.W. Perkins is a writer, filmmaker, videopoet, and digital marketing director living and working in Loveland, CO. Perkins’ second feature film, Small Town Remedies, premiered at the Horsetooth Int’l Film festivalon Sept 10th, 2020, where it took home the festival's Feature Film Audience Choice and Horsetooth Awards.READ ON

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