It was doubly thrilling for me, because I’d had the honor of working with her as she crafted the piece.  As with any story that reads so beautifully you have the sense that writing it was effortless, it took a lot of work. So I thought it might be interesting to show the process Michelle went through to take her piece from a good idea to a riveting read.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Michelle is a fabulous writer. Her voice is assured, compelling and nuanced; her insights are piercing in the best possible way – at first unsettling and then, reassuring.

Interestingly, she didn’t set out to write a Modern Love piece, she set out to write about death for a monthly personal essay series (think The Moth). But like most of us, the hardest part was finding the story itself, the interconnected cause-and-effect chain of events capable of bringing her vision to life.

That’s where I came in. I worked with Michelle, helping her do just that. She was already miles ahead of the game, because she went into the process having defined the one thing that writers often forget to do: she had zeroed in on the point she wanted to make. To wit, that nothing can prepare you for how vulnerable loving others, especially your children, makes you feel.

Michelle: I knew the emotional truth of my story. I spent years working with terminal AIDS patients, helping people face death – I thought I’d made peace with it. But being a single mother turned all of that experience upside down. My dread of something happening to myself, or my son, made me fearful of death in a way that I didn’t understand. This caused me to shut down emotionally and as a result I was missing out on life, particularly my son’s life. That’s what I was writing about.

Lisa: Then came finding the story – the series of events – that would bring her point to life, so we could experience it ourselves.  Michelle was writing a personal essay, which is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that she had a storehouse of actual events to choose from, the curse that that storehouse spans her entire life.  Talk about an embarrassment of riches.  So her first job was to zero in on the right event, or series of events. She started with a story about baseball.

M:  I knew that I needed to choose an event from my life that personified that point I wanted to make. I thought about using the story of the day when my son was nine and got hit in the face with a baseball during a little league game. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life and certainly put me in touch with the fragility of my son’s life. But that didn’t feel quite right. It didn’t have anything to do with my own fear of death, or the numbness I’d allowed it to cast over my life. So although yes, it did touch on my fear of death and my son, it didn’t have anything to do with the point I wanted to make. I knew I needed to go in a new direction.

L: We began brainstorming. When Michelle mentioned – in passing – something that had happened between her and her son Joe a week earlier, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This time it wasn’t Joe’s vulnerability that leapt out of the story, it was Michelle’s. Which is exactly what she was writing about. Here’s how it happened:

M:  I’d mentioned to Lisa that I’d had an emergency MRI the week before, and that  on the morning of the procedure I’d lost my temper while driving my son to school. I was already stressed, and as he dawdled getting out of the car I snapped, “I can’t start our day this way, this kind of stress is going to make me sick.” Telling the story  out loud made me realize that I didn’t explode because I was worried about myself; I exploded because I was terrified of what might happen if I died and left my son. That was the connection between real events in my life and the emotional story beneath those events. It wasn’t about how I felt when he was injured; it was about how he’d feel if something happened to me. The thought of leaving him alone in the world terrified me more than the thought of dying. That fear is what caused me to shut down emotionally, trumping everything I’d done prior to “get over” my fear of death, and so, ironically, I was leaving him in little ways every day.

L: Once we centered on that particular day, the goal was to then cherry pick the necessary backstory to bring it to life, and give it meaning and weight. This is always very tricky process, because there are often so many things that happen concurrently that are fascinating in and of themselves, but really have nothing to do with the story being told.

M: That’s so true. There were lots of things I could’ve included in the piece. For example, why I chose to keep my pregnancy despite having known my son’s father for such a short time, why his father left, why I was drawn to working with AIDS patients and tons of other things. While all of those things are interesting details, they weren’t relevant to the particular story that I was telling. What’s more, I was looking for details that didn’t just tell about my fear of my own mortality. The story is about why I was fearful, how that caused me to become emotionally numb, and how I came to realize it and begin to feel again.

L: That done, the next task was to bring what remained into sharp focus, identifying which specific facet of each remaining memory was relevant to Michelle’s point, then making sure it was vivid enough to allow the reader to not only picture it, but experience it as if it were happening to her.

