WOW! Women On Writing Blog: personal writing stories

Linda Petrucelli, 2nd Place Creative Nonfiction Winner, Started with a Writing Prompt

Saturday, August 22, 2020

For most of her adult life, Linda Petrucelli has lived on islands—Taiwan, Manhattan, and Hawaii. Being surrounded by water suits her. Her story, “Figure Eight on the Waves,” won first place in the WOW! Women on Writing Fall 2018 Flash Fiction Contest. Her fiction and personal essays have appeared in KYSO Flash, Flash Fiction Magazine, Memoirist Magazine, and MacQueen’s Quinterly among others. Linda writes from her tin-roofed rancher on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island. She posts her flash fiction at jackrabbitfiction.com.

Linda's winning essay is "Ballsy," which you can read here.

WOW: Hi Linda! Congratulations on your win, and thank you for letting us pick your brain today. What led you to write this essay?

Linda: I keep rambling lists of my life superlatives. The lists come in handy when I need to dredge my memory for subjects to write about. Spinal fusion appears as number one on “The Weirdest Things I’ve Had Done to my Body.”

WOW: Maybe your list could lead to a lot more interesting essays! You start in an interesting way with the stat on tennis balls, and throughout the essay, you include some information about these little yellow spheres. What made you write about your topic in this way?

Linda: "Ballsy" came in response to an exercise from an online writing class I was taking with Chelsey Clammer. She posted a quirkily brilliant writing prompt: Use five facts to describe an everyday object that carries great emotional meaning exclusively to you.

I knew almost immediately that my object would be a tennis ball because I had been hoping to write about my back surgery, but didn’t exactly know how. Those fuzzy yellow orbs became a metaphor of my infirmity, Arranging the story around tennis ball facts suggested parts of the narrative, especially my relationship with my husband, that I had never considered. Those facts opened narrative doors I would never have thought to enter.

WOW: That is so awesome that this essay started from a writing prompt in Chelsey's class! You also chose to write in second person, "you," instead of first person "I." Is this how the essay started? What led you to this strong choice?

Linda: I had been reading Mayra Hornbacher’s essay, "Strip." At one point in the essay, she moves from first POV into the second, and I remember feeling how close I felt drawn in to her and her story. “You” became “Me.” I think that (intense) reading experience and desire to create intimacy with the reader were elements of my decision.

WOW: Reading is one of the best things you can do for your craft. You've also won first place in our flash fiction contest, and so we can tell that you are a dedicated, well-rounded, and talented writer. Do you have a preference between fiction or nonfiction writing? Do you think one helps you perfect the other?

Linda: When I started exploring creative writing a few years ago, I began with fiction. I never even considered memoir or the personal essay because, as I look back now, I was horribly self-conscious writing about myself. Yet, my early fiction always contained an autobiographical seed grounded in my life—a recurring dream, a memory a troubled relationship.

Last year, I began to see that writing about my life, sharing my opinions and preserving memories, was oddly therapeutic. I fell in love with the literary power of “a true story." And, what’s neat is that for those life experiences I have trouble publicly owning, or that might damage a relationship, fiction allows me to tell that story and still preserve a certain privacy.

WOW: That's a great point. What's next for you and your writing career?

Linda: To realize my writing dream…Pens on fire! Ruthless truth and prismatic prose. Forgiving myself over and over again when my initial clumsy attempts disgrace the glorious ideas in my head.

WOW: Thank you, Linda, for this delightful interview. Here's to your dream!

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The Stories Behind the Authors

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Geeking out over our swag at the John Green book tour in Charlotte, N.C.

This seems like a busy time of year for authors! I follow a lot of them on social media, and have seen more posts about book release tours than usual. Sioux also wrote about one a few days ago. I got to attend a special event with one of my literary heroes, young adult novelist, John Green, last week. Of course, because I have a 14-year-old daughter who also loves to read, I positioned it to my friends that I was taking her to the event, and not vice versa. Pretty sure she’ll keep my little secret. In Sioux’s post discussing Sherman Alexie’s new memoir, she asked the question, “What have you read that resulted in you embracing the author’s vulnerability?”

To be honest, while I’ve enjoyed reading John Green books like The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, I didn’t consider the man behind the pages. I know he has a family he adores, he loves his younger brother, Hank (the two co-host a YouTube series and podcast and are also traveling many of these tour dates together), he’s a self-proclaimed nerd and proud of it, and is passionate about giving back to causes he believes in and fighting against social injustice. But until the release of his latest book, Turtles All the Way Down, I had no idea he has also fought a lifelong battle with obsessive compulsive disorder.

The main character in his latest novel, Asa, has what Green calls “instrusive thoughts.” Thoughts like, “Excessive abdominal noise is an uncommon, but not an unprecedented, presenting symptom of infection with the bacteria Clostridium difficile, which can be fatal. I pulled out my phone and searched “human microbiome” to reread Wikipedia’s introduction to the trillions of microorganisms currently inside me.”

As Green greeted the packed auditorium where we attended the event, he shared with the audience about how he’s had these types of intrusive thoughts from childhood. He also prefaced it by saying that he had a wonderful childhood with a family who was nothing but loving and supportive, but he couldn’t escape those thoughts and the anxiety they caused no matter how hard he tried.

As I listened to him speak, and then read a selection from the book in a shaking voice, I couldn’t help but fight back tears. This was a man, an author, who has loomed so larger than life my mind, who always seems so confident in his videos online, sharing his deepest vulnerability with the audience. I could hear my daughter, who also has been known to have some of these types of thoughts, as well as sensory challenges, sniffle beside me. This is a child who has told me there are times she “just can’t get her brain to turn off” when she’s trying to go to sleep and for a few years became obsessed with researching the differences between poison oak and poison ivy because she was terrified of getting it.

Green also shared his worry that he would never be able to write another book again after the success of The Fault in Our Stars (I believe it has been almost six years since that book was published) so watching him stand in front of such a crowd (a crowd that I could tell made him more anxious than he wanted to admit) helped nudge the voice in my head that tells me I won’t be able to get past my own challenges and produce a great piece of work.

It was a great night with a powerful message. Yes, many creative people are considered “crazy.” No, that’s not really an acceptable stigma. There should be no stigma. We’re all human, and if we need to take medication or go to therapy to keep us on a level playing field, so be it. It’s not something we should have to be ashamed of.

And it will make for some damn good writing when the time comes.

What story do you have that propels you to keep moving forward?