Washington Square. On air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor on Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Harrison Zeiberg, whose piece the Patrolman, is in the Summer 24 issue. Hey, Harrison.

Hello.

So tell us about your piece. How did you come to write it?

So the Patrolman kind of, I guess, has a roundabout way of becoming its own short story. It's part of a bigger work. Had thought of probably sometime last year, just as in conversation with my sister, and we kind of were just joking about somewhat outdated technology. So in that, like, it kind of spun into its own story that became very weird and changed a lot and ended up writing it. But that's this much bigger thing. And in all of that, I always try to look for opportunities to submit to different places. And I wanted to have a short story. And I noticed that there was a small section of the story with a character, the Patrolman, who only shows up, I think, three times throughout the entire longer book that it was a part of, like a very, very minor character. Kind of just a way to get the main characters from point A to point B. But I was able to see, like, it's kind of like I wrote this own little chapter for him, and I was like, oh, on its own, that could work. So I kind of just took it out of the entire book and made it on its own, edited it a bit, kind of took out the context of the story so it could stand on its own. And then I've just been submitting that to different places.

Tell us a little bit about the bigger piece that it came from.

Yeah, I've always been somewhat bad at describing the things that I've written, but the entire idea was one kind of to challenge myself. I've always somewhat struggled in terms of writing heavy plot stories. I would just get really lost in the details and eventually to sort of never finish it because it became too complicated or became much more about how does a character show up here when they weren't there to 10 pages ago and all of that. So it's somewhat of a challenge to myself to write something that was more heavily plot focused. That kind of happened. But the theme of the story, the idea of the story is that. And going back to the theme of kind of outdated technology is that there's this floppy disk that holds some type of government secret on it. Nobody knows what the secret Is. But there's all these theories about it and it goes missing or someone steals it and it's about the people who are trying to find it. So the government official who's trying to find it, a private detective. And then it just kind of expands and expands into weirder and weirder groups who are trying to find it. And it gives like a multi character perspective. So it's. I also have described this story to my friends as. It kind of would be like Sherlock Holmes kind of. But if everyone was bad at their jobs. Like people who are just really trying to figure out. And this kind of shows my deficiency in writing plot of people don't deduce where it is. It kind of just like other people show up and tell them not to tell them where it is, but they. They end up finding out not for their own genius or being able to deduce the plot or the secrets of it, but just kind of like happens and it's more of the character interaction rather than the plot. So I didn't succeed in my first mission, but I still ended up liking the major story.

It sounds a little bit like real life though, that people succeed kind of by accident, they tumble along and sometimes things work out that way.

It definitely seemed more like that than I initially intended. It's much less Sherlock Holmes or a mystery book than I intended it to be.

Okay, so you pulled this slice out. What has become of the rest of the story? I'm wondering if there are other little.

Slices that you could pull out for other slices. I would guess probably not because this one was for a named character, the one that shows up the least. And it's less context specific. I kind of had to like shave the beginnings and ends of it to make it its own thing and then change it and submit it. The entire story. I'm, you know, hoping to look back at it. I wanted to give it some space and time to edit it again. Maybe send it out as fully to different places. I haven't done that yet. I'm always looking to do things like that. But I wanted to give it time before getting too heavily back into editing. Because I always think if you continue looking at something for month after month after month, you kind of basically lose the forest or the trees.

Yeah. So leaving it alone for a while and you come back to it gives you a fresh perspective.

Yeah.

Okay.

Definitely.

You don't necessarily do creative writing for your work. I'm sure there's writing involved. I was wondering, how do you carve out time for these creative projects?

Honestly, kind of whenever I can. I guess that's a good thing. What weekends are for or, you know, my current job at a nonprofit, it's almost all on computer. I work remote a lot of the time. So I found in these last few months that I started this job after seven, eight hours on the computer. I'm not super thrilled to bring out the laptop and start typing. Yeah, for sure. It can be finding whenever I'm up to it or the weekend or even during my lunch break just to try to get a few more words out or a few more edits in.

