Cynan Jones on Nature and Nonlinear Love

This week’s story is about a couple that fears that a fierce storm is going to bring a tree down on the power lines near their cabin in the countryside, potentially endangering them and their young daughter. When did this scenario first come to you? Although readers will receive this story very much through the prism of fiction, this happened to me. Not necessarily in the order or with the exact events on the page. But, yes—I was woken up in the pitch-black middle of the night by a tree bringing a power line down on our house. I had no sense I would write about it until much later, and even then I was hesitant. Trying to reframe a real event into a working piece of fiction is more challenging than making something up from scratch. And trying to judge whether you’ve adequately transmitted the true feelings of a situation you’ve been through is nigh on impossible. Hopefully, though, the impact is there. The story is told in the third person, but we experience events primarily from the husband’s point of view. Did you know from the outset that you’d stick so closely to his perspective? Early drafts tried to bring in other perspectives. There were a few iterations in which I also wrote from the climber’s point of view, climbing the tree with him. And I also experimented with the wife’s voice. All the different approaches helped me to get a better sense of the characters themselves, and of how they navigated the scenes. In the end, the story wanted to compress itself into the one person. The cabin has been leaking, and it becomes clear that the couple had meant to seal the wood, but hadn’t had the time or energy to do so. Does this seeping water change their relationship to their home—and to each other? Relationships are not linear. Things can happen at any point to unsettle them, or make them stronger. Maintenance of the basics, though, is key, and if that maintenance is foregone, for whatever reason, it’s more problematic if pressure comes […]

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