Byline

By Melissa Ballard

“What’s that?”

“It’s a magazine that published one of my essays. See, you can read this.”

I pointed, and Adah read, “By Melissa Ballard.”

My almost six-year-old granddaughter is not easily impressed, but her eyes opened wide.

She looked at me and said, “Woah!”

Truth be told, I was excited, too. Most of my essays these days are published online, but in this case, there was also a print edition. It arrived on my birthday, while Adah was visiting, and both were a gift.

During her quiet time after lunch, I noticed Adah had borrowed my latest writing journal. Instead of the pencils I use, she had found a pen.

I glanced as I walked by. She had printed, laboriously, in the same font used for the title of my essay, “by” and her first and last name.  

After her bath that night, Adah clutched the journal while I read Judy Moody Predicts the Future to her. She interrupted me and asked, “Can we look at your newspaper again?” I realized she meant the magazine, so I grabbed it, and we opened it to my essay.

She waved her hand across the pages. “How did you think of all these words?”

 My first thought was black coffee in the morning and red wine at night, but even I knew that was not age appropriate. “There are lots of ways to get started,” I said. “Sometimes I write about my best thing of the day. Today you rode the bunny at the carousel five times. So, if I were you, I might write about that”.

Before long, I heard her sigh and say, “I messed up.”

“You can’t mess up in a journal. It’s the perfect place to make mistakes.” I showed her the messy writing and the cross-outs in the pages I’d written. I told her about multiple revisions (some experts say “seven”), peer readers, and editors. I turned to the inside front of the magazine and showed her the photo of the editor.

Thinking Adah had tuned me out a long time ago, I was surprised when she said, “Show me the mistakes she found in your words.”

I laughed and pointed to a section at the end. “The editor had to cut two thirds of it, because the article was too long, but she let me read it before it went to print.”

Adah asked me how to spell “rabbit” and continued writing. Before she went to sleep, she placed the journal and the pen on the table next to her bed. “I want to write as soon as I get up in the morning,” she said.

As I turned out the lights and left the room, I tried to remember the first time I met a writer; I could not, but I know I was an adult. I thought of all the books I’d read over the years, how I gradually learned the writing process, which was never explicitly taught, not even in college. I thought of my ongoing struggles with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and drafts that refuse to gestate. I also thought about the absolute joy of writing when something clicks. I thought about the days, which occur with stunning regularity, when I can’t face my own writing, not even for a minute. Instead, I send a note to a writer whose essay I’ve enjoyed. I came to writing so late; Adah’s story will be different.

By seven a.m. Adah was ready to search the yard for real rabbits, and the journal sat dormant for the rest of her visit.

Five days later, as Adah and her parents packed last minute items before they left for the airport, I picked up the journal, grabbed a fat, triangle pencil, and slipped both into her backpack.

__________________

Melissa Ballard has written essays for Appalachian Review, the Brevity blog, Full-Grown People and other publications. Her work is forthcoming in Berea College Magazine.

Angel Talk

A guest post by Melissa Ballard:

I’m sitting at my desk, getting ready to write.

Translation: I’m checking Facebook.

I hear a rustle, followed by a sigh, and I see movement out of the corner of my eye. When I look up there is a tall, slim woman with spiky blonde hair lounging on my upholstered chaise. She is wearing black Vans, ripped jeans, and a black t-shirt with “Rabid Feminist” in white letters. Her scent is that of excellent coffee; the to-go cup she’s holding must be from the Slow Train Cafe.

“Who are you?” I ask. “How did you get here?”

“I’m your angel, Gloria. Never mind how I got here. So, how many words have you written this morning?”

“Um, I don’t do word counts. That doesn’t work for me. I just write, mostly when I’m inspired. Sometimes for a long time, sometimes not for very long.”

She snorts. “So, then, none? Zero? You haven’t written anything and it’s almost noon?”

“Wait, are you the Angel of the House that Virginia Woolf wrote about? I thought you’d be smaller, and wearing gauzy robes, with long hair in a loose knot. But if you are that angel, you should know I cleaned the refrigerator this morning.”

Gloria rolls her eyes. “Are you kidding me? This is the 21^st Century. I’m here to make sure you’re writing. So, what’s the problem?”

“The fridge was really dirty. I found sticky stuff that had dried in all the ridges of the vegetable crisper. And in the fruit drawer, bits of the orange plastic mesh bags from the clementines we ate six months ago. Oh, and a couple of cat hairs. We don’t even have a cat!”

“Great. Next time write first, then clean. And now that you’ve cleaned, why aren’t you writing?”

“Well, right now, I’m composting.”

Gloria sniffs. “In your office? Why don’t I smell anything?”

“No, no, it’s a term from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. It’s when you’re thinking about what you’re writing, but not actually writing.”

Gloria squints at me. “What’s that noise? Oh, it’s Natalie. She’s groaning at the way you’ve used her idea about the need to process some experiences before you can write about them, and turned it into a procrastination device. How many books about writing have you read, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A few.”

Gloria rolls her eyes again. “I have something for you. Catch!”

I usually miss when someone says “catch,” but this time I reach up at just the right time. It’s a good thing, too, because the object is small, but heavy and sharp.

It takes me a minute to realize: it’s a one-inch picture frame.