I think a lot of people can relate to that was just being at the keyboard for so many hours. What do you think it is that motivates you to do the writing?

A good question, I think. I mean, I can't remember a time when I didn't write in some way, even really before I could read. So I had a hard time learning how to read because I have dyslexia. And, you know, I was reading probably grade levels behind my peers. But I came from a family that always, you know, very good storytellers surrounded by books. So even though I was, it took me a while to catch up to my peers. It was always just a part of my life. And I think probably just here in my family just say different stories or talk or love different stories. Whether it be family stories or even just the movies that they saw or the TV shows or the books that they read. That's part of the motivation, but it's also just comes from something that I can't really name. It's just something that I've always done and I can't really think of not.

Doing it for sure. What I was thinking about when you were talking is how storytelling to me is kind of separate from writing because the story exists in multiple forms and writing is one of the ways that you get it down. But telling the story to your friends and your family, just interesting that storytelling and writing aren't necessarily the same thing.

That's definitely true. And I found with short stories or longer form writing in that sense, it definitely does have a more definitive version. Whereas maybe other types of writing like playwriting, which I've also done, it does change so much over time in a way that I didn't really know. When I started doing that, I kind of finished a draft and I submitted it and I was like, okay, well that's done. And then I got like notes back and I was like, oh, plays change constantly. Even well known plays are always getting cut. And Added to and rearranged. And that was something I somehow was totally unaware of before I started on that path.

Talk a little bit about your playwriting.

Yeah, I did a little of it in high school. Probably not very good plays, but I just always liked writing. In a lot of my earlier, longer form writing, I realized the part I really liked writing was dialogue. So it took me, I guess probably a bit longer than it should have to realize, oh, why don't I write something that's all dialogue? So then I started writing the play and the idea for the play came from my first full length play called we the People, which was I was lucky enough to actually see performed, which again, maybe I was a bit too naive to realize that I wrote the play and started writing in January, submitted it in May, and by November I saw it performed somewhere, which is not the usual way it goes. This is also the start of the pandemic. So that was also not the usual way. But my first play just started off, I guess with a pretty basic question. Also being as a history nerd, I was like, oh, there's the signing of the Constitution is probably the most important event or the creation of the Constitution in American history. And I couldn't think of a creative work that described it. That's where the play we the People came from. And that just set me off on really falling in love with playwriting and getting that as a different way to express my opinions of myself or just writing, getting to write in a different fashion, so different from short story writing.

Before we started recording, you let me know that you have a background in history and politics. There must be a connection there with the topic that you selected.

It definitely wasn't a time period I. I couldn't like before I started writing. I can't. Couldn't say I knew a ton about it. I mean, maybe more than the average person because I spent years studying history in college and very much a history nerd and from a family of history nerds. I think it just made me deeply interested in the topic where maybe as if I wasn't in as much into history or political science, it would have just maybe seemed a bit more boring. From what I know, there could be a big play out there about the Constitutional convention that I just don't know about. But not knowing that, I was like, oh, why there should be one. It's, you know, such an important event and it's just kind of glossed over both in a lot of. I remember in high school was not discussed a ton. And unless you really go out of your way to study it. Not talked about a lot unless kind of in like, vague terms or people wrote a long time after it. So that was just the. Want to write about it. I wouldn't call it historical fiction. It may be kind of a little like that. I just tend to not be a huge fan of historical fiction. So I don't want to call my play that. It takes. And it takes a lot of liberties. It's less. It tries to get big general themes of historical fact. Right. But doesn't try to get too deep into the weeds of who said what on what day and who was there and when. There was like 50 people there. There's not 50 characters.

It sounds like seeing your work performed within such a tight time frame must have been really exciting. Like, were you expecting that to happen that quickly?

