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Wednesday, Nov. 04, 2009

It takes 136 authors to write a long short story

"I found her sitting on a bench in Woodland Park. She looked up when my shadow fell on the letter she was writing."

These are the words that launched a tale that warps and weaves through the imaginations of 136 people, ages 6 to 85, to become Lexington's Longest Short Story.

Written in a day that was designed for writers, it's a story that doesn't quite hang together (if you read too closely) but, heavens, does it drape. From the second floor of the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning down to the information desk where the luckiest of staffers get to camp out under the words of the inspired.

The writers joined the center in celebrating writing on the National Day of Writing, something the National Council of Teachers of English dreamed up when they weren't assigning homework.

Because this was anything but.

Neil Chethik, writer-in-residence at the Carnegie Center, says the idea was to remind writers that while much of their work can be hard, tedious and time-consuming, a lot of it is pure joy. This is the pure joy part.

The Longest Short Story is actually four different versions of a story that all began with words written by Lexington author Ed McClanahan. One version stayed at the Carnegie Center on Oct. 20, and three went traveling, one toured coffee shops; one, libraries; one, bookstores.

There were few rules. No more than 250 words per person. Try your best to read the stanza ahead of yours just for continuity's sake but don't feel constrained. Write.

They knew they weren't creating a masterpiece.

"Six or seven write something that follows the storyline, then it careens off into a ditch for a while, then someone comes along to tow it out," Chethik says. "It's a little like the game of telephone. The story completely morphed."

But along the way, there are triumphs of community. Members of the English as a Second Language class from the Carnegie Center decided they would contribute. Two stanzas are in foreign languages, French and Spanish. A man who spoke Persian came in and wrote what amounts to a practice paragraph in English. It reads, quite nicely: "We need to love each other. Everyone needs love. We are brothers and I think the world can be better."

Some low-income kids who were getting tutoring watched as their parents contributed.

"It says something to a child," says Chethik, "that their parents would do that."

And that their parents can say they co-wrote a short story with Bobbie Ann Mason.

The noted Kentucky author's contribution is unheralded and unsigned, which is just like all the others. It is neither profound nor out of place.

Which is not to say that some paragraphs are just plain riveting or just plain provocative.

Who doesn't want to read more when confronted, in a swirl of a story, with battling aliens, the futile pursuit of perfection, a Saw movie marathon, a foreign-speaking grandiose cat and Cassius Clay's 12-year-old mulatto wife at White Hall.

Or these stark sentences:

■ "Here's why and here's how?"

■ "Is the frisbee like life?"

■ "Rule #1: Don't talk about Fight Club."

"It's a beautiful thing," says Chethik, who is still considering whether he will do it again next year.

In the meantime, Katherine Greene-Owens and Laura Whitaker, staffers at the center, labor under the swirl and swag of the story until the center decides it must be taken it down to preserve it.

"One of our volunteers came in the other day," says Whitaker. "She saw the display and said, 'It's raining words!'"

That was volunteer Sue McKaig, who then broke into a song and dance.

And all over Lexington 136 writers beamed.