FOREWORD

Vol. 2.
TWENTY-THREE PIECES
The Chelsea Journal Writing Challenge


FOREWORD

Imagine yourself as a journalism student judging a writing contest. While reading, the oddest thing occurs. Unrelated backstories and settings overlap. Themes, plots and characters synchronize into some unnatural preordained order. Each composition raises dramatic expectations for subsequent stories to fulfil. Collectively, a larger story wrestles to be told. But how? And why?

A Toronto news media conglomerate accepted you for a semester on a work-term placement. You were assigned to the Community Newspaper Department. It oversees the content of Heralds, Gazettes and Tribunes across the country. Your job assignment as you understand it is to judge a writing contest. Nothing is known about the source of the submissions other than the name. The Chelsea Journal inspires the image of a quaint whistle-stop in rural Southern Ontario.

[Sidebar: FWIW, I felt an immediate affinity to the name. It reminded me of a pen name used in my youth.]

So what happened? Did some atrocity transpire during the contest? Could some repressed dirty little secret be surfacing? Is this assemblage of prose a prophesy of some imminent unspeakable act (tongue-in-cheek) and why are there recurring references to a need to heal?

It all starts with Dreamers & Deep Fryers. A mock magazine article tells the tragedy of a tortured soul racing against the clock. Failure after failure, he reaches for the elusive brass ring, obsessed with the need to experience success.

Just Pick Up The Suitcase, warns of a telltale sign of mental health. It was written as a hypothetical public service announcement by the Psychiatric Association,  Should it ever happen, everyday life as you know it is in for a little disruption.

As all good fiction has subplots, Twenty-Three Pieces does not disappoint. Journal entries tracking the inception, execution and publication of this competition, thread between the submissions uneditted as originally thumbed into a Blackberry. Composed during an intense period of personal conflict, the diary chronicles much more than its author realized.

A series of letters in the words of migrant workers weave a second subplot. Concerns are raised over unexplained disappearances of fellow Mexicans. The anonymous submission implies someone close to the guilty party wishes the truth to come out, if not the guilty party him or even herself.

Suspicions of some unspecified incident start with Dantes' Playground. The impact resonates in the writing.

What the Professor Calls Quality Time discusses how trauma and subsequent healing ripples through a community; an assertion further substantiated by a letter to the editor entitled Community Healing. There is the sense the residents are coping with the trauma, each in their own way.

The Missing Piece reads as if the actual perpetrator of this unknown event is recounting childhood memories.

Thank you . . . (under the circumstances) points a finger. It introduces the first of many occurrences of religious overtones.


Chelsea? What in the world is happening in Chelsea? And why Chelsea? It certainly is not an easy place to find on a map. Historical references are equally hard to source.

To share the experience of gradually unearthing Chelsea as encountered during the judging, setting-of-the-scene and characterizations have been left up to the sequence of submissions. I will however, concede this much. The first submission tells the story behind the choosing of Chelsea's tag line. In it, the town sign reads:

Welcome to Chelsea
Population 17,100
Everyone has a story to tell.

Following is the story of one reverent Chelsean. I thought I knew her; gracious, humble, tried to make a difference in the community. It's funny how the mind works sometimes.