M: For example, I knew it was important to tell readers about my history working with AIDS patients and becoming a bit of a daredevil, but why? It wasn’t until I made the connection that I thought that exposing myself to some of life’s most challenging experiences would make me fearless and that fearlessness would somehow protect me from the potential loss of people I love. As I reflect on all this I realize that good writing also involves fearlessness—there must be a bold (and often painful) willingness to look under the surface of things. It’s not enough to recount what happens, we must reveal why those things happened and how our characters are defined by the choices they make. We, in turn, as writers, are defined by the details we choose to show and tell. And perhaps, we’re even more clearly defined by something the reader will never know, the things we left out—finally realizing their presence in our story would dilute it rather than enrich it.

L: How true is that? It reminds me of something Tony Bennett said recently on NPR. When asked what he can put into a song in his eighties that he couldn’t when he was younger, he answered without missing a beat, “The business of knowing what to leave out.” Why wait until you’re eighty to master that one?

It’s amazing how easy it is to lose sight of the irresistible power of story, considering that our brain is literally wired for story – we think in story, it’s how we make sense of the world.

And yet, so often when we want to communicate something we feel is serious we shun story. Instead, our first impulse is to marshal all facts and explain it in great graph-strewn, statistic-studded, pie-chart detail so that other people really, really understand it.

Unfortunately, unless you have a captive audience whose very life depends on it, not only won’t they understand your presentation, chances are they’ll sleep right through it.

The simple truth is that facts that don’t engage us emotionally, don’t penetrate. Especially these days, when we’re bombarded with information 24/7 from all sides. The last thing we want is more information to sift through. What we’re innately hungry for is something that helps us interpret how that information will affect us. That’s exactly what a story does. The world presents  us with facts. Story gives us a way to interpret them.

That’s why the key to getting people engaged isn’t to tell them what’s vitally important (regardless of how right you are), the key is to show them by allowing them to experience it through the world’s first virtual reality — story. Make no mistake, I’m not just talking about novels, movies or plays. The principles of story — of engaging an audience — apply to every modern human endeavor. This is something that advertisers, politicians and televangelists know very, very well. Isn’t it time we took stock of it, and gave them some of their own . . . magic.

Who knows, maybe we can change the world for the better. One story at a time.

What do you think?  What motivates you more, hearing the facts laid out in a businesslike fashion, or experiencing them via a compelling story that shows them in action?

I know, it’s kind of rhetorical, isn’t it? The key takeaway is this: story isn’t just for entertainment. It’s how we survive. And, to go one step further . . . all story is emotion based. Think about it. Motivation is, by definition, a feeling. Not a “rational” decision.

Interesting, isn’t it?

With that in mind, I’d like to give you a sentence from what many believe is the greatest novel ever written.

Go ahead and read it, but first a word of warning. Not out loud, because unless you’re a star underwater swimmer, you’ll pass out long before you get the to end. Here goes:

“Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which is the most doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendor is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for the proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipotent nature’s incorrupted benefaction.”

Just rolls off the proverbial tongue, doesn’t it?

Then again, if someone were to ask you to come up with a sentence that’s pure highfalutin gibberish, could you do a better job . . .

. . . than . . .

James Joyce?

Yep. That’s from Ulysses. I know what you’re thinking, I took it out of context. That’s why it doesn’t make sense.

Trouble is, in Ulysses there is no there, there. Honestly, with apologies to Gertrude Stein, there’s way more there in Oakland.

Sure, you could whip out your dictionary, your scholarly texts and first decipher, then resolutely deconstruct that sentence.

But . . . why?

My point is that often what passes for great literature is really the emperor’s new clothes. It’s scary to point out that there’s really not much, um, there. So instead we pretend to see great merit in it, and as a result we don’t actually see it at all.

And when we’re walking around blind, we make all kinds of mistakes. That might be what motivated the American Book Review to proclaim that the all time best opening sentence of any novel is:

. . . wait for it . . .

“Call me Ishmael.”

Really? Really?

Think about it. The goal of an opening sentence is to lure the reader in. To suggest that all is not as it seems, to arouse our curiosity.

Would that sentence do that? Of course not. It’s a name tag. So why did they pick it then? Because, sheesh, Moby-Dick is a classic. My guess is that they picked it because they’d already read the book, and much more important, knew of its undeniable stature.

But let’s reflect on this for a minute. Can you image an aspiring writer opening her debut novel with, “Call me Nimrod,” and having agents read no further than that before calling her to say: “Oh my god, that opening sentence, it’s brilliant. It might be the best-written first sentence ever! Where do I send the million dollars?”

