What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing this piece of fiction in 2018 (BELOW LEFT) and finished the final draft 2021 (BELOW RIGHT). The title of this three-page piece is “The Things You Lose: An Elusive Kind of Light”
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? Most of my writing is done at a desk, with a laptop/computer. Occasionally, some of it is written spontaneously (with pen and paper) in other locations, and sometimes I use a trusty typewriter (a 1948 Royal Quiet De-Luxe or an Underwood).
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I always begin a writing day sipping a cup of coffee and nibbling at some (the darker the better!) chocolate. Dove dark chocolate always makes my day a little lighter. Mornings (9 a.m.-12:00) are usually the best times for me to write, before the world presses in on me with obligations, practical tasks, etc.. Music is a bit distracting for me, since I love rock music and am always aware of the lyrics, so I don’t listen to any while I write. A silent room/area is always the best. That way, my creative thoughts/ideas get louder.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. Here is an excerpt from “The Things You Lose: An Elusive Kind of Light” from page 176 of Light at the Edge of the Field, a short story collection published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press, October, 2021.
When you’re an aging ballplayer, what you lose is not that vacant lot where you played baseball when you were seven years old. It was a small field, with a warped wooden board for a home plate, two worn spots in the grass where batters anchored their feet, and a rickety wood slat fence in the outfield.
It was a place where, in the early evening, fireflies rose from the deep grass and into the air, their tiny yellow lights blinking at you as you tried in vain to catch one in your cupped hand. Every few seconds, they’d light up, but always somewhere else. When you asked your Dad, who stood there with you, how fireflies can glow like that when they’re only insects, he said he didn’t know. It wasn’t electricity, exactly, he told you, but a power we humans didn’t understand, an elusive kind of light. As you walked home, he slid his arm around your shoulder and told you a story about how each tiny firefly is like the soul of a person.
That field is gone; an aluminum-sided rambler suffocates home plate. You’ll always miss those lost gloves and baseball cards and T-shirts and fields. But the real thing you lose is more important than any of those.
What you really lose is the person who took you to that field each day, the person who always walked by your side. What you really lose is that act of lifting your baseball in the stillness of late afternoon and tossing it across the blue air between you and your father. What you really lose is that game of catch, that arcing connection between your hand and his hand.
Years after your father is gone, something tells you to walk at dusk from your house to an empty ball field at the edge of town. There, you pause, seeing a few blinking lights above the grass. You believe your father could be there, in one of those faint, tiny lights—speaking to you in a flickering code you can’t quite understand.
So you stroll toward the center of the field, surrounded by those tiny illuminations that glow yellow for an instant, then go dark, then glow yellow again, but always in a different place. And though you know how hard it would be to catch one, you still reach out with your cupped palm. You reach out, as if you believe it would be that easy to grasp an elusive kind of light.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This piece is a powerful work of fiction for me because it conveys the feeling of loss, and in particular, the loss of a parent. The firefly images give the section a visual effect, and the exchange between the innocent son and the father shows that neither of them can explain, exactly, why some things are the way they are. This quote exemplifies the concept: “It wasn’t electricity, exactly, he told you, but a power we humans didn’t understand, an elusive kind of light.” Then he adds to his speculation, and in a way, creating his own myth about the insects, stating “each tiny firefly is like the soul of a person.”
The fireflies become a specific symbol for the father at the end of the story. And at the end, the narrator—now a grown adult—thinks back on the scene and attempts to capture the essence of the father in an abandoned field.
As I wrote this passage, the sense of loss was very powerful for me, and I felt a welling of emotion. Even though I invented most of the imagery about the fireflies, it seemed like a perfect metaphor for the light and encouragement that my father gave me as a young boy. And I realize that, as the narrator in this piece does, the physical things you lose (ball cards, t-shirts, gloves, and even a favorite field) are not what matter in life. What matters is the spiritual connection between two people, and in this case, between a parent and a child. Every time I read it, I still feel the same way.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I always revise my fiction/stories about six or seven times (and sometimes more). I try to make the imagery consistent throughout, and not to repeat details in an ineffective way. I also look at the flow of each short story. I ask myself—does the conflict, tension and/or expectation build in the story toward a final scene? If not, I need to restructure some of the events so that the conflict rises toward a turning point. In the case of “An Elusive Kind of Light,” which is more of a nostalgic image piece, it was a matter of making the speculation about the fireflies work throughout. The hardest part of this was to try to describe how a firefly looks when it ignites in the dark and then reappears elsewhere a few seconds later. In the end, I hope that it works, and that the reader can envision the scene along with me and, in the end, understand the light and wonder this writing attempts to portray. Here is one of the segments of the story that I revised. The complete story itself is an additional two pages.
Anything you would like to add? A version of the story is also included in a forthcoming baseball/photography book, Circling Toward Home: Grassroots Baseball Prose, Meditations, and Images, which will be published in February, 2022 by Finishing Line Press.
Bill Meissner is the author of ten books, including his two forthcoming baseball books. Circling Toward Home: Grassroots Baseball Prose, Meditations, and Images, a collection of photographs and writing, will be published by Finishing Line Press. Light at the Edge of the Field is a full-length 240-page short story collection forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin University Press and distributed by Texas A and M University Press. His novel, SPIRITS IN THE GRASS, from the University of Notre Dame Press, was awarded the Midwest Book Award, and is available in hardcover, paperback, and as a Kindle ebook. He has had two previous short story collections published, including HITTING INTO THE WIND, a baseball-theme short story collection published by Random House (and now an e-book from Dzanc Publishers), and THE ROAD TO COSMOS (University of Notre Dame Press), stories about the unique characters in a small Midwestern town. He’s the author of five books of poetry, most recently THE MAPMAKER’S DREAM (Finishing Line Press) and AMERICAN COMPASS, (University of Notre Dame Press). TWIN SONS OF DIFFERENT MIRRORS, poems in collaboration with Jack Driscoll, was published by Milkweed Editions, and his previous poetry books were published by Ohio University Press. A chapbook of his carnival/circus related poetry and fiction is THE GLASS CARNIVAL.
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