{"id":311,"date":"2020-02-06T14:41:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T14:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/?p=311"},"modified":"2020-02-06T18:07:19","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T18:07:19","slug":"the-crawl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/the-crawl\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crawl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Gordon Jones, J.G. Lewis, Susana Molinolo, and Lee\nParpart<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley steps off the elevator into a long hallway at the end\nof the insurance company\u2019s foyer. She\u2019s been here three months, finally past\nprobation. She clears a gauntlet of plastic palms and admires the cleanliness\nof the floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides, congratulating herself on\nlanding a job in such a beautiful building in Toronto\u2019s financial district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman\u2019s voice carries clearly from inside the cafeteria\nand just reaches Ashley as she walks past a goldfish pool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s been talking about it,\u201d the woman said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking about what? She\u2019s curious, but she\u2019s also due across\ntown for her weekly improv class, and she doesn\u2019t want to be late. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she walks towards the cafeteria, she decides she\u2019ll just\npoke her head in, find out what\u2019s going on, and make her exit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s probably just the usual talk of coronavirus, anyway.\nIt\u2019s almost getting to be annoying, the number of times people are mentioning\nit every day. Goddamn Bob from the actuarial group wore a mask to work the\nother day. Jesus, Bob, just wash your hands and get a grip.<\/em> The funniest\npart was when he couldn\u2019t get the Timbit under the mask without loosening it\nand exposing himself to certain death. Ashley is already thinking about how she\ncan work him into tonight\u2019s sketch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She checks her phone. Half an hour to class. Just enough\ntime walk up Spadina instead of taking the streetcar, if she can avoid being\npulled into the drama that\u2019s unfolding fifteen feet away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just outside the glowing doors of the cafeteria, she zips up\nher ratty MEC jacket, and that\u2019s when hears it: a low, sickly gasp. Ashley\npeeks into the room, staying out of sight, and sees two women huddled together\nnear a vending machine. One is visibly upset. They are both staring up at a TV\nin the corner. The sound is off, but Ashley can see a steady stream of images\nof people with masks over their mouths, and interviews with people in white\ncoats. Underneath those boxed news segments, in the crawl, CP24 reports that\nMeghan and Harry are \u201cunder siege in Canada.\u201d Poor Meghan and Harry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley assumes it\u2019s safe to move on. Of course it\u2019s just\nmore drama about the coronavirus \u2014 or the Crown. Whatever. Figuring it\u2019s still\na good idea to say goodnight, she cranes her neck into the room and catches the\neye of the woman facing her, the one who was upset. She recognizes her from a\ntraining session earlier in the day. A middle-aged woman with a shock of\nchemically dependent red hair. The other woman turns and sees Ashley, and says\n\u201cHave you heard the news?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat now?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a hoarse voice, the trainer chokes out one word:\n\u201cLayoffs.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As if on cue, the crawl on the TV switches from royals to\nnews of her employer, the second largest insurance company in Canada: \u201cJob cuts\nacross the board: undisclosed number of layoffs this quarter and next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley freezes. This is going to make for such shitty improv.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

January 30, 2020 The Journey: A Group Writing Session Group 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A note on the process of writing The Crawl<\/em> by Lee Parpart <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Orange-mango tea courtesy of Susana Molinolo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Our group consisted of four writers: Susana Molinolo, me\n(Lee Parpart), Gordon Jones, and J.G. Lewis. Susana and Lee know each other\nwell from a shared writing circle outside of Authors\u2013Toronto, whereas neither\nof us had met Gordon or J.G. before, and they had not met each other. Gordon is\na member of Authors\u2013Toronto, while J.G. made a last-minute decision to join his\nfirst branch event after seeing our group writing session listed on social\nmedia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started by talking about our trip over to the CSI Spadina\nthat evening. Two of us got lost (and a little stressed) on the way to the\nvenue; one came in from Montreal; and another stayed late at work to deal with\na presentation the next day, then popped into a tea shop along Spadina. From\nthis mishmash of starting points, we quickly settled on what we hoped would be\na tight but moody narrative about a female protagonist who was trying and\nfailing to exert control over every aspect of her life, from work to domestic\nroutines, as she managed escalating tensions over health ahd money concerns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We imagined a woman whose smug confidence about her own work\nethic and preparedness for anything gradually unravelled under pressure from an\narray of competing threats to her tidy existence. The mood of the piece was\ngoing to reflect a heightened sense of worry that all of us had noticed in our\nmovements around the city recently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the other group, we wrote our story on the computer. Lee\nis a fast typist who is used to taking notes while people are speaking, so she fired\nup her laptop and became the group\u2019s secretary. The time pressure we were under\nseemed to keep us all very focused. We began to function like a TV writing\nroom, pitching ideas and making decisions quickly, accepting lines and ideas that\nseemed to be working and leaving others out. There seemed to be no time for ego\nor tiptoeing around. This was storytelling triage, and we were all crowding\naround doing chest compressions at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One surprising element of our process had to do with how,\nand how much, the story and the main character evolved. Small decisions about\nplot and character introduced dramatic changes that then affected everything\nelse. For example, we were having trouble figuring out what kind of meeting to\nhave the woman attend, and we cycled through several options, including\nAlcoholics Anonymous and circus training. As soon as we settled on having her\nattend an improv class, that changed everything; from a smug narrator obsessed\nwith micro-managing every aspect of her life, our protagonist, Ashley, evolved\ninto a darkly funny person whose inner dialogue included a sarcastic critique\nof her colleague\u2019s attempts to control their<\/em> environment. In other\nwords, Ashley went from being a control freak to criticizing the control freaks\naround her, as we wrote her into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introducing voice into the piece also shaped our main\ncharacter; as soon as we heard her venting about \u201cBob from the actuarial group\u201d\nat work, we knew we had an aspiring comedian on our hands, and the rest of the\nstory began to fall into line with that aspect of her character. This meant that\nwe had to sacrifice large chunks of the story that were already written, but it\nalso gave us the focus we needed to finish the story within 45 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating something from scratch always feels like a high-wire act, and it\u2019s incredibly satisfying when you see your creation begin to take shape, even when it\u2019s as lumpy and incomplete as the raw draft you see here. We all agreed that the collaborative process was very organic and fluid, and that we could imagine working with the same group to write a longer piece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We imagined a woman whose smug confidence about her own work ethic and preparedness for anything gradually unravelled under pressure from an array of competing threats to her tidy existence. The mood of the piece was going to reflect a heightened sense of worry that all of us had noticed in our movements around the city recently. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[21,20],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writings","tag-group-sessions","tag-writings","category-19","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}