No. And I mean, I was very lucky. I started writing January of 2020. I started writing it and I was 20 years old. Got the first draft done or submitted a draft I felt comfortable submitting in May of 2020. So pandemic was set in. That's kind of like, let me give me the time to finish it. I was a junior in college. And then August was a different further draft on it gets accepted and performed. Gets part of a virtual play festival. And luckily, a little bit after I got performed like a stage read at a theater. That was the summer of 2020. 21. And from the summer of 2021 till this publication, none of my writing got featured in anything. So I think I get a very good, like, crash course and what writing can be like and sometimes how fast it can move and also the long droughts in between where you're writing. And I think I've written much better plays than we the People or like characters I may. And characters I'd really want to see on stage. And I haven't seen them. So this is the interesting fact. It was kind of a crash course in what being a submitting writer can be like. Both very lucky. And I know many people who write plays never get to the point of seeing their words performed. And then you have a long drought of just waiting for the next chance. Whether a short story being published or a manuscript being looked at or a play being performed.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of waiting involved with writing. Waiting and more waiting. I wanted to back up a little bit and talk about seeing it performed. Did the performers bring anything to the characters or the lines or the plot points or anything that you didn't expect something? They gave it A new touch anywhere, perhaps.

Definitely. I would say. With the plays, I learned that my writing was very repetitive in certain ways, which is like the most basic thing you hear in the first read through. You're like, these four lines could be one line. Which is honestly something I love most about writing. I've always like. I like turning a page into a paragraph and a paragraph into a sentence. Like, I like nothing more than just getting to delete pages from a short story or any. Or when I was in school, a paper I was writing just to make it more compact. But then just seeing, you know, like I wrote something maybe to think of it as a joke and the actor delivered a more serious or the audience reaction because I was able to see it performing live in front of people. I think it was five times over four days. And just seeing the response. I remember what clear memory, the place someone ends, I guess, probably unsurprisingly, with the reading out the beginning of the Constitution. And the people in the audience didn't know I was the playwright. It was a very small theater, and I was like, selling concessions and, like raffle tickets. And I was, like, talking to people about the play. And someone next to me was saying the preamble of the Constitution with the actor. Not loudly, it was kind of under their breath, but, like, seeing that kind of reaction to it or, like, what would get applause or what. Like, in the play, there's a character of Billy Lee who is a enslaved man who is owned by George Washington. And as I came across just reading him, and I was like, oh, of course he needs to be a character. You know, they're talking about liberty and freedom. And here's an enslaved man who has to stand there and watch the entire time. And you don't hear much from him throughout the play because you sadly don't, because his voice would have been silenced. But right before the act break, he has a monologue. And seeing what I could write as the author of the monologue and just seeing the actor across five performances completely elevated and turn it into something different and better than I could ever think or describe it being. And a lot of people have told me that's their favorite point of the show. So that was something I was kind of nervous about writing because I knew it was going to be the heart of the play. And probably it's for everything I've written. You're always a bit nervous over what you think the center or core of the play are going to be and how it's going to turn out. And then seeing the actor just elevate it completely. Was like I definitely sigh of relief for me. But also just grateful that they could do something with it that I never could on my own.

That sounds amazing and beautiful.

It was a great experience getting to see it said a lot. And again so shortly after I had really written it. And even like end was a large editing process over four days of rehearsal. So the script I went in was nowhere close to the script that got performed.

That makes me wonder if in the future as you're writing more scripts, if you'll know in the back of your mind that that possibility exists again in the future for someone to do something more with what you've written than you have done yourself.

Oh, I think definitely. I think that's a part of. As compared to the more of the short story where it's less collaborative. It is more of you sitting and writing and getting your ideas out there. Theater is inherently collaborative and people bring to it and like it very clearly will show you if it works or if it doesn't work. Like if over four days of rehearsal, if a joke you wrote isn't landing, odds are it's not going to land on the fifth night and you should probably get it. But if you're hearing good responses from the actors and the people doing it, it makes you know, like, okay, this is probably something I should look at or lean into or definitely keep in. And somewhat similar, I think with short story writing where isn't the collaborative. But like, you know, if you. If you hand a short story to a reader and they're just like, I don't get it. The reaction shouldn't be you didn't try hard enough. It should probably be okay, what's not clear about this? And that's just also figuring out how to get out of your own way. Like I think was a patrolman. Those who read it, it's not a lot of dialogue. None of the characters really have names. It's more of titles. And I think that was part to serve a bigger purpose within the broader story I was writing. Just because did there need to be another named character? The character shows up a few times. How much time am I going to dedicate to writing this relatively minor character? But also somewhat as a writer, I know that if I get too detailed, it kind of loses something to it. It's going to get too lost in the weeds of the 3,000 word story I'm trying to tell. Like, you can't go into this guy's entire life backstory because that's not really relevant to what this story is.

