Pain Garden

by Channie Greenberg

Sandy looked at the blood vessels visible through her near-translucent skin. People in her support group cut. She wondered if pain helped.

Thorough exploration of topics is an important matter. Sometimes, the analyses that undergird bits and bobs come easy. It’s rather straightforward, for instance, to look up the number of planets in the Solar System, or to search for 1982’s most popular, Israeli baby names. Conversely, sometimes information-seeking can be challenging. “Happiness,” for instance, is tough to examine succinctly, while “the happiness of dachshunds,” is too strange a focus to be satisfied by a few expository paragraphs.

It was only tenure, a husband, and a pregnancy loss. The doctors had called it “a spontaneous abortion,” her mother had called it “a miscarriage.” She had called it nothing but continued to define the event with tears.

When a sample of speculative fiction features, for example, archaea, prime movers must make sure that readers will understand the ecological implications of those nucleus-free, single-celled critters’ biochemical functions. In another case, if scripters murder stories’ darlings in daylight, it behooves them to become familiar with civil laws and industrialization echelons that are concomitant to such narratives; literally visible manslaughter doesn’t bring about the desired effect in all contingencies. Skilful fiction writing often requires greater numbers and deeper classes of probing than does skilful nonfiction writing.

Theodore was an idiot. They had spoken of careers and travel before marrying, but not of children. During her loss, he had left her in the hospital. Later, his text message declared that she’d be hearing from his lawyer; he’d moved in with the businessman whose mansion overlooked the hills. He promised Sandy that after their divorce, he’d find a woman who could produce heirs.

At any rate, research deficiencies remain the greatest impediment. Altogether, there’s little point in broadcasting uncorroborated claims or in disseminating poorly expanded plots. Outside of opinion pieces, the most superlative of which are adroitly hewn nonfictions based on accessible data, there’s little room in either make-believe or in realistic narratives for unfounded statements.

Theo still worked in a mailroom. He’d need a spouse who earned more. Maybe, he’d not marry an assistant professor or any female involved in software development, again. Realtors and other professionals could provide him better financial security.

When writers neglect to probe subjects, narratives’ maneuverings fall to pieces. When writing falters, writers get discouraged.

Sandy’s tenure and promotions committee having been unimpressed with her work on post-quantum encryption, had muttered something about government lackeys and unimaginative software architecture. There had been much jealousy about her renewable federal grant.

First, a wordsmith must bring their inquiries into being. Inception necessitates content. Notwithstanding the world’s many cases of “artistic” driving, e.g., of haggling in open air markets, or of manipulating love relationships, newcomers usually sweat to evince their designs, to publicize their deliberations. If strivers are deficient in talent or maneuvers, then they stay limited to thrashing among topics without fully “downloading” any cerebration.

Mai, Sandy’s co-author had laughed at the committee’s verdict and had encouraged Sandy to make herself available to Eindhoven, Tsinghua, CMU, and MIT. Sandy had shrugged and had remained quiet; her midwife had cautioned her to keep her life steady, i.e., boring, while gestating. Sandy was undergoing a “geriatric pregnancy” because she was thirty-seven.

Among the most parsimonious tools, the most logically straightforward shunts for unclogging suppositions are list-making, brainstorming, rough outline writing and free writing. List-making leads to theme-making in response to one of the six “w” questions; “who,” “what,” where,” when,” “how,” or “why,” per a single construct. The appeal of list-making is its focus on a single aspect of a subject.

Sandy had never imagined getting married. She was geeky. Her world was a palace of zero knowledge, symbol interconnectivity, and protocol securities, not of club-hopping, electronic relationships sites, or blind dates. Her family and friends had long tired of trying to find her a partner.

Brainstorming is a reaction, simultaneously, to all six “w” questions regarding a single construct. Brainstorming encourages expansive thinking and the integration of conflicting sentiments.

Nonetheless, as cliché as it still seemed, one day, when biking to the university, she literally ran into Theo. Upon dusting himself off, he asked her out for coffee. He wasn’t much to look at, but he wasn’t an eyesore. They married before the school year ended.

A third form of prewriting, rough outline writing, is the establishing of an outline without regard for sentence assembly, grammar, spelling, punctuation, or delineation. Rough outline writing’s handiness is its proffering of scaffolding for freshly decanted views.

