Writing Samples

Ocean Vuong 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 

(Pages 79 – 81)

Because I am your son, what I know of work I know equally of loss. And what I know of both I know of your hands. Their once supple contours I’ve never felt, the palms already callused and blistered long before I was born, then ruined further from three decades in factories and nail salons. Your hands are hideous – and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream. How you’d come home, night after night, plop down on the couch, and fall asleep inside a minute. I’d come back with your glass of water and you’d already be snoring, your hands in your lap like two partially scaled fish. 

What I know is that the nail salon is more than a place of work and workshop for beauty, it is also  a place where our children are raised – a number of whom, like cousin Victor, will get asthma from years of breathing the noxious fumes into their still developing lungs. The salon is also a kitchen where, in the back rooms, our women squat on the floor over huge woks that pop and sizzle over electric burners, cauldrons of phở simmer and steam up cramped spaces with aromas of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, mint, and cardamom mixing with formaldehyde, toluene, acetone, Pine-Sol, and bleach. A place where folklore, rumors, tall tales, and jokes from the old country are told, expanded, laughter erupting in back rooms the size of rich people’s closets, then quickly lulled into an eerie, untouched quiet. It’s a makeshift classroom where we arrive, fresh off the boat, the plane, the depths, hoping the salon would be a temporary stop –  until we get on our feet, or rather, until our jaws soften around English syllables – bend over workbooks at manicure desks, finishing homework for nighttime ESL classes that cost a quarter of our wages. 

I won’t stay here long, we might say. I’ll get a real job soon. But more often than not, sometimes within months, even weeks, we will walk back into the shop, heads lowered, our manicure drills inside paper bags tucked under our arms, and ask for our jobs back. And often the owner, out of pity or understanding or both, will simply nod at an empty desk – for there is always an empty desk. Because no one stays long enough and someone is always just-gone. Because there are no salaries, health care, or contracts, the body being the only material to work with and work from. Having nothing, it becomes its own contract, a testimony of presence. We will do this for decades – until our lungs can no longer breathe without swelling, our livers hardening with chemicals – our joints brittle and inflamed from arthritis – stringing together a kind of life. A new immigrant, within two years, will come to know that the salon is, in the end, a place where dreams become the calcified knowledge of what it means to be awake in American bones – with or without citizenship – aching, toxic, and underpaid. 

I hate and love your battered hands for what they can never be. 

Erin Morgenstern 

The Night Circus

(Pages 314 – 317)

He recalls what the tag said about opening things, wondering what could possibly be inside all of these jars. Most of the clear-glass ones look empty. As he reaches the opposite side of the table, he picks one at random, a small round ceramic jar, glazed in black with a high shine and a lid tipped with a round curl of a handle. He pulls the lid off and looks inside. A small wisp of smoke escapes, but other than that it is empty. As he peers inside he smells the smoke of a roaring fire, and a hint of snow and roasting chestnuts. Curious, he inhales deeply. There is the aroma of mulled wine and sugared candy, peppermint and pipe smoke. The crisp pine scent of a fir tree. The wax of dripping candles. He can almost feel the snow, the excitement, and the anticipation, the sugary taste of striped candy. It is dizzying and wonderful and disturbing. After a few moments, he replaces the lid and puts the jar carefully back on the table. 

He looks around at the jars and bottles, intrigued but hesitant to open another. He picks up a frosted-glass mason jar and unscrews the silver metal lid. This jar is not empty but contains a small amount of white sand which shifts on the bottom. The scent that wafts from it is the unmistakable smell of the ocean, a bright summer day at the seashore. He can hear the sound of waves crashing against the sand, the cry of a seagull. There is something mysterious as well, something fantastical. The flag of a pirate ship on the far horizon, a mermaid’s tail flipping out of sight behind a wave. The scent and the feeling are adventurous and exhilarating, with the salty tinge of a sea breeze. 

Bailey closes the jar and the scent and the feeling fade, trapped back inside the glass with its handful of sand. 

Next he chooses a bottle from a shelf on the wall, wondering if there is any distinction between jars and bottles on the table and the ones that surround it, if there is an indiscernible filing system for these curious containers. 

This bottle is tall and thin, with a cork held in place by silver wire. He removes it with some difficulty, and it opens with a popping noise. There is something in the bottom of the bottle, but he cannot tell what it is. The scent wafting from the thin neck is bright and floral. A rosebush full of dew-dripping blossoms, the mossy smell of garden dirt. He feels as though he is walking down a garden path. There is the buzzing of bees and the melody of songbirds in the trees. He inhales more deeply, and there are other flowers along with the roses: lilies and irises and crocuses. The leaves of the trees are rustling in the soft warm wind, and the sound of someone else’s footsteps falling not far from his own. The sensation of a cat brushing past his legs is so genuine he looks down expecting to see it, but there is nothing on the floor of the tent but more jars and bottles. Bailey puts the cork back in the bottle and returns it to its shelf. Then he chooses another.