All kidding aside, beware the towering so-called importance of Great Literature. Sure, some of it is splendid, but a whole lot of it isn’t. If it leaves you cold, chuck it.

Why not pick up Gone With the Wind instead. Which, back in 1937, actually did win the Pulitzer. I’m just saying . . .

What do you think? And, if you want to deconstruct that sentence from Ulysses, please do!

Judy led me to the window of a lighting store, and pointed to a dusty painting leaning against the glass. “I so love that painting,” she said, “sometimes I walk here just to look at it.” Judy battles osteoporosis and moves very slowly. The store is half a mile from her apartment. It’s not an easy walk.

The painting was of townhouses facing a river. Although technically done by hand, it had clearly been mass-produced. It was very, very tacky. The kind of painting hawked by those guys who pull over to the side of the road with a U-Haul full of gigantic plush day-glo stuffed animals and shiny throw rugs of dogs playing poker.

Judy is very smart. A member of Mensa, she ran salon back in the day, she lives on TS Eliot and John McPhee. She only reads highbrow nonfiction, literary novels, poetry and the New York Review of Books. She knew the painting was tacky, and said so over and over, in an uncharacteristically gruff voice.  She was embarrassed. Yet she had brought me there to show me the painting. It did something to her, she said, she couldn’t help it.

And it got me to thinking. There is such a huge, yet deceptively subtle, difference between the things we “like” and the things that affect us. Liking something is a choice, a judgment – something we often analyze before admitting, even to ourselves. Being affected by something is not a choice. It sweeps in and changes us without our permission.

It made me realize that if you asked me what I thought the ten best books I’d ever read were, it would be a very different list than if you asked me what ten books affected me the most.

One of the lists would have a lot of guilty pleasures. The other wouldn’t embarrass me.

What about you? Is there a difference between the art, books, stories and movies you officially like, and those that affected you the most?

And if there is a difference, which list matters the most to you? Don’t think about it. Just feel.

Just knowing that you might judge a stranger as either a warm or cold person, based solely on whether you’ve just held a cup of hot or iced coffee, sure can give you pause.

The point is, we often mistake what seems obvious on the surface for the deeper reason – the real reason – we’re drawn to something. Like novels, for instance.

What’s on the surface of novels? Words. Language. Sentences. That’s what we see. And often, those sentences are exquisitely beautiful. And so we think that’s what has us hooked.

It’s not. What we’re responding to is the story those beautiful sentences are harnessed to. What makes me crazy is the common notion that if you learn to “write well” – to compose luminescent sentences – then, Voila! you’ll have written a story.

That’s why, reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s piece, “My Life’s Sentences,” in the Sunday New York Times, I thought my head would explode. It came close when I read her assertion that the sentences that “come to her . . . are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, handed to me in no particular order, with no discernible logic. I only sense that they are part of the thing.”

Not wanting my head to explode, I popped two aspirin and did the next best thing. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Times making the point that — despite the article’s implication — no one but a genius like Lahiri can expect stories to arrive magically, in such a lyrically otherworldly fashion. That is, and have them make a lick of sense. They printed it under the headline, “The Art of Writing: The Story’s The Thing.”

The story is the thing. It’s what has actually captured you. And the great prose, exquisite sentences, and splendid voice? Their job is to serve the story. Alone, they’re window dressing in a vacant house.

And here’s the most important thing of all: story isn’t something you either have in your bones, like Lahiri, or not. While you can’t learn voice – it’s what you’re born with – story is something you can learn.

You don’t even need a muse. Because, creativity and imagination? Guess what, they aren’t magic or “otherworldly” either. Here’s best-selling science writer Jonah Lehrer from his fabulous new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works:

“For most of human history, people have believed that the imagination is inherently inscrutable, an impenetrable biological gift. As a result, we cling to a series of false myths about what creativity is and where it comes from. These myths don’t just mislead—they also interfere with the imagination.”

So, to hell with muses, divine inspiration and magic. Great stories come from having the gumption, determination and perseverance to stick at it, draft after draft, until you’ve wrestled the damn magic onto the page.

What magic is that? The very real magic causes the reader to surrender to the story so completely that it doesn’t feel like a story at all. What it feels like is life.

Long live story!

Last night, when I responded to an email she’d sent, my laptop decided to play a practical joke on me and randomly add two other email addresses to the “recipient” line. In accordance with some sort of Murhpy’s Law, I realized it a split second after I hit “send.” One of the email addresses was yelp@yelp.com.  No need to worry about that one (I hope). The other was to someone I know professionally, respect immensely, and who thank god has a great sense of humor.

