dog bites
Overheard in a restaurant.
The woman who thought suing for a dog bite might be a good business idea also had some potentially great stories starting with lines like “this woman we know from metal detecting club. . . ” only the stories were actually super boring accounts of somebody’s medical problems and whatnot. If I were a writer I’d file away that metal detecting club thing to whip out later; it’s just that sort of Tom Waitsian detail that makes a story seem more real and more false at the same time.
Funny you always credit this writing strategy as “Tom Waitsian” when I know you know there’s a lovely Alice Munro story about exactly this thing. Mind you, if there were a Nobel Prize for pop music, Tom Waits might get it eventually. He has subscriptions to those magazines, he never waves when he goes by. He’s hiding something from the rest of us.
I assume you’re referring to “Material”. That is my FAVOURITE Alice Munro story.
“I told Hugo he ought to pay more attention to Dotty if he wanted to be a writer. I told him about her husbands and her womb and her collection of souvenir spoons, and he said I was welcome to look at them all by myself. He was writing a verse play”.