Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks

• how new ideas come crashing in.

       • how I embrace these new ideas without hesitation or judgment.

       • how I am willing to leave a good idea behind in favor of a new one, regardless of how little promise the new idea seems to hold.

       • how I manage to keep my hand moving at all times.

      If you go to the StoryworthytheBook YouTube channel, you can see me engage in this process, speaking it aloud as I do in my workshops. But below is a Crash & Burn final product, transcribed from pen to digital text.

      I always launch my Crash & Burn sessions with an object in the room, but you can start any way you want. On this day, there was a bowl of grapes on a table, so I started with the word grape. Slash marks indicate the moments when new ideas or memories came crashing in.

       Grape. Grape juice. White grape juice / When I was a kid I stepped on a broken Mello Yello glass bottle and cut my foot — got infected — happened by a pond / oh, the pond, Yawgoog had three different waterfronts and Ashaway Aquatic Center — I never took / I was a lifeguard at Yawgoog — so boring so dumb to be a lifeguard at a Boy Scout camp — at least you give yourself a chance to look at girls but I saved that kid who couldn’t swim and didn’t want to tell anyone / when Eric and what’s his name? Rory yes Rory flipped their canoe adults facing away from pond and Jeff and I went to / a pirate is a criminal on the sea — I should commit a crime on the sea so I can be legally called a pirate / I was a criminal but if you’re found not guilty were you never a criminal or a former criminal? actually I was definitely a criminal: mailbox baseball and stealing the shoes lots of other crimes — isn’t everyone a criminal or am I just especially bad / list of crimes would be / story about a guy who commits a crime at sea just to be a pirate and wears an eye patch for effect / I used to walk the train tracks as a kid but I wouldn’t want my kids to walk the tracks even though it must be safe, right? how does a train sneak up on you? Not possible / nail polish for women has weird and crazy names maybe I could do something with it / green red yellow blue gray / The Confederates wore gray uniforms, right? Seems like the least inspiring color — British wore red to conceal blood and make fellow soldiers / I took that ASVAB test and would love to see the results — I had no idea what kind of job I might have landed in military — thank God I didn’t re-sign at 17 I wonder what / I took the pledge at 17 in a fake way and then had to take it again at 18 and refused thinking I would but does that make me a bad guy of some kind? / bad guy the black and the white is inconvenient Stephen King says that the side of the good is the side of the white which I like but sort of places it in unintentionally racist terms similar to “forgot the face of your father” is great but / haven’t read Dad’s letter yet why am I so scared all I want is a relationship and /

      Once I’ve finished with a session, I look back and pull out threads that are worth saving. Story ideas. Anecdotes for future stories. Memories that I want to record. New ideas. Interesting thoughts.

      Here is an annotated look at what I produced in those ten minutes:

       Grape. Grape juice. White grape juice / When I was a kid I stepped on a broken Mello Yello glass bottle and cut my foot — got infected — happened by a pond /

      I have no idea how grape juice brought me to Mello Yello, but my mind somehow made the connection, and it brought me back to a day of swimming with my family at a water hole when I was five or six years old.

      I had forgotten about the Mello Yello bottle and the cut on my foot until this Crash & Burn session, but more importantly, it brought back another memory from that day, not recorded during my session, because a new idea came crashing in, a much more meaningful memory than the one about my infected foot.

      It was a memory of my father jumping in the pond from the edge of a large, flat rock and remaining underwater for so long that I was sure he was dead. I was absolutely certain that he had drowned before my eyes. I remember a wave of crushing sadness washing over me, overwhelming me. My father was gone. The only man I loved was lifeless on the bottom of the pond. I knew in that moment that my life had changed forever.

      As I opened my mouth to scream, my father’s head emerged amidst a patch of lily pads, and “forever” had miraculously come to an end. Life was instantaneously returned to normal. Rarely have I experienced such an emotional swing in my life.

      It turns out that I have inherited my father’s ability to hold his breath for a frighteningly long time. Over the years, I have terrified many people, including my wife, by disappearing under the water for excessive periods of time, never once thinking about that moment by the pond when I thought I had lost my father forever. This is probably a story that I will tell someday.

       oh, the pond, Yawgoog had three different waterfronts and Ashaway Aquatic Center — I never took / I was a lifeguard at Yawgoog — so boring so dumb to be a lifeguard at a Boy Scout camp — at least you give yourself a chance to look at girls but I saved that kid who couldn’t swim and didn’t want to tell anyone /

      The memory of the Mello Yello water hole triggered memories of Yawgoog Pond, at the center of Yawgoog Scout Reservation. Yawgoog was the Boy Scout camp where I spent many summer days as a boy. The bit about the stupidity of working as a lifeguard at an all-boys’ camp might be worth exploring for part of an essay or perhaps for my stand-up routine. It feels funny. Or at least potentially funny.

      As for the boy who nearly drowned (after being too embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t swim), I had forgotten about that moment entirely until this Crash & Burn session, and it will certainly make a good story someday.

       when Eric and what’s his name? Rory yes Rory flipped their canoe adults facing away from pond and Jeff and I went to /