About Fragments, 2.

Though I do have a writers group, I generally do writing exercises on my own. My group tends to look at the novel in progress, or discuss nuances of language use and writing in general. One exercise that’s novel specific is to interview a character.

A Fragment has nothing to do with a novel or other form of story. It can certainly be used for one, or lend itself to one, after it’s been written. What is a Fragment? It’s an exercise where I take an observed moment and put it into writing. Sometimes it relates to my own direct experience, others just what I observed.

It started on a day, years ago, when I went down to Atlanta. I’m not sure who I went to meet, but I remember where I’d been because of two observed moments still etched in my memory. One was outside Everybody’s Pizza near Emory University. The first was a man asking a girl for directions or a date. Her body language made it interesting. She was attempting to answer him, but her body language was distant. She kept looking away, her body turned away. She did not want to talk with him. The other was at Carpe Diem, where an American woman talked nonstop to a visiting foreigner. I could hear part of the conversation, so the foreign woman’s stiff jawed politeness came as no surprise to me. The American was blithe and loud as she carried her assumption of superiority. I could see it in her body language, hear it in the tone of her voice, as well as the reaction of her guest. So I wrote about it.

A few weeks before I was walking through my field—now sold—wearing my duck books. It had rained over night. The tall grasses were weighted down and matting over the soggy wet of the soil. I’d written about it, and the sensation of walking over the slipper and yet spongy grass.

I’d spent much of my life “intuiting” or making assumptions about moments, instead of truly taking the time to observe that moment. Writing Fragments, bringing out the sensual moments, helped me step back and pay attention. Like eating an apple or the taste and texture of homemade yogurt. The trick isn’t to catalogue the body language or conversation, but to evoke the same moment even if it is fiction. My aim is to recreate it so well that any reader can be there, as if they are observing it or even experiencing it. It doesn’t have to have a story. It is just a Fragment.