Even so, I felt utterly exposed. And mortified. I consoled myself by thinking, yep, this is another example of what story is about. The things we don’t say. I mean, which do you think would be more interesting: accidentally receiving someone’s confident sounding professional email, or one that revealed what they were really thinking? Something that gave you a glimpse of what sounding professional actually cost them. After all, the old saw is, “Never let ‘em see you sweat,” not “Don’t sweat.” Stories are about sweating.  They’re about what your protagonist is really thinking when she says, “Sure, no problem, I’d love to!”

And, since misery loves company, I’m curious. What email would most mortify you if it were accidentally forwarded to a random person in your address book? Or better yet (not to mention safer) what about your protagonist? What would most mortify them?

Even so, last Saturday when I pulled from my mailbox a huge white United States Postal Service Priority Mail envelope that someone had paid six dollars and twenty cents to send me, my heart began to pound – and not in a good way. There was a generic return address. Holding it up, I saw that inside was nothing but a single letter size envelope. It looked ominously official.

Was I being sued? What had I done? I’ll refrain from going over the scary possibilities that flew through my mind, beyond the thought that somehow I’d been caught on a traffic camera crossing on a red, and I was going to jail. Besides, once I opened the envelope it turned out to be a form letter about a new benefit my bank was offering.

But it got me thinking about the old saw that eighty-five percent of people, if you sent them a telegram saying, “All is discovered, flee!” would be out the door without asking a single question. Because we all have “that thing” that we don’t want anyone else to know, ever. The thing that, if it came out, would change everything.

And it struck me that it’s a great question to ask of your protagonist – one of the few general questions that will inherently yield relevant information. So why not ask them: if you received such a telegram, what would you be sure had been discovered? What would you be fleeing from?

I’d love to hear what they ‘fess up to! And, did it surprise you?

How could a show in which authority of every ilk is not only constantly questioned, but deftly skewered — usually simply by taking it at face value — play so well in Peoria?

What brought this question back to mind recently is, of course, the children’s picture book I Want My Hat Back.

Like The Simpsons, it tells a funny story that is about far more than what happens on the surface.  And like The Simpsons, it’s layered, so if you’re four, you’ll love it. If you’re older (and more sophisticated), you’ll love it for decidedly different reasons.

How is this possible? Because both do exactly what a story must: tell us something about how to navigate the human condition (even if, in the case of I Want My Hat Back, you’re a bear).

And the brilliance of I Want My Hat Back is that it is, actually, the darker of the two.

On the surface it’s about whether the bear gets his hat back (that’s the plot). But what it’s really about is how a person can be too trusting, the danger of taking things at face value, and how sometimes even doing the right thing can leave you feeling as guilty as the person who, um, stole your hat.

How does a 32 page picture book with fewer than 300 words get all that across?

By creating a plot that forces the bear to confront the internal problem that’s holding him back so vividly that we’re able to intuit every internal turn. And so we watch the bear politely inquire of a snake, a turtle, a rabbit, a fox, and a beaver whether they have seen his hat. When they say no, he takes them at their word. Even though, as far as we’re concerned, the rabbit — who is in fact wearing a hat — doth protest too much when he vehemently asserts that he would never steal a hat. Hmmm, we think, there’s more here than meets the eye. This puts us a step ahead of the bear, which makes us feel clever, and that feels good. So does our sense of anticipation, as we wonder whether the bear will figure it out.

Spoiler alert: he does. It’s when a deer asks him what his hat looks like that he realizes that he has, in fact, seen his hat. On the rabbit’s head! In a blinding flash of “Aha!” he finally understands that it’s one thing to be trusting, it’s quite another to be so trusting that you ignore what’s right there in front of you.

And so off he races to confront the rabbit. When he does — because we’ve been privy to the bear’s “Aha!” moment — the look that passes between them speaks volumes. The bear has realized his mistake, and so, clearly, has the rabbit.

We feel the tension. We know something big is about to happen.

In the next picture, the bear is indeed wearing his beloved hat. As for the rabbit? Well, we’re left to draw our own conclusion when a squirrel asks the bear if he’s seen the rabbit, and the bear vehemently denies it. I would never eat a rabbit, he says. Uh oh.