Tucked in the back of one of the shelves is a small bottle, rounded with a short neck and closed with a matching glass stopper. He picks it up carefully. It is heavier than he had expected. Removing the stopper, he is confused, for at first the scent and the sensation do not change. Then comes the aroma of caramel, wafting on the crisp breeze of an autumn wind. The scent of wool and sweat makes him feel as though he is wearing a heavy coat, with the warmth of a scarf around his neck. There is the impression of people wearing masks. The smell of a bonfire mixes with the caramel. And then there is a shift, a movement in front of him. Something grey. A sharp howling pain in his chest.The sensation of falling. A sound like a howling wind, or a screaming girl. 

Bailey put the stopper back, disturbed. Not wanting to end on such an experience, he places the strange little bottle back on its shelf and decides to choose one more before leaving to catch up with Poppet and Widget again. 

He picks one of the boxes on the table this time, a polished-wood box with a swirling pattern etched into its lid. The inside of the box is lined with white silk. The scent is like incense, deep and spiced, and he can feel smoke curling around his head. It is hot, a dry desert air with pounding sun and powder-soft sand. His cheeks flush from the heat and from something else. The feel and sensation of something as luscious as silk falls across his skin in waves. There is music that he cannot discern. A pipe or a flute. And laughter, a high-pitched laugh that blends harmoniously with the music. The taste of something sweet but spicy on his tongue. The feeling is luxurious and lighthearted, but also secretive and sensual. He feels a hand on his shoulder and jumps in surprise, dropping the lid down on the box. 

The sensation ends abruptly, Bailey stands alone in the tent, underneath the twinkling stars. 

That is enough he thinks. He goes back to the flap in the tent wall, careful not to disturb any of the jars or bottles nearby. 

Important Takeaways

I have two very different writing samples picked for this month. I picked these two samples for a couple reasons: 

1. These excerpts come from two of my favorite books and are written by extremely talented writers.
2. The fact that the writing style is so different between the two shows that no matter your writing style the act of engaging the senses is a powerful and universal writing tool. 

Let’s dig into the meat of how these two writers make us see, feel, smell, and taste their writing. 

Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – 

A strong reason that I chose to showcase Vuong’s writing was his beautiful style of blending poetry and prose. This style embraces strong lyrical descriptions that engage the senses. 

There are quite a few powerful descriptions in this excerpt that really allow us to visualize what the narrator is talking about. His description of his mother’s “callused and blistered” hands looking “like two partially scaled fish”  is not only an immediate visual example but brings with it that feeling of rawness and pain that you would imagine a fish would feel if it was descaled alive. It gives you a gut clench at the same time you can see in your mind eye the exposed abraded skin contrasting with the “scaly” patches on his mother’s hands. And he does all of what I wrote with 58 words in five words! 

Food and food smells are great ways to immediately root the reader. Everyone has to eat so there’s a good chance that everyone has at least one powerful food memory (if not more. For example, I’m made up of mostly food memories). Vuong describes the nail salon where his mother works as “… huge woks that pop and sizzle over electric burners, cauldrons of phở simmer and steam up cramped spaces with aromas of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, mint, and cardamom mixing with formaldehyde, toluene, acetone, Pine-Sol, and bleach…” The specific spices listed ground us in familiar aromas while the sharp contrast with the abrasive nail salon and cleaning ingredients throws us into an uncomfortable dissonance, visualizing Vuong’s point that these nail salons were both a gift and a curse. 

Morgenstern’s The Night Circus – 

This excerpt is probably one of the best I could have found for modeling writing about the senses. Morgenstern creates a fun guessing game in this passage where you’re trying to figure out the memories or locations that’ve been trapped into these bottles. For the most part she avoids visual descriptions, which beginning writers tend to rely on heavily. I feel like this is a great exercise in stretching yourself to create a scene using minimal visual clues. 

I would suggest reading through this excerpt a few times while looking out for which descriptions fall under which sense. I’ll start a list off here. 

Smell: crisp pine scent; pipe smoke; salty sea breeze; bonfire; caramel; incense, deep and spiced; 

Taste: sugary taste of striped candy; the taste of something sweet but spicy; 

Touch: a cat winding against his leg; 

Sight: a mermaid’s tail flipping out of sight behind a wave; 

Sound: melody of songbirds; laughter; waves crashing against the sand, howling wind; 

Writing Tip 

When working with sensory descriptions use smells, tastes, and sounds that mean something to you. Does honey have a special memory for you? Does the smell of tar in old railroad tracks make you feel like you’re transported to a different place? Do you feel sad when you hear the squeaky crunch of sled runners gliding through the snow pack? If the sensory descriptions you use have power for you that will come through in your writing! 

Exercise and Prompt 

This month the exercise and prompt are blended together into a Super Exercise Prompt! 

Let’s use Morgenstern’s memory bottles as inspiration for this ‘promptercise’. Write a short piece in which your main character interacts with three to five bottles (or some other vessel) that gives them the sensation of being inside some other place or memory purely through the senses. Imagine you are writing for an alien audience that doesn’t understand what emotions or feelings are. You have to use the power of the senses to describe feelings and emotions. Use all of the senses! Think what does that taste like, smell like, feel like? What color is angry? 

How does sad taste? What does it smell like when you are tired? Have fun with it. Make connections that might seem weird at first but make sense in a strange way. In fact the weirder the better. I always encourage weird! Have fun!