the writing and photography of Neil Kramer
“New York is the type of place where you need make your own life. Â If you get divorced, you go to the park and chat it up with lonely women eating their store-bought salads. Â If you are unemployed, you put on a nice jacket from the Men’s Warehouse and hit the pavement. Â You have to act like a winner in this town, because the city despises losers more than rats or Republicans.”
Dear Mary,
How are you? How are things back in Kansas City? How is your mother? I’m writing you to tell you that I finally did it. I made my mark on the city and I got that penthouse apartment overlooking the city, just like I always dreamed about. My windows are so big and so high, it’s like God is my only neighbor. I know it’s been 35 years since I left town, and we haven’t kept in touch, but I’ve waited for you. I’ve never married or had any serious relationships. Have you waited for me too? I dream about you every night. Everything I’ve done in New York has been for you. Every deal. Every fight in the boardroom. Every climbing another inch to become the master of this metropolis has been a test to prove my worth to you. Will you marry me? Nothing has changed in 35 years. Has it changed for you?
Love, Milton
In a few seconds, the woman in the white sweater will cross the street. She is a divorced publishing executive with a daughter in graduate school. She will bump into the guy in the tan sports jacket. He is lost in his thoughts. He works in advertising. The woman will laugh at her clumsiness, but the man will say he was about to go have dinner at Hunan Garden. Would she join him? They will order Broccoli and Chicken with Garlic Sauce, and then the guy will invite her to his apartment for a drink. They will make love and the woman, who hasn’t been with a man since her husband left her six years ago for that younger chiropractor, will have the most intense orgasm she’s had since that crazy afternoon with Johnny Spenser at Smith College. “What’s your name?” she will ask the man, his tan sports jacket neatly folded on a chair at the foot of the bed. He doesn’t answer, yet. He looks at her nakedness and finds her beautiful.
On the night before my wedding, my soon-to-be father-in-law, a conservative businessman from a prominent family in Seoul, took me out to a private bar to give me some marital advice.
“If you want a happy woman, you don’t bring your work back home with you,” he said.
“I’m still joining the force. Â Here in New York. Â It’s what I want to do,” I replied.
And my father-in-law hasn’t spoken to me since.
“It’s pouring outside. Do you have to go to work?”
“Of course I have to go to work. I need to make money.”
“Just stay a little longer,” she said, putting her head on his chest.
It wasn’t the first time he had heard the rain pounding against the window, relentless, as if crying for help, demanding entry into the warmth of the interior, but it was the first time he had ever felt it in his blood.
“He told me that I should meet him on 53rd and we would drive to the Island to see the Belmont Stakes. He told me to buy a hat, like those ones they were at the Kentucky Derby, all fancy and stuff. He told me that it was going to be a historical day – that we were going to see the first Triple Crown winner in decades. He told me a lot of things. He told me that he thought I was beautiful. He told me that I should meet him on 53rd Street with a hat in my hand. It was all lies.”
“I don’t see the rainbow after the rain anymore. Since meeting her, all of life has becomes the most colorful rainbow of them all.”
“Don’t do it,” said her friend. “You don’t know him. He’s too blue collar. You make more money. He’s not well-read. He’s too old.”
But Sandra didn’t listen, and stepped right onto the bright yellow tape that screamed “caution,” smashing it with her clean white sneaker.
Let me just say that I’m not mad at Cindy for last week. She was only looking out for me. She DID invite me to the Mother’s Day picnic in Central Park with her other friends. She just thought I would be uncomfortable as the only woman there without a husband or kids. Did I really want to endure all these crazy kids running around screaming at the top of their lungs? She was probably right. Better to meet her alone on some weekday night, when she has more time, for a quiet dinner or movie.
My other friend, Dagney, of course, thought Cindy was rude, but couldn’t even understand why I would want to go somewhere I wasn’t wanted or treated like a second class citizen. Dagney really loves being single and not stuck at home with kids. She can’t stand Cindy, who is always mom-this and mom-that. Dagney has a whole group of forty year old women, all of them career women without kids, who go out each Friday night together, living it up like the women in Sex in the City. More power to them! I love Dagney, and I don’t blame her for never inviting me along on these women night outs. She’s right about me. I’m too much of a downer, and I wouldn’t fit in with others. I’m also not successful enough. They only go to expensive places.
It’s like I don’t belong with the women who are moms because I’m childless, and don’t belong with the fun-loving independent women because life seems empty without a family. Sometimes I don’t feel like a woman at all.
One of the most exciting changes at the BlogHer conference over the years has been the increasing focus on writing. It is an acknowledgement by the powers-that-be that the core of blogging is not just about SEO or branding, but writing.
Not “content,†but WRITING.
This year, the Writing Lab at BlogHer ‘13 offers two 90-minute sessions each day on various subjects. I will be leading the writing lab in Short Form Fiction. The meeting times will be —
Friday afternoon from 2:30 – 4:00 PM
AND
Saturday morning 10:30 – noon.
Come prepared with your questions and your laptop or tablet (or come old school with a notebook).
Here’s a short syllabus of the Short Fiction Writing Lab. I put it up, hoping for some feedback, especially by anyone who is interested in attending. After all, writing is all about editing. Would you like me to add or change anything about the writing lab? It’s supposed to be a discussion for YOU.
0-45 Minutes — Does Short Fiction Have a Role in Mainstream Blogging?
1. Journalism, Opinion, and Memoir are accepted forms of blogging, but is fiction?
2. What makes short fiction different than a novel?
3. Does the main character have to be likeable?
4. The importance of drama. Why we hate it in real life, but must embrace it in our creative writing.
5. What reading 400 posts for the VOTY competition this year taught me about short fiction writing.
6. Using fiction to fictionalize your online blog persona. How creating a somewhat fictional first-person “YOU†can allow you to be more honest and authentic as a blogger? Is David Sedaris really “David Sedaris?†Narrarators — reliable or unreliable?
7. How far can you go in fictionalizing your life on your personal blog? Is anything off-limits? Do we judge a person’s imaginary life as harshly as we do their real life? Would you be afraid to have dinner with a fiction writer like Stephen King?
8. How do you communicate to your audience what is fiction and what is real? Did you really sleep with that hunky Fed-Ex delivery guy, or was it just a good story?
9. Remembering James Frey. When is it fiction and when is it lying? Are we hiding from ourselves when we fictionalize?
45-90 Minutes — Let’s Write –The Truth Quotient Writing Assignment.
1. Write a one paragraph 100% true story based on an assigned topic.
2. Now write two more one paragraph stories based on the first, but with the second story being 50% true and the third story being 75% fiction.
3. Discussion. Which of the three stories best captures the original intention of the writer. Which of these three stories is the most “honest.†Which best engages the reader? Which is the most “authentic?â€
4. Can there ever be a 100% true story?
5. The purpose of fiction.
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