Source of Lit - Unsaid - Sam Michel

Sam Michel - Things Filled Me In

Sam's writing, and I obviously do not know if this was intentional or not, in this piece has the potential to cause me to feel claustrophobic.  The reader is placed so deeply into the mind of the narrator, with non-stop mixing of longer and shorter sentences that are predominantly her thoughts, with the word I generating the direction, the emotion, and everything else the reader feels.

Did you feel the same way upon reading this?  Also, I know this is an excerpt from Sam's novel, Lincoln Dahl Turns Five (per the contributor note), and am curious - Do you read a piece differently if you know it's an excerpt as compared to a strictly stand alone short story?  Also, we've already discussed that you actually do edit material you publish in Unsaid, and aren't strictly accepting submissions as is.  Do you approach editing excerpts differently than stand alone stories?

David

These are all great questions, Dan. I don't feel claustrophobic in the least when reading Michel's sentences. I feel the piece has a great sense of meter, and I like how the narrator opens and unfolds her insides to the reader. The voice I hear when reading these pages is that of a woman whispering. Honestly, I was reminded of of some of the voiceovers by the character Holly--played by Sissy Spacek--in the film Badlands. Innocent and haunting, a voice I cannot turn my hearing from.

As far as the excerpting process goes, I read all of Michel's novel, and I feel the pages placed in Unsaid stand strongly as a self-contained piece. Oftentimes I will make suggestions on how to end the excerpt, and other times there are parts of an excerpt that need to be removed to make the pages solidly self-contained. These parts are most often tied to earlier pages of the larger whole, and if left in the excerpt without reference to those earlier pages, they don't share a sense of frame with what I have cut to stand as self-contained.

After this process, I read and edit the self-contained piece as I would any other. A writer like Michel needs little--if any--editing. He's a dedicated writer whose attention is wholly committed to the page.

Comments

[Peter Markus]

Sam Michel's Under the Light is one of my favorite books of the late 20th Century. I can't wait to see what his new work is all about.