Finding the Form with Molly McCarron

My stories often start from an initial image of characters. They’re already busy somewhere, doing something, and I follow them to see where they’ll take me. This time, it was the couple on the bus tour I saw first. I knew the couple was only understanding part of what was going on around them: a little island in the middle of a bigger group. At first, it wasn’t clear where they were, but once I’d determined they were in Turkey, and more specifically Ephesus, the site of an ancient city, I became obsessed with the Temple of Artemis there, once one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and that drove the rest of the story.

A cult worshipped Artemis in Ephesus as a fertility goddess. Artemis is most often known as the goddess of the hunt, and there are many statues that feature her with a bow and arrow, or next to a deer. The Ephesian version of Artemis is striking and unusual, covered with multiple gourd-like protuberances. Because we expect to see breasts on the front of a woman’s body, that’s what they look like, at first, but there is debate about what they really are. I even got a note from TNQ editor Pamela Mulloy questioning whether anyone could think they were breasts! That image, a kind of ridiculously fertile symbol (of whatever it is), as well as the fact that Artemis is described as being the goddess of fertility but also things that seem to be the opposite of fertility (e.g., eternal virginity) fascinated me.

I had the beginning of the story for a long time, but – as is often the case – the ending was the hardest piece to find.

Trying to get pregnant is sometimes a lonely, isolating experience. It can involve an unusual amount of focus on your own body (especially the parts of it you can’t see), as you try to create another one inside. Travelling is the opposite experience – you pick yourself up and drop into another world. Life in the place where you’ve arrived was carrying on before you got there, and will continue after you leave. While you’re there, it surrounds you. Eventually, I realized that that Aline’s city, like mine, is changing and growing around her. She doesn’t need to travel to regain that feeling of being in the middle of life happening around her. That’s when I realized I had an ending.

Even once I’d figured that out, though, there was something about the story that hadn’t quite landed. There was a certain distance to it. I love writing in the third person limited, where the narrator is still separate from the protagonist, but we’re seeing things through that character’s point of view. In this case, though, the third person point of view wasn’t leaving enough room for Aline to come through. I rewrote the story in first person, and that’s when it clicked into place.

Molly McCarron writes fiction and non-fiction in a backyard shed in Toronto. Her work has appeared in The Humber Literary Review, The Globe and Mail, and other publications.

Photo by Beyza Erdem