“He looked at me; I must say I like it better when they look at you; a lot of the time people seem to be scared of finding out that other people have real faces, as though if you looked at a stranger clearly and honestly and with both eyes you might find yourself learning something you didn’t actually want to know.” Come Along With Me – Shirley Jackson
I read this book while camping, and one of the essays, Experience and Fiction really transfixed me.
“People are always asking me—and every other writer I know—where story ideas come from. Where do you get your ideas, they ask; how do you ever manage to think them up? It’s certainly the hardest question in the world to answer, since stories originate in everyday happenings and emotions, and any writer who tried to answer such a question would find himself telling over, in some detail, the story of his life. Fiction uses so many small items, so many little gestures and remembered incidents and unforgettable faces, that trying to isolate any one inspiration for any one story is incredibly difficult, but basically, of course, the genesis of any fictional work has to be human experience. This translation of experience into fiction is not a mystic one. It is, I think, part recognition and part analysis. A bald description of an incident is hardly fiction, but the same incident, carefully taken apart, examined as to emotional and balanced structure, and then as carefully reassembled in the most effective form, slanted and polished and weighed, may very well be a short story.” – Experience and Fiction – Shirley Jackson
As I was reading it, I was building a spooky short story in my mind based around the extremely poorly placed windows in the public restroom at the campground.
We were alone at the campsite, so I knew there would never be anyone in the neighboring stall. This was reassuring, but also every time I used the toilet at night, I would look up and imagine for one moment seeing someone in that stall who shouldn’t be there, the different ways they might look, who they might be, and what they might want from me. I never wrote this short story, but I was deeply deeply invested in the idea for about a week.
Pictures from 2023, Words from July 2026
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