Back Story: Confetti by Brett Rosenblatt






When I was a child, my father decided to grow a vegetable garden without planting anything. All winter he collected boxes of discarded produce from neighborhood shops and dumped them into the tilled dirt behind our house. By early summer, we had a wild collection of maybe-edible food, a beautiful, disordered square with every inch teaming and fighting for life. We were fairly poor, so we pretty much ate everything. In late summer, we walked the garden and came to the last of the large growths. A zucchini, perhaps? A squash? No one knew. My father handed me a knife, and I severed the stem. He hefted it from the dirt and placed it in my arms, and I nearly collapsed from the weight. Then he patiently explained to me that it was a cucumber that decided to become a watermelon. I remember staring at him for a long time, but finally, I decided to believe him.


I still do.


Writing is the same way for me. The things that I could overlook or discard stay with me, trying to grow. Maybe I’m just weird or lonely, or maybe it’s the same for everyone. I don’t know. At some random point, probably when my head starts to hurt, I’ll hurl fistfuls of this useless matter and spread them out on pages. Much of it dies right there, unable to survive the air. Sometimes one part will grow too big, and I’ll have to cut it off into its own story. Other times, something organic grows with little help.


“Confetti” was no different. Originally, it was a story about a borderline sex addict (not) dealing with her issues. Then, of course, there is a husband. How does he feel about it? What does he even know. I wonder. A child? What about the strangers whose paths they cross? Certainly, they have their stories, too. So I gave them all voices, writing in real time as I always do, letting the characters go about their business. I never decided to have different points of views until the child had something to say. Then I let them keep their voices separate. It made the characters lonelier, but then we are all alone, anyway. The airplane itself was never the story, initially it was never even in the story. It was just the garden. And what happened to it had little to do with me. I’m a writer, not a pilot.


What I learned from the editors willing to work with me, and they are rare and often unpaid, is that when I finally think a story is done, it’s probably little more than half done. It took a long time not to submit at that point (‘just to be rid of it’). Now when I write, I ramble. It’s not so much putting words on a page delicately as it is throwing them on the floor, against the wall, stomping them like unkillable bugs. I usually have several stories in various states of abandonment because I know this is how I will treat them. When a story finally grows that I am able to read, I bring out my editing knives and do brutal violence. When I can no longer lop off entire paragraphs, I change knives and go for words. There’s always some useless word cringing in a dark corner trying to survive. When I can no longer find any words to destroy, I go for letters. Surely there is a bloated word trying to squeeze itself into a space meant for a smaller one? Selfish bastards. Evict them, and open the door for a lighter, more humble word. When that’s done, I go for commas, punctuation. I have read stories where writers eliminate punctuation altogether, but they had MFA’s. I don’t.


As someone who stuttered for most of my life, I have both a deep love and a particularly violent hatred of words. I will write a sentence and fall in love with it, but I also get keyboards with those large delete buttons that I can smash with my whole fist. Also, I’ll often write a story backwards, or move around the parts to see if they can survive. Whatever is not alive cannot stay in the story. Whatever I can kill was never really alive. It’s a messy process, but so is life. And if an entire paragraph, or even an entire character, doesn’t have the will to survive on its own, then so be it. Something else will grow in its place. I’m certain of it.


I am very much an amateur writer, and probably always will be. I never know what works or doesn’t. One of my favorite stories has never been published; ones I didn’t think were any good got rave reviews and nominations or awards. I never know. But I can say that I love writing, not the physical process of writing but the rest of it; the screaming in the shower, the crying in the car, and the late night subway rants. We’re all a little crazy, yes. Writers often imagine that they’re creating a better world through fiction, and maybe some do, but not me. I just take the ugly parts and rearrange them until they make sense to me, and then I go out in the world and find some more.



Brett Rosenblatt is a software entrepreneur and fiction writer living in New York City. Brett's work can be found in various literary and consumer publications including Newsday Magazine, The Barcelona Review, Opium, Lit Up, Rose & Thorn Journal, The Battered Suitcase, Susurrus, Metazen, and others. He can also be seen occasionally reading his work in cafes and bars throughout NYC. Visit him at brettgariarose and read “Confetti” in the winter 2012 issue of Rose &Thorn Journal.

Posted by Editors at 2/15/2012 7:29 AM
Categories: Back Story
Tags: rose & thorn brett Rosenblatt fiction prose
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