You guys,
There I was at left midfield in a real Division I field hockey game, the only freshman to get playing time. My teammate Kristy Bally kept screaming in my direction, “Bleecker, move! Bleecker, get back! C’mon, you need to get those, Bleecker!”
I should have been used to it at this point in the season and never imagined talking back to the best player on the team, but today I snapped.
I stopped playing, turned around and yelled, “Shut up, Bally.”
I was immediately subbed out of the game. I don’t remember the score or even who won. I only remember the locker room afterwards. Bally was talking about me loudly to two upperclassmen. I heard the words “freshman” and “disrespect” and “unacceptable.”
I considered transferring schools after that. Bally was only a sophomore. If I stayed she’d be my teammate for the next three years. There were many phone calls with my mom during this time. There were internet searches for other field hockey programs at potential schools. There were weekends I didn't leave my dorm room.
In the end, I stayed.
Years later I wrote a blog post about my relationship with Bally over the course of our four years together. I described Bally as being my worst nightmare freshman year. I said she never had a positive thing to say, ever. I said I felt like everything out of her mouth towards me was a criticism.
I said some nice things, too, and then tagged her in the blog post on Facebook. She removed the tag and we haven’t spoken since.
It’s taken me three years of writing and publishing weekly to finally learn an important rule:
Don’t write disparagingly about others.
It’s completely normal and natural to dislike a person or an entire group of people. But it is not my job as a writer to tell you, the reader, what I think of them.
Stephen King says, “When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."
Thoughts and feelings are not the story. Action and dialogue make up a story. What can you see with your eyes in the scene? What can you hear, touch, taste, smell? Stories are a sensory experience.
Whenever I write disparagingly about others I’m also telling the reader how I want the reader to feel, like in the first lines of this essay I wrote about my brother:
“My brother is the real-life Grinch. He mopes through life and takes pleasure in putting others down to try and make them feel stupid and small. Especially me.”
It is not my job to coerce the reader to take my side. My job is to tell the story—or rather, show the story—and let the reader make their own decisions. If I were to rewrite the essay about my brother I might start with something closer to this:
“When I was a kid my brother zipped me into a sleeping bag and dragged me around our house while I screamed and begged him to let me out.”
In the first version I wrote my opinion of my brother. In the second I wrote something that actually happened.
No matter my thoughts of my brother or Bally, if I ever write about them again it’s my duty to show the reader a sensory experience and omit everything else.
When I was a senior in high school I had no interest in the college that wanted to recruit me. But there were whispers of a substantial scholarship so Mom pushed me out the door to go watch one of their games.
From high up in the bleachers I couldn’t take my eyes off this one player in the center of the field. She was fast, fearless, and the first player to every loose ball. She even wore my jersey number: 16. By the end of the game I’d made up my mind.
Later I would learn her name was Kristy Bally.
Bleecker Bombs
A new memoir deep dive is out!
I read Born Standing Up by Steve Martin.
Listen to the episode on overcast.fm, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.
Also, send me your recs!! As long as they're not written by a celebrity. I’m done with celebrity memoirs.
—
Merry Christmas!
Charlie
I desperately want to make a fake account for KBally16@aol and leave a comment, but I won't.
Instead, I'll say thanks for writing this -- it's both heartfelt and practical for those of us with lingering feelings about people in our past, and a desire to write about them....
Charlie: I keep thinking about your deep dive last week and then this essay. I knew I had plateau'd a bit in my writing. You've shown me the next peak! It looks vertical, hard to navigate, and I'm tired as hell, but you've given me a specific thing in my writing to get better at. What a gift!