A few weeks ago I sent a message to my friends that most found slightly alarming. The message was as follows:
“My debut into weird fiction will explore the strange urge I keep having to put on face paint and dress up like a clown to go out and do errands”
I have very patient friends.
That intrusive thought eventually did make its way through my brain and out my fingers, like when you suddenly have to use the bathroom and know you need to strap in for a wild ride.
Sorry, being in this headspace makes me weirder than normal.
So what the heck is this clown story? If you haven’t already, I recommend reading through my Current Projects list for a synopsis. The short of it is, one day I was suddenly in labor, this clownly (word?) urge ready to shoot out of me like a baby. I had recently been entranced by such weird fiction as CJ Leede’s Maeve Fly and Jade Song’s Chlorine, the former following an unhinged twenty-something killing her way through Los Angeles as a reaction to the failing health of her grandmother, and the latter a slice-of-life style narrative that builds to some fantastic body horror. You may consider those two works the mommy and other mommy of Project Name: Clown.
Let me assert this, as for some reason it has been important to me from the very beginning: this will not be a killer clown slasher. There are more than enough of those out in the world. I want the clowning in this story to be as respectful as it can to the actual art of clowning, and as such, I purchased and read actual clowning material.
The story, as I have it in my mind right now, will switch back and forth between scenes of Ronnie’s past as she developed her clown self and Ronnie’s present, where she is currently in a sanitarium, where it is suggested that she committed a series of gruesome murders. The voice, so far, is playful, scornful, and unhinged.
Some of my favorite parts of Maeve Fly were the scenes where Maeve interacts with children at her job at Disneyland. It was very clear that Maeve did not pose any danger to children despite her increasing insanity, and I wanted to borrow from that for Ronnie- possibly her sanest moments will be when she is clowning for children.
When I say that something weird is coming out of me, here’s what I mean. This story is coming out of me, as in, I’m pulling a lot from myself here. Don’t freak out- I’m not going to lose my identity and slowly dissolve into an alter clown personality- but several elements of Ronnie’s past and present have been borrowed from myself, either my reality or things that have held residence in my head for a long time.
For example, the opening scene is a flashback to Ronnie’s first encounter with clowning where she gets a job at a local Halloween haunt- you know, the kind that takes up residence at the fairgrounds for the month of October and is full of sets meant to scare delighted paying customers. This is quite literally borrowing from my own teenage years, where I enjoyed one season of being an actor in a Halloween haunt. My position was not a clown, however, but a zombie.
In that opening scene, Ronnie is asked to attack a mannequin like a zombie would, and that’s exactly what I was tasked with at my own audition as a nervous seventeen-year-old. Apparently I was not bad, because they hired me. That Halloween season was incredibly fun and grueling, as several of my friends auditioned and got hired with me, though all of us ended up spread throughout three different haunts.
Fun tidbit- my pal and former bandmate Alayna got her start in special effects makeup at this gig, and now she does it professionally. Like, for movies and stuff. Incredible. Shameless plug. Check out her Instagram. You won’t regret it.
Anyway, I worked a lot of long and tiring nights, one of which literally almost ended with me dying in a car accident. Sorry ma and pa- can’t hurt to know now. I almost fell asleep at the wheel on the long country road that lead to home. It was 3am, and I had been at school that morning. But most nights ended with a car full of good friends, going through the Taco Bell drive through with fake-bloodstained clothes and real dark circles under our eyes.
It was the only year I worked that gig, but I thought that Ronnie would have come back again and again. She’s put in the role of a clown at the last minute, and that’s her catalyst that starts her down her inevitable road of delusions.
The other part that is me- and don’t worry, it sounds worse than it is- is the present narrative, where Ronnie is a patient in a sanitarium. There’s something about long-term hospitalization that has always fascinated me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t romanticize being mentally ill. That’s not it at all. This is just something that’s lived in my head for a long time, and what are we really doing when we write besides exploring things in a safe space?
When I was about twelve, I picked up a book at our local thrift store, Cut by Patricia McCormick. It followed a young girl living in an institution because of her addiction to self-harm. That book planted this space in my head that’s kind of hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.
There’s something very comforting, very secure and relaxing, in the idea of living in a mental ward as a long-term patient. I know this is often the plot of terrible stories- AHS: Asylum to name a favorite- but that’s not what’s always been in my head. To me, this imagined ward was a comfort, a constant, a safe place. In that ward, the darkest parts of me were normal, usual, accepted, discussed. I imagined orderlies with which I’d be on a first-name basis, a clean, organized room, and a regimented existence that left nothing up to chance or disruption. This is the place I tended to retreat to a lot in my angstier years, especially during high school.
Since I’ve spent time in an imagined ward inside my head (look, don’t call the whitecoats on me yet), I find it very easy to write Ronnie in this place. It was not planned, like nearly all of my writing, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this place being transferred from my subconscious into my Word document. It felt like having a melody in your head for years and then finally finding the right notes on a fingerboard.
Project Name: Clown is just in its infancy, but I can tell already that it’s going to be not only fun but cathartic to write. In a time where many of us feel like we have no control over anything, many writers are finding relief in the weird, the unconventional, the “good for her” unhinged stories that populate the shelves this season. I’m excited to see where Ronnie will take me and I hope that if, by some miracle, she does get published, people will see themselves in her, the part of them that wishes to hide under a mask of face paint and ruffly clothes, the part of them that secretly wishes to just snap and turn away from reality once and for all.
That’s what this is all about, right? Sharing parts of yourself to the world, hoping the world understands?
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