Acorns are falling on my head. I’m out walking the dog, and they plunk hard and bounce on the road, only narrowly missing us. Do we need to wear helmets, body armor? Later, I’m chatting with a neighbor, and my feet suddenly roll out from under me. Before I can register what’s happening, I’m on the ground.
My husband rushes over. What happened, he says? Did you trip?
I shake my head and stammer. I was just standing here.
On a road covered with acorns.
The neighbor looks embarrassed for me, and I make a joke about the trees attacking from above and below. It’s not really a joke. Some days everything feels precarious.
I drive an hour to a doctor’s appointment, trying to be mindful of other potential dangers. Deer darting across the street. Porcupines. This is a thing around here. I have seen their prickly bodies, stiff at the side of the road. I’m listening to an audiobook about how to write. The author is a teacher who uses Russian literature to show how stories can be put together. I love this book.
Each chapter begins with a well-known actor reading a story by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy. The stories are like spells, and I am in the Russian countryside, jolting along in a horse driven cart or singing with the townsfolk in a rustic inn. I want to understand how these stories are put together, but I keep losing myself in the cart, in the singing.
Forget plot. Forget characters, says the narrator of the audiobook. Focusing on these elements won’t help you write your story. So, what will? My mind drifts out of the Russian countryside and into the Adirondacks, the car, my own self. The mountains blaze up and all of the brightly colored trees. The road weaves around the lake. An acorn hits my car like a gunshot.
Or maybe it actually is a gunshot. What do I really know about this place?
This is a mast year, a friend says, when I tell her my funny story about slipping on acorns. Apparently, every few years there’s a bumper crop, too big for the animals to eat it all. In that way, the trees ensure their survival. But how do they communicate to each other?
No one knows.
Some magic switch turns on and the trees let loose. The Russian people sing and ride along with me as I drive the hour back home. When I walk the dog later, we pick our way around the acorns. There is no great secret to writing stories.
All you need is one sentence. You set it down and write another.
And another.
