Chrissy Hennessey c hristine.hennessey@gmail.com - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Chrissy Hennessey

c

hristine.hennessey@gmail.com

https://sorelatable.substack.com/

“Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery.”

Daniel Kahneman

From

Leave The World BehindThe store was frigid, brightly lit, wide-aisled. She bought yogurt and blueberries. She bought sliced turkey, whole-grain bread, that pebbly mud-colored mustard, and mayonnaise. She bought potato chips and tortilla chips and jarred salsa full of cilantro, even though Archie refused to eat cilantro. She bought organic hot dogs and inexpensive buns and the same ketchup everyone bought. She bought cold, hard lemons and seltzer and Tito’s vodka and two bottles of nine-dollar red wine. She bought dried spaghetti and salted butter and a head of garlic. She bought thick-cut bacon and a two-pound bag of flour and twelve-dollar maple syrup in a faceted glass bottle like a tacky perfume. She bought a pound of ground coffee, so potent she could smell it through the vacuum seal, and size 4 coffee filters made of recycled paper. If you care? She cared! 

From my work-in-progress

By the time I made it to the grocery store, the shopping center was nearly empty. A single cart creaked in the middle of the parking lot, pushed forward by the wind as the sky grew dark. Inside, I bought whatever was left—a loaf of white bread, ten bricks of ramen, a case of sparkling water, a box of wine, and a single head of fresh broccoli. The vegetable rolling down the conveyor belt offered a fleeting sense of control. Even in the face of an oncoming storm, I would find a way to nourish myself. Why compromise my body’s needs for a mere force of nature?

Let’s go shopping!

Name an important event with high stakes Kids birthday, a wake, fleeing Europe, another lockdown, first date Describe an attitude someone might have toward moneyAnxiety, obsession, worried, investment, conscious, stressful Send a person with that attitude grocery shopping for that event

From “Twin Study,” by Stacey Richter

I’ve been a human specimen going on twenty years now, ever since my sister and I were twelve, when my parents enrolled us in the California State University Twin Study. Every four years the two of us, along with several other hundred pairs of identical twins from California, meet in the same depressing chain hotel in Fresno to be tested, prodded, and poked. “You are special!!!” begins the notice for every one of these meetings. Whoopee. I’m special. Not because of anything I’ve done, no, of course not. I’m special because I’m genetically identical to another person, a person I haven’t seen in four years, since the last meeting of the twin study.  

From my work-in-progress

The first time I met Marcus Olvera, I thought he was going to kill me. It all started with the hurricane, which formed over the Atlantic Ocean in early September. In my coastal city we watched it brew for over a week, gaining and losing strength as it swung between depression and disturbance, stages of development I found particularly relatable. I began to think of the hurricane as a mirror, and I wondered what it would reflect. Then it organized itself and began to lurch toward the southern part of North Carolina, and the mirror cracked.

Back to the beginning.

Think about that grocery list we just wrote. Write an opening paragraph that will eventually bring us to that scene. Try to reveal: WHO the story is about WHAT is about to change WHY this day is different

Let’s add some conflict.

Go back to the person in the grocery store Add a second person—friend, lover, nemesis, store employee Give them something to argue about Make money/class the unsaid thing