I think that's part of the magic of the short story is that you can accomplish so much with so few words and still leave an impact on the reader. One of the other things that you let me know is that most of your educational background has not been in writing. So I'm wondering how have you formed yourself as a writer? Have you sought out any instruction or read craft books or just talked to people? How did you make it happen?

Honestly, there's probably little things I've done more than just write in my free time, and I think it's been trial and error through that way. I'm not really a part of any writing groups. I didn't study creative writing in college. I have friends who are also creatives, so I've been able to read some of their work and they've been good enough to read mine, which I've always appreciated. But it's honestly just largely been me throwing words on a page over 24 years or whenever I first picked up a pencil or most likely when I began crayon. What I learned from then to now, it's just one of my favorite things to do. I'm always. I'm always happy when I've gotten to write in a day. It doesn't always get to happen. I'm always happy when it does happen.

You were talking about crayons. That made me wonder, do you have any of your really early works?

Oh, probably buried somewhere in a box. I do come across various notebooks sometimes where it will be like two pages of semi legible writing of some usually fantasy story. Most likely just a rip off of Percy Jackson or Lord of the Rings or anything that I saw on TV that day. There was always stories like that that I was starting off with. And that's I think where I learned. Especially with fantasy stories, they tend to be so plot heavy or so context heavy. And although I love those stories, I haven't been very successful in writing those stories. Like I said before, plot is not one of my strong suits. It tends to just really be focusing on like the emotional story or the character of it. So I think once I moved away from fantasy, that's actually when I started trying to write plays and it turned out well. I'd love to get back to fantasy at some point, but again, I may need to get much better at plot before I try that.

What about poetry?

I have tried it somewhat. I can't say I've put a lot of effort into it. I've been interested in it. Both because it'd be a new challenge and also maybe the practical side of me looks at the different, like, submission, like websites, and it's like there's a lot of poetry out there, not always a lot of plays or short story. So somewhat is the practical sense of it. But I also want to make sure that I'm. If I'm going to dedicate my time to it, I want to make sure I actually like doing it. I don't think I've found the poet yet who I connect with the most. Like, I found poems that I like, but I don't know if I found a poet who I really connected with and thought, okay, this is something I could really sink my teeth into.

Okay, who knows? Maybe it'll just happen one day.

Exactly. I've tried a little bit, haven't looked back too much, but I've been thinking about it.

Yeah, it sounds like for the most part you just trust your intuition about what you're called to write and then that's what you write.

I tend to. I don't really do work with outlines all that much. I tend to, if I get an idea, I'll write it and I'll see how many words I can get out of it. And if it's more. So probably with plays and with anything else. But I've noticed that with plays you can edit it, redraft it, add new characters as much as you want. If it's not working, it's not going to work. There's not much you can do to it. And I've found over the, I guess four and a half years I've really been writing them. Is that the play that is supposed to be written does end up being written in some way. It takes a long time or different forms or. The last play I wrote originally, it was set very much, very plot heavy, very like, a lot of backstory to it. And then I was like, this isn't working, but I know what the core is. And I just threw out everything that I had written over a few weeks and just restarted from page one. And it turned out so much better to me than I think I ever could have, really. Trying to just force dialogue into the structure that was never going to work.

How can you tell when it's not working?