I smile. “Anne Lamott. Bird by Bird! Right? It’s a metaphor for focusing on one small part of a piece, instead of constantly worrying about the bigger picture.”

Gloria groans. “So, you’ve read that one, too.”

I nod. I squirm in my desk chair, hoping to block her view of the shelves behind me, which are crammed with writing manuals, collections of essays about writing, and memoirs about writing.

“So, it’s not as though you don’t know what to do,” she says. You just need to get out of your own way and write. My work here is done.”

Gloria disappears as quickly as she came. I stare at the empty chair.

Perhaps I imagined her.

As my eyes wander back to my computer screen, I read a card I’ve placed on my desk, in my line of sight. It’s a quote from Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind:

Forget expectations.

Just write.

And, finally, I do.

_______________________________________________

Melissa Ballard composts, checks Facebook and, occasionally, writes from her desk in Oberlin, Ohio. You can read her essays at https://melissaballardsite.wordpress.com/

Stripper Girl

A guest post from Melissa Ballard:

Family history. Why would anyone waste their time with it?

In the summer of 1993, I agreed to do just a bit of ancestral research, at the request of my great-uncle. I was quickly lured into the mysteries of century-old handwriting, sepia-toned photographs, and the personal details in local newspapers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

I began to write essays about my ancestors, who were much more interesting than I’d thought. My publication record for these pieces is scant, but I persist. At first, I had to go to libraries or historical societies and do battle with microfilm machines. Now I can do most of my research online, from my home office.

So when the newspaper database I use added two decades of issues from Muncie, Indiana, I set aside some time to search. I already knew a line of my family had lived there from 1888-1912, where my third-great uncle, A. A. Arnold, owned a small manufacturing business. His own education ended when he was twelve, and began to learn a trade, but he sent all three of his children, two boys and a girl, to college before 1910. His older son became a priest and eventually, a bishop.

Skimming my search results, I stopped dead at this, from September 3, 1905:

WANTED–Stripper girl

followed by my uncle’s business and home address, across the street from the Catholic church, where he and his wife were godparents for a good portion of the families in the congregation.

This can’t be right, I thought. Surely, if he had some kind of illicit side business, he wouldn’t have advertised so blatantly…would he?

My negative stereotypes about power and institutions have been reinforced daily of late, and I know things were even more skewed toward powerful men 113 years ago. It’s not that I expected my ancestors to be perfect, but this didn’t fit with anything else I’d learned about them. I did a bit of research: in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the age of consent in Indiana had been raised from 12 to 16, but the laws were not applied consistently. This did not make me feel any better.

As I put away my papers and poured a pre-dinner glass of wine, the Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl” morphed into “Stripper Girl” and settled in as my personal earworm.

The next morning, after some strong coffee, I sat down with my folders of notes on my Muncie ancestors. I am only an amateur historian, as evidenced by the stacks of photocopies I constantly—and unsuccessfully—try to organize. I began to search through them, not sure what I was hoping to find. My persistence was rewarded when I removed the binder clip from a stack marked “Background/Misc.”

*

One of the first steps in cigar-making is to remove the thick vein from the middle of the dried tobacco leaf. Now it’s mostly done by machines, but pulling out the stem by hand doesn’t require a great deal of strength, so before automation it was often a job performed by women. My uncle was a cigar manufacturer.

Occupations were included in the early city directories and by searching for “A. A. Arnold,” I could identify some of his employees. In the 1893 directory I found a Katie Gallivan, “tobacco stripper.” A quick search of the census showed she would have been twenty in 1893.

Health hazards from tobacco hadn’t yet been established. But my uncle advertised “union made” cigars, so I like to think his workers were treated well, at least by late 1800s-early 1900s standards.

The Beach Boys quietly surfed out of my head.

*

If I had the sort of neat and legible journal that could serve as a reference for future essay writing, I would turn to a fresh page and start a list. Instead, I’ll blog it here:

• Remember: words matter, but they can have multiple meanings.
• Consider context.
• Maintain a sense of humor.
• Write your own stories, and the stories of other people, with care. If something doesn’t fit, it’s worth trying to figure out why.

When I found the “stripper” want ad, I could just see my dad shaking his head and saying, “Always let sleeping dogs lie.” I prefer to poke them with a stick, gently, and see what I can learn. It’s risky, but far more interesting.

________________________________

Melissa Ballard’s work has appeared in Brevity, Compose Journal, Full Grown People, Gravel, and other publications.

Brevity’s Bright and Sunny Summer 2010 Issue

We’ve launched a truly outstanding Summer 2010 issue, featuring twelve beautiful concise essays from Fleda Brown, Steven Church, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Sarah J. Lin, John Calderazzo, Marcia Aldrich, Melissa Ballard, Erin Murphy, Danny Goodman, Lisa Groen Braner, Diane Seuss, and Jenny Spinner.

In our Craft Section, Drema Hall Berkheimer visits those moments when the muse seemingly has better things to do, and Sharon DeBartolo Carmack outlines the ways a writer can put proper flesh onto the bones of ancestral stories.

Also Book Reviews from Michelle Wittle, Kelly Ferguson, Patty Wetli, and J. Luise, and stunning photographs from Ryan Rodgers.

Come visit.