Hallie Ephron: Learning from failing

HALLIE EPHRON: Welcome back to Reds on Writing Week.

I have the great pleasure of teaching at many writing conferences, and often I get to read and review writers’ works-in-progress.

I try to refrain from my writing-is-a-steep-learning-curve lecture. And I always marvel at how it’s so easy for us to see what’s wrong in other people’s work when we’re so blind to the same faults in our own.

And although a writer who is being raked over the coals doesn’t want to hear it, you really can learn from your failures and near-misses. Most published authors have one, if not many, unpublished manuscripts to document their own struggle to get to good enough.

I'm a case in point. I did not see myself as a writer back in the fall of 1992 when the brother of one of my best friends was murdered.

Rose (not my friend's real name) was a single mother working in her family business. Her brother Bill (also not his name), who worked with her, was a young father with three daughters, under the age of 10, and very much a father figure to Rose’s two sons. The killer was a man who was unhappy with some work Julie had done for his family. Angry and armed, he showed up at their office. Rose wasn’t there; instead he confronted Bill and shot him to death.

Grief-stricken and guilt-ridden, Rose was so traumatized that for months after that she was physically unable to leave her house alone. She and her family and co-workers were terrified that the killer would come back and kill them all. Just stepping out her front door to pick up the mail triggered a panic attack.

A few months later he was arrested. Eventually he was tried and found guilty and sentenced to prison for 85 years.

Six months after the murder, I paid a series of visits to my friend. Every time we got together, she talked. And talked. And I listened and recorded her memories. First she told me about the day of the murder—it started out as an ordinary morning when she’d taken her son to the doctor instead of going into the office. She talked about the funeral. And on to what it had been like after for every member of that extended family in the days and weeks that followed.
I’d return home and transcribe the tape. Eventually I wove the anecdotes together into a book-length narrative. It was about story of the aftermath of a murder.

Here’s an excerpt from when Julia arrives at work.

Time seemed to slow down as Rose turned in the driveway and pulled into her spot next to Bill’s green Saab.  She climbed out.  Seemed like an awful lot of flashing lights for a car accident in a parking lot.  There were slashes of yellow tape across the entrance.  Maybe a break-in?  But why was there an ambulance at the building entrance, it’s rear doors thrown open?  And why were so many people standing around, watching?  Among them, she recognized the couple who owned the Chinese restaurant on the first floor and the young girl who worked at the dry cleaner. 

A man taking notes in a spiral pad was talking to a policeman.  A newspaper reporter?  At a parking lot car accident?  Rose tried tamp down the sparks of fear that was threatening to ignite in the pit of her stomach. 

There was Al Murphy, one of the brokers who worked for them.  He was staring up at their office windows, rolls of pink neck bunched at his suit jacket collar. 

"Al?" she said, coming up behind him. 

As she said it, he turned to face her.  He’d been crying.  Something had happened.  Something she didn't want to know. 

"What?" she asked, unable to stopper the words. 

For a few seconds, his eyes searched hers.  Looking for ... what?

Finally, he said, "There's been a shooting." His voice was flat

"A shooting."  She heard herself repeat the words with the same lack of intonation.

He nodded.  "Bill."

“Bill what?”

“Bill’s been shot.”

No.  Not possible.  It was as if Rose was hit in the face with a wall. A car accident or a robbery—that had to be what happened.

She heard herself asking, "He’s okay, isn't he?"

Al reached out and put his hand on her shoulder.  "I’m sorry." 

Rose’s vision telescoped.  Her purse went flying.  She watched its arc, as if she were watching from atop a roof of one of the buildings that flanked the parking lot.

"No!" she screamed, the sound faraway and empty. 

Al backed away, palms up, his mouth making words she couldn't hear while she pressed forward, driving her fists into his chest, trying to make herself feel something, anything. 

Then, somehow it wasn’t Al she was beating on.  It was a police officer.  He put his hands on her shoulders, the pressure gentle.

In the end, the story was too painful and too personal to publish, and we never did. But the process of telling the story helped my friend start to recover, physically and emotionally.  And I discovered that I could write. Not well enough (yet) to get published. But I had a knack for drama and suspense.

I also discovered that, as a writer, I had to plant my feet firmly  in fiction. True crime is too horrific, and bringing a killer to justice doesn’t “fix” what a murder breaks. When I write a murder in a novel, I try to take it seriously, remembering what it means in real life.

So my question for today: What have you tried and failed at that taught you an important lesson?