It's kind of like when I can't string it together, I guess. I don't always write in order for the Patrolman and for the broader story it came from that I wrote in order. But for plays, I tend to just think of Characters and okay, what would this character say in a scene with each other? And I'll try to string it together and you know, and I realize, okay, this is overlap and it's like this. And then work it out into a structure from there. But if I get to the point where I write everything I can think about and I try to put it in order and it just isn't working, if it just doesn't make sense or there's nothing I can do to make the dialogue sound right, or the story or the emotional story, these characters to connect. I know it's probably something deeper than just like clunky first draft dialogue. And that's usually. That's how I write for play is very rarely is it in order. Honestly, this last. The broader story that the Patrolman came from was the first thing I think I wrote or one of the first things I wrote in order. Even like the previous, I guess, novel, kind of a collection of interrelated short stories. I originally didn't write them in order at all. And then kind of realized like, oh, this will make no sense if it's not chronological. No one's going to understand any of this.

It kind of sounds like the story exists somewhere in the your subconscious and you pull it out piece by piece.

I haven't thought about it in those words, but I think it's. I think there is something at the core of each story that will get out and will make its way through all of the bad writing and the earlier writing and the missteps, because that's a story you want to tell. There was a plot device I was trying to work into like three or four different plays and a lot of like, failed attempts at plays. And it was supposed to be a character who was reading Letters from Home. And I tried like every which way I could to really shove that into a story. And it never worked until it eventually did, until it worked within the context of the thing I was looking for. And for me, it just. When I edit in a short story or a longer work or a play, it tends to just be cutting out unnecessary context and unnecessary plot and get into really what's at the most basic of it and expanding there. I've often described it as my first drafts. If it was a steak, it would just be all fat, the first draft, and then the second draft would be just a bone. And then I have to work to try to get meat back on it as a final draft. And that's just in my process, been, I guess, somewhat successful over the last four and a half years at least I've been enjoying it.

Yeah. I think understanding your own process as a writer is probably one of the most important things because each writer has a different process, you know, and you can't. Somebody else describes, I do this and that and then you try to do what they do. Sometimes it just doesn't work.

Yeah. And I'm very interested in how other people write. Not just creatively, but not too far removed from college. And I loved asking my friends, how do you write? And for me, I love drafts. I love just the act of writing itself. And also part of having dyslexia is knowing that I need the extra time. What may take some people for writing an hour will probably take me two hours, two and a half hours, three. And I had some friends who said first draft. And that's what you turn in. Some even people who. Creative people who. That's how they would write. And for me, I just tend to throw everything on a page and see what comes out and then figure it out from there. Like I said before, no outlines, no real preconceived notions of what I want to happen. Just some ideas of a story, a general theme, a general plot or structure and then just throw everything in there.

Writing is mysterious.

Definitely. Everyone does it differently.

Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that makes it so intriguing is that there is not one way to do it. There's your way. And then a year or two can go by and your way may not be what it was and it changes. And then you have to try to figure out why am I doing it so differently. Yeah, that's. That's something else. Any last thoughts about anything that you might want to suggest to someone perhaps that's interesting in writing a play? What would you suggest to them for writing a play?

I would probably. What's something I've noticed and I've seen, you know, other sometimes like student work. Never, never write. Slang never turns out well. I've seen. That's a very basic one. I'm. I'm sure that's there's hundreds or thousands of examples of how that's not true, but I've just always found in seeing like a 10 minute play showcase of just seeing people like, oh, slang never turns out well on a script. You need to have really good actors to make that seem natural. That's the most basic one. And I guess besides that, just keep editing and keep. Cause you're eventually going to find the play that you were supposed to write.

Well said. I think if I was gonna add something I heard you say, is to give the actors something to work with and you know, to know that, to trust the future actors to bring something to the page. So that's what I got out of what you said. Well, it's been great talking to you. If people are interested in connecting, they can find you on LinkedIn.

Yep, I, I do have a LinkedIn. It's just my name, Harrison Zaberg. I'm going to probably be working on a creative, like a website for my creative stuff.

Okay. All right. Well, I'll put your LinkedIn in the show notes in case anyone would like to get in touch. Thanks a lot for joining us today.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Thanks for stopping by the audio town square of the Washington Square Review and take until next time. This has been Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc.edu. wSR writing is messy, but do it anyway.