At least, “Uh oh” is what we big kids think. Leaving the four years olds among us to laugh the laugh of the innocent, blissfully unaware of the fact that the bear may have gone a tad too far in retrieving his hat. Because like The Simpsons, while I Want My Hat Back plays on several levels at once, it always plays on a level that gives us insight into what – when push comes to shove — makes us human, regardless of how old we are.

And there you have it, the layered mechanics of story, as revealed by a simple – and deceptively deep – picture book for four year olds.

We learn the fundamentals of story way before that.

In fact, cognitive scientists believe our first foray into narrative began long before we had the language to express, well, anything. Usually back when we were wee babes and it first dawned on us that when we get hungry, if we cry real loud that nice lady with the kind eyes will bring us some warm milk.

In other words, we wanted something real bad, and figured out how to get it.

Desire drives destiny. It also drives story. Whose desire? The protagonist’s.

Like, for instance, that bear we were talking about last time. The one who wants his hat. We know exactly what he desires. And that’s good. But is that enough to make it a story? To instantly yank us in?

No, that alone won’t do it.

I Want My Hat is not a story.

I Want My Hat Back is a story.

Why? Because it implies conflict. The problem is that a story called “I Want My Hat” – which, after all, does tell us what the protagonist wants — might just list reasons why the bear wants his hat. Do we care about that? No, we do not. We don’t know this bear, so why should we care what he does and doesn’t want? We have much more pressing things to think about. Like what we want and don’t want.

And one of the things we want is a story that solves a problem. One that not only answers a question, but – and here’s the crucial thing – a question that we’re actually aware of.

I Want My Hat Back clearly falls into this camp. This bear isn’t going to write a paean to his lovely, luscious chapeau. Nope. How do we know? That one simple, plain, beautiful word that speaks volumes: Back. Forget the damn hat, it suggests, this is a tale of adventure, intrigue and it’ll answer the question: just how far will this bear go to get his hat back?

That is what the story is really about. In other words, it’s not about whether he gets his hat back or not. That’s just the plot. The story is about what the bear has to go through – and learn – in order to solve his problem.

Which brings us to a lesson that’s hidden in plain sight. It is indeed something we learned back in kindergarten, from books just like I Want My Hat Back, but it’s something that’s shockingly easy to overlook when we write stories of our own. To wit: it’s the very concreteness of the protagonist’s desire that allows us to delve into decidedly deeper matters.

The protagonist’s desire must be clear and concrete, as in: When you close your eyes you can actually see it? Not metaphorically. But in the “Look, it’s a hat!” sense. This is the foundation that gives you access to areas that aren’t so concrete. Like what it is about the bear’s worldview that keeps him from finding his hat. And what he has to master – that is, face inside himself – to actually get it back.

How? That’s exactly what we’ll be talking about in the next installment of the bear’s odyssey, in which we examine the bear’s deeper (and perhaps darker) nature.

Now, what about you? Is there a book you remember from childhood that still resonates with you? How did it do it? Looking back, is there anything about story that it taught you? We’re dying to know!

One title stopped me dead in my tracks. It leapt out so viscerally that I instantly ordered the book. It was . . . a kids’ picture book. My kids are grown. None of my friends have little kids. I don’t make a habit of reading kids books.

But I had to have this one. Because I loved the title. The name of the book is:

I Want My Hat Back

I read the title and I felt it in my gut, it made me strangely happy. It was so clear, so concise, and so deliciously full of portent. Someone’s hat has gone missing! And clearly that person (bear, actually) is going to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this missing hat thing. I was instantly dying to know, will he find his hat? And if he does, will he get it back?

After I ordered the book I read the title over and over, and it made me grin every time. I still like saying it. I want my hat back! (BTW, the book came and it’s just as good as the title promised it would be. Even better, maybe.)

And it got me to thinking: Why is it that so many of the manuscripts I’ve read lately – adult manuscripts that is — lack what I Want My Hat Back has? A main character who really wants something. Something the reader is aware of from the very first sentence. Something that we can root for, something that gives meaning to what the protagonist does, and shape to the story.

How is it that writers who’ve spent years studying, and who’ve poured their hearts and souls into their work, can still forget to answer this simple question: What does my protagonist want?

Because the answer? That’s what drives the story. How? We’ll talk about that next time. But for now,  tell me, who stole your protagonist’s hat? And what will she do to get it back?