I’m a little nervous about the portfolio, partly because I volunteered to have my “Earthly Tents” story workshopped one last time. I felt like “Earthly Tents” was getting pretty strong and I wanted to know how I could make it a little bit better before I turned in my portfolio. Or I thought I wanted to know how I could make it better.
Extend. That’s not a word you want to hear with barely a week and a half left before the semester ends ands your portfolio’s due.Every time you get workshopped it peels back another set of eyelids you didn’t realize you had shut and you see your story more clearly. Each workshop shows you how clear of a window into the world you’ve imagined that your words create. Sometimes it’s just your words that need to be fixed, and other times you have to go back and fix the world itself, make it bigger, deeper, more real. You find that you have to extend.
That’s what I found out at my last workshop. As close to done as I thought I was, as fully imagined as I imagined Alan’s life to be, I still need to extend. To really show how meaningful Alan’s change of heart is at the end of the story, to really let my reader feel that change, I have to extend.
In workshop Dr. Bailey and my classmates pointed out they still don’t truly know why Alan got divorced. The answer in the story is that he got divorced because he and his wife couldn’t see eye to eye about money. But that’s not a detailed, fully imagined answer (probably because I have had very little experience with divorce).
The newly deepened answer currently incubating in my brain right now is that Alan and Jodi did not divorce merely because they disagreed about money. They disagreed about time and money. Alan spent lots of time working to earn money to provide for his family. He loves his family. But Jodi didn’t see it like that. She felt like Alan was a workaholic, and she wanted him to take a higher-paying, less time-consuming desk job. She doesn’t understand that Alan loves being a carpenter.
But extending means more than just offering up this explanation. There’s a lot of emotion that goes with it. I may actually have to create a scene that shows some of this, a scene with Jodi physically present in it. I may actually have to imagine (one thing I’ve learned this semester is that imagining takes a lot more effort than you’d think) what Jodi looks like and how she talks.
Other areas in which I need to extend: Alan’s financial status, Alan’s relationship with his kids (I may actually have to imagine them too) and Alan’s relationship with God before and after his divorce.
It’s not that I don’t want “Earthly Tents” to get better. On the contrary, I want “Earthly Tents” to be as good as I can possibly make it, as close to perfect as it can be. I’d ask God to proofread it if I could. I’m just a little stressed because making “Earthly Tents” as good as it can be is going to take lots more time and effort, more time and effort than I’ll be able to fit in between now and next Thursday, which is my portfolio deadline and the end of the semester.
Sometime between now and then I not only have to extend “Earthly Tents,” I have to revise “All of Me” as well. “All of Me” is in even more desperate need of extension. Dr. Bailey gave me some great suggestions on how to cure the story’s ailing ending, but it’s going to take time to get the story as good as I can possibly make it, time I won’t have before the portfolio is due.
Of course, I’m not too worried about my grade in the class. I’ve put in a lot of hard work on these stories. They’ve improved immensely this semester, and I feel like I’ve really begun to grow as a writer. We’re required to write a self-critique letter to preface our portfolios, and in mine I’ll be able to note all the ways my stories could still be further expanded and lifted up a little closer to the ungraspable heights of perfection.
The last bit of advice Dr. Bailey gave us after our final workshop gives me some comfort. As he was explaining to us the importance of extending, he said one of the most valuable lessons we could learn this semester was that “it’s not what you wrote, it’s what wants to be written.” Those are exciting words for me to reflect on as I look forward to continuing to learn here at Susquehanna and continuing to grow as a writer.