They had gotten pregnant easily. Sandy hadn’t known to wish for nausea or other, common signs that all was well. In fact, she had hardly noticed, excepting a change in her girth, that she was enceinte.

Free writing, the regurgitating of comings and goings onto a page without worrying about semantics or mechanics is meritorious in its scope. This type of prewriting encourages the quick dispatch of large data chunks.

Her loss, conversely, had been highly evident. She had hemorrhaged so severely that emergency room care providers had placed a bucket beneath her. Then, when she was at risk of dying, Theodore had fled.

Second, no matter which prewriting system is used to bring cognitions to the fore, simply hatching impressions, and then ignoring them, results in fragmentary jottings, not in completed texts. An ink-slinger must consolidate thoughts. Amorphic ponderings, like tatters of cloth, represent mere curios of sentience; such musings configure neither kites nor kittens but rustle up congregations of hazy parts, which flutter, at best, or hang unerect, at worst. Grand, word-based edifices are optimally served by surgical exactitude, not by flinging all manner of sutures and bandages at gaping passages. That is, written work calls for correct assembly.

Mai had suggested the support group. In that space of anonymity, Sandy had learned that her research pal was a survivor of childhood abuse and that many women suffered worse than being unmarried in their thirties.

Third, observations must be supported. Repeatedly, when crafters attempt to furnish material, they lose sight of the fact that embryonic ingredients are unusable, as is. Providing illustrations and explanations is elementary to hewing “opuses” heedless of how protracted a route appears. Without backing, executions suffer from overgeneralization. Preferably, writers reject malformed considerations and, instead, carefully enlarging upon solid themes.

Among the group’s members were recovering alcoholics and folks fighting eating disorders. Sandy hadn’t known that obesity could be correlated with anorexia. She hadn’t known that satanic cults, which caged members’ children, existed outside of movies.

Fourth, just fleshing out substance is inadequate for verbal achievement. Ruminations needs fine-tuning. Misspellings, weird grammar, also unorthodox uses of punctuation deter readers from scrolling or from turning pages. Since so many artifacts compete for audiences’ awareness, it’s shrewd for enterprising wordies to offer unflawed work.

The more Sandy learned, the more she enlarged her vocabulary of self-harm. There were no trigger warnings at the group’s meetings, just lamentations of lives gone sideways.

Furthermore, few outlets accept “rebellious” language. Contrariwise, most venues entirely reject error-laden pieces. Even when individuals feel flummoxed by morphological details, the abundance of apps that instruct on conventions yields no leeway for spates of mistakes. Simply, given late-date technology, slipshod documents are rarely excused.

Some ladies had tried self-immolation and had the scars to prove it. Others had overdosed or had sold themselves as sex workers. A few had repeatedly punched themselves.

Nonetheless, all things being disproportionate, “good” writing can fall off gatekeepers’ publication schedules. Codswallop that hasn’t been redrafted many times is reckoned as rubbish.

In the end, Sandy never actualized self-mutilation. Rather, she connected with a former friend from graduate school, who helped fund a position for her at Boise’s ISPM Research Lab. The Department of Energy was not the only agency with a significant investment in that sparsely populated state.

While in her early forties, Sandy married a fellow scholar, birthed a perfectly healthy daughter, and received tenure. The family’s favorite vacation destination became Salmon-Challis National Forest.

Overall, rewriting ought to occupy the greatest part of wordslayers’ diligence. Revising is the key to publishing success. It’s arrogant to assume that a measly handwave or two over a text will bring about anything other than tripe useful for lining parakeets’ cages or litterboxes. It’s folly to believe that by muttering “presto changeo,” i.e., by making a sudden, halfhearted stab at description or explanation, one can cultivate comprehensive assemblages. Akin to sanding an antique multiple times before applying lacquer to it, manuscripts’ components must be improved over and over again, first coarsely, and then finely, before they can be considered “polished.” Writing’s payout is its process.

Under the spreading conifers, unless interrupted by her husband or daughter, Sandy would contemplate the many types of pain that she had refused to garden. Her life was nothing like she imaged it would be; it was better.