Tryptophan May Cause Procrastination:Return From Thanksgiving Break Part I

The Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving break, I shut myself in my room and worked on “Earthly Tents.” My goal was to get the story pretty close to done — that is, good enough to include in my portfolio that’s due at the end of the semester. That way I could focus completely on “Someone to Watch Over Me” (which is now titled “All of Me”) over Thanksgiving break.

I accomplished half my goals. I'm really pleased with the way “Earthly Tents” shaped up (though I volunteered to have it workshopped again this coming Tuesday, just to be sure), but when I got home for Thanksgiving vacation, I was on vacation.

Thanksgiving break was five days long, Wednesday through Sunday. The week before Thanksgiving break this sounded like mountains of time to spend with my friends and family and to get work done, but Saturday afternoon when I was only beginning my rewrite of “Someone to Watch Over Me,” I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t already churned out several manuscripts fit for The Best American Short Stories.

Maybe it was the tryptophan that got me. Or the last-minute Christmas-tree-selection trip my family took Sunday afternoon. Whatever it was, it left me frantically typing on my laptop scrambling to rewrite my 16 pages of story as my dad drove me back up Sunday.

I finished my new 26-page draft Monday night (or rather Tuesday morning as I finished sometime between midnight and 2 a.m.), and though afterwards I was awfully tired (and still am even as I type this), I was really pleased with the new draft — except for the ridiculously implausible shootout I tacked on to the story to end it.

Tryptophan May Cause Procrastination:Return From Thanksgiving Break Part II

Over Thanksgiving I did do a little work. I read and took notes on a jazz musician’s firsthand account of a musician’s life and the music business in the ’20s and ’30s, and I found a lot of good historical details that give my story a really authentic feel. I’m also really pleased with the way Danny Ressing and Mae Bellport are starting to develop distinctly different voices and the way they are both deepening as characters.

My big problem is plot. I really need to stop having people get shot at the end of this story. Those are cheap, easy, 1:30 a.m.-the-night-before-it’s-due endings. The ending to this story and the whole plot need to arise naturally from the characters in the story. I’m having a conference with Dr. Bailey on Monday to get some help straightening all this out.

I need to get it straightened out soon. We only have two fiction classes left — one week of classes — and then it’s finals week. At the end of finals week our portfolios are due (in writing class there is no final test, our portfolio of the writing we did this semester is our final). I have a fair amount of work to do on “All of Me” to get it ready to hand in, but the good news is that since I already have my short-short and my first short story basically complete, I can focus all my attention on “All of Me.”

The only other things I have to focus on are an essay on genetic engineering I’m writing for Thought class (which I already have a good start on), a final in my Jazz History class (which shouldn’t be too hard for me since most of the test will involve listening and identifying different songs and elements of jazz music) and a final in my New Testament class (in which I already had a strong A before I handed in an extra-credit assignment yesterday). So I really will be able to focus a lot of attention on fixing up “All of Me.” I’m eager to hear Dr. Bailey’s suggestions on Monday, because I think the characters in the story and the beginning and the middle of the story itself are all shaping up very nicely. Hopefully Dr. Bailey can help me get all my ending problems worked out.

And then after all that work is done, I get an entire month off for winter break before second semester begins. Over winter, considering all that time I’m sure I’ll have, I am quite certain I’ll be able to churn out at least three, if not four, Pulitzer-Prize worthy manuscripts...

What Wants to be Written:The End of the Semester Part I

It snowed the night before my last Intro to Fiction class, and I almost considered wearing the boots that my mother had insisted I bring to campus with me after Thanksgiving break. Our last Fiction class was going to be a “secret field trip,” except it was the same secret field trip Dr. Bailey had taken my summer writers workshop class on two years ago, so I was in on the secret. We met in the library like usual on Thursday and then walked to downtown Selinsgrove to the used bookstore, D.J. Ernst Books. I wore my sneakers and nothing bad happened to me on the walk over.

At the store, Dr. Bailey bought each of us two books, two well-written books which he either picked or approved. No sappy romance novels. Nothing about aliens. For me he bought The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and a collection of short stories by John Updike. Because I've never been able to walk into a bookstore without buying something and because paperbacks were only 50 cents, I ended up buying about six more books. I bought two James Baldwin novels, several more Barbara Kingsolver novels (I’ve never read any of her work before, but half the class assured me she’s an excellent author. Kristen, one of my classmates, nearly knocked me over when she thrust The Poisonwood Bible into my arms).

I also bought two Christmas presents for my mom (maybe because I was feeling guilty about not wearing those boots): a pristine-looking copy of The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green, a book about a girl struggling to overcome schizophrenia I read in my high school modern fiction class.

After our class was finished cleaning out the book store, we crossed the street and had coffee in the Kind Café. It was a nice way to end the class, sipping coffee and reading John Updike with the friends I’ve made in class this semester.