Emily Articulated: Meaning-making

By Emily Erickson
Reader Staff

My writing has never been accused of being succinct, and I’ve been told a time or two that I can be a bit unclear. I get swept up in my mind, a place where I think in metaphors and feel in images, and haven’t yet mastered the art of short, punchy sentences — always pulled to say a bit more beyond the last punctuation mark. (See? Even there I couldn’t help myself.) My edit sessions feel like surgeries, cutting off clauses like third limbs so lines are more recognizable, and paragraphs easier to digest.

But I recently read a short story that felt like looking into a mirror — not in the content or subject matter, but in the way the author tried to pack so much into each sentence (which he did, with mastery). It literally took my breath away, and I found myself returning to it; my new North Star for honing how my mind tries to cobble together thoughts and feelings into sentences. 

Pulled from the 2024 O’Henry Prize Winners anthology, the story Orphans, by Brad Felver, was one I wanted to both climb inside and dissect to find its magic.

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

I came across it in my morning practice of the last few months, reading a short story to prompt my own writing. The practice has not only helped me expand the things I write but also starts my day with kinship and awe at the things people create — at the stories we all have to tell and the bravery people demonstrate by sharing them. 

Orphans is about an old furniture maker, shaken out of mundanity and loneliness by a teenage boy, sent to intern by his shop teacher. The main character, as observed by the apprentice, is a master of his craft.

“He was brilliant, there was no ignoring that, but he was so quiet about it. Maybe even ashamed. Brilliant the way an oak tree is brilliant,” Felver wrote.

This phrase made me stop. I returned to it, running my finger over it again and again as if I could siphon out all that it had to say. I wondered about the kind of brilliance it described and all that it said about the character, without having to say it explicitly. 

The lack of total clarity allowed me to ponder how a person could become so stoically brilliant. Was he always this way? Did he ever feel the need to justify his own brilliance, or did he always know he was creating something special (and how foreign would that be in a world where confidence is often mistaken for brilliance, and mediocrity is carefully packaged and sold as something more)? It was phrased in a way that invited exploration, allowing me to fill in the gaps and make the connections I needed for it to feel true. 

Felver wrote: “He felt old, and his body felt heavy, little more than a repository for so much grief accumulated along the way, which was just what happened to people who managed to live long enough.”

The vividness of this sentence, plus all the lived experience packed into just a few lines, is what I love about writing. I’ll never know all the specific things that make this man feel this way, but I can know the feeling — can understand the cumulative nature of grief, and the relentlessness of life, and find companionship in it.

I finished Orphans the morning of a new art installation at Evan Brothers. I walked into the cafe and took in the pieces on display — beautiful bodices constructed from foraged bark, set against backdrops of moss. I was consumed by a simple, comforting thought: people are always up to something inspiring.

Even in a time when so much of the world feels distant, art remains a bridge. Someone puts something into the world — a sentence, a sculpture, a melody — and others find what they need in it. The artist may feel one way when creating it; the observer might interpret it entirely differently. But they interpreted it. And that’s the power of artful expression: it invites us to fill in the spaces, to explore, to connect.

I may never master the art of a perfectly concise sentence. Then again, maybe I will. But what is most encouraging is the thought that, whatever form my art takes, someone might find something special in it. Or perhaps, more importantly, they’ll find exactly what they need — if only I keep putting it out into the world.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.