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As I glance back at my notes from Anne Dalke’s  Literary Kinds course  discussion on Thursday,  Feb. 7, on my attempt to answer “What makes this text a “story in fragments” rather than an essay in fragments, or a life in fragments? “, the page reads:

 -->Pieces of a puzzle that come together to form a story.

--> The “breaks” in those fragments allow for an imaginative flow of pieces. See how it all comes together. The breaks as a space to find the connections to examine how it all comes together. 

--> By having these breaks, it allows for it not be an essay or memoir but a way to recount a collection of periods of a story.

My thoughts and reflections are broken, I admit. But I can relink my fragmented notes as I rewind back to the moment when all the ideas crossed my mind.

A similar process occurs when writing stories. A story is not about a repetition of circumstances but a description of a writer’s perception of events,  a written account of the connections that are randomly made across time and space in one’s mind. Anne Dalke’s essay above narrates clips of her personal and professional life, intertwined by her reflections and view on the day-to-day encounter of “breaking”. It starts out as a remembrance of the past and its connection to fragments of her present: her marriage, students, work, home. A story is distinguished from an essay or a life as it shares an angle of the circumstances, a twist to the events that makes sense to the writer or storyteller,  that it not available within the bounds of an (academic) essays or the reality in the life experience.