Hypertext Magazine asked Beth Gilstrap, author of Deadheading and Other Stories, “Why do you write linked story collections?”
By Beth Gilstrap
I love story cycles because they’re a form that’s not quite a novel, not quite a story collection, and both at once. As a person living with Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and all the depression, anxiety, and compulsive tendencies that come with it, I find this hybrid form most aligns with how my traumatized brain functions—it’s how I make narrative happen both on and off the page. I doubt I will ever be the kind of writer who writes a nice, linear tale with a traditional structure and a single protagonist. I like to examine place and people from multiple points of view. C-PTSD typically occurs after prolonged and inescapable trauma. I’ve experienced this in early childhood and in my adult life. Research shows brains like mine have trouble with emotional awareness, emotional regulation, social emotional processing, and self-referential processing. In other words, I get overwhelmed and anxious constantly. My origin family was an abusive one, marked by alcoholism and mental illness. My mother worked hard to remedy the situation and successfully got us away from my father but, understandably, her own mental health suffered. What does all this have to do with writing? With my love for linked stories?
Everything, darlings. Everything.
You saw Wandavision, right? I cannot process the idea of writing a linear novel from a single point of view. My brain is at war with itself at all times and this leads me to question my own perception, to question the very nature of reality, to question time. It has led me to read about quantum mechanics. I find comfort in the possibility that there is a place in the universe where my brain functions “normally,” where I can lose myself in a conversation about red-winged blackbirds and not feel them dead in my hands. Where I sing my heart out without the memory of pushing a mattress in front of my door. Where I’m not triggered by the sight of daisies on bedspreads or the smell of Polo cologne. In no other world does that big-eyed child have to check her father’s pulse.
You may be sinking into the images above, but still wondering what this has to do with linked stories. Reader, it’s this: my brain fixates on small details and I follow the threads. I do not plan or outline. I follow where my mind wants to go and when you start with a fragmented mind, the mosaic-like structure seems like a natural fit, no? One can be bound to place and still wander. If a brain struggles with emotion regulation, impulse control, and perception, a story cycle is an excellent place to play with these things in a low-risk setting.
In other words, in real life, I have trouble making and keeping connections. Making interconnected stories gives me a sense of peace, even if it’s fleeting. It is that simple, that terrifying, and that magical.
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Beth Gilstrap is the winner of the 2019 Women’s Prose Prize from Red Hen Press for Deadheading & Other Stories. She is also the author of I Am Barbarella: Stories (2015) from Twelve Winters Press. Her work has been selected as Longform.org’s “Fiction Pick of the Week” and chosen by Dan Chaon for inclusion in the Best Microfiction Anthology 2019. She holds an MFA from Chatham University. Her stories, essays, and hybrids have appeared in Ninth Letter, The Minnesota Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Stream Lit, and Wigleaf, among others. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with a house full of critters.