Writers Who Inspire Us Series: Sarah Gerard and the Chaos Within
In a 2017 interview with Sarah Gerard for Entropy, writer Zeke Perkins says, “...people end up living their stories,” to which Gerard replies:
“The stories of ourselves that we tell ourselves. Then we wrap our whole identity around them. The question is what’s left when you extract that. What’s left when you strip away the story you’ve told about yourself.”
The interview was a press piece for Sunshine State, Gerard’s essay collection that explores Florida’s environmental threats and economic pitfalls, in addition to a beautiful personal narrative threaded throughout the book. Having grown up in South Florida, this book had a deep impact on me, but it also opened my eyes to worlds unknown. I was completely mesmerized by the writing, by the openness and grittiness, the way Gerard cracks open a feeling and pushes her way inside.
It’s the reason I keep returning to her work; I know that I will get the truth, no matter how unsavory, unflattering– I know it will be real.
When True Love came out in 2020, I eagerly dove in. The novel follows Nina, a protagonist who seeks both love and abandon. The story winds itself around a sprawling plot whose twists and turns mirror the chaotic and unexplainable trajectory of life. In the midst of a transitory time in our country full of impending doom and gloom, Sarah Gerard isn’t telling us what to think or how to feel. She writes about the world as it is, not how she wants it to be.
As I get older, I’ve gleaned that in art, and in life, peace and chaos live simultaneously.
It is the ability Gerard has to hold these truths in mind while writing that inspires me. In the Entropy interview, Gerard speaks about giving oneself over to rapture and love. This is what we must do as writers. It is possible to write in a way that we are inching back to some higher meaning while also finding ourselves in a personal hell. We are transcending while realizing it is impossible to fully transcend. Our characters look up from the ground level. We as writers are also peeking down from the heights of our own confidence that waxes and wanes. To me, the best writing stays grounded while always reaching for something above and out of reach, and the most successful writers are the ones who are always willing to navigate this harrowing, rigorous effort.
Just as the best actors do not act, but instead react; this is what I find in Sarah Gerard’s writing. She is reacting to the world around her, having her characters react to the world around them, and in turn she creates a lens through which we often don’t want to look, but must. We don’t want to see the bad parts of ourselves, but they are there, glaring, and they must be recognized in order for us to become whole. '
“That’s why writers keep returning to the same story because we can’t possibly know what they mean for sometimes even decades after they happen — how they changed us and why we did the things we did”—Gerard from Entropy
Pretty much every writing class I took before graduate school asked me to define “What is the point?” If I couldn’t answer that question, I was doomed to a bad grade, to being wrong. But every time I read writing that had a clear and direct “point,” I felt gypped. Most of us are told what to think our whole academic lives, and we long for the day we would be able to think freely for ourselves. In school, we regurgitated facts and figures, memorized dates and historical events, we were told the symbols in each story and we identified all its themes. We often tried to answer the question of why did the writer write this? The teacher often had a correct answer in mind.
But I think it is impossible to know why you are writing something. It’s hard to answer the question of “What is this piece about?” and I almost feel that if you know the answer, you might be in trouble. If writing is a soul dump, a seeking, a meandering, then how can we possibly be so sure? There can be intention, images and ideas that are guiding you; but the beauty of writing comes from tapping into the unexpected, going deeper than you intended, going to a place that is off your original roadmap, somewhere that will surprise you.
When I asked Sarah Gerard which writers and stories garner inspiration for her, she said, “I guess all of the writers that I read do this in some way. I love it when I read a novel and simply do not know how the writer did what they did.” She mentions Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, a book she still turns over and over in her mind three years after reading, as well two authors that are private investigators, Erika Krouse and Ellen McGarrahan, whom she states she is, “in awe of their bravery, persistence, and intelligence.”
Circling back to my youth spent in Florida, my family and I often took trips to Disney World in Orlando. Sometimes, we’d be unlucky and a ride would break down while we were in our seats. When this happened, all the lights would come on and we were able to see the inner workings of the ride: the track underneath us, the shoddy backdrops and painted scenes that looked more real in the dark, the creepy animatronic figures paused in time. Disney World is known for being “the most magical place on earth,” but when all the lights were on, the magic died. We could see the trick of the light, how it was all done. Sometimes we were even escorted out of our ride vehicles and walked through to the exit by a cast member, guided into a gift shop or returned to the unbearable afternoon heat.
I don’t think readers want the lights to be turned on when it comes to reading. I think we want to marvel at how the author crafted story, how the writer unfolded memories. I think it’s more important to guess at how than why, to recognize that every author is grappling with something in their lives that they battle with on the page, that perhaps by doing so they might better understand themselves and in turn we might better understand ourselves too.
When we find authors who inspire us, we return to their work because we respect their courage to do what they do. They deserve our praise and our wonder. It’s the least we can do in return for such a grand feat.
About Brittany Ackerman
Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She has led workshops for UCLA’s Extension program, Catapult, HerStry, Write or Die Tribe, and forthcoming for Lighthouse Writers. She currently teaches writing at Vanderbilt University in the English Department. She is a 2x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, and more. Her first collection of essays entitled The Perpetual Motion Machine was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel The Brittanys is out now with Vintage. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
