1 Corinthians, Iraqi Poetry, and the Year 1937:Too Much Homework

This week I’m exhausted.

I have a three-to-five-page, single-spaced(!) essay and a presentation on 1 Corinthians both due Tuesday in my New Testament class, a three-to-five-page, double-spaced draft of an essay on exiled Iraqi poets due Monday in my Honors Thought class, a presentation and a final draft on the Iraqi poets due Friday and a new short story due Tuesday. This new short story is supposed to “extend,” to go beyond the relatively simple one-scene stories we just did. Dr. Bailey encouraged us to “be ambitious with this one.”

So I am. In the midst of all this work (I’m not going to know what to do with myself next Friday afternoon after everything’s turned in), I’m writing a short story set in 1937 that will be told from two different first-person perspectives. The characters are based on two musicians I studied in my Jazz History class here at SU: Artie Shaw, the first white bandleader to hire a black singer, and Billie Holiday, the first black singer to perform with an all-white band.

I'm in over my head. Since I never actually experienced the year 1937, this story requires about as much research as my Honors Thought essay on Iraqi poetry. It's all the small things that trip me up. What did the dance halls and clubs look like? Where did bands rehearse? What songs were popular? How did people talk?

That’s not to say I don’t find the research interesting. I love jazz music. The problem is, whenever I sit down to write this thing, I always spend more time digging through Wikipedia for background information than I do actually “hammering the keys” (Tom Bailey’s prescription for writer’s block, something he doesn’t believe in). It’s just difficult to write about a real place that you’ve never experienced and still make it feel real.

Ripped Up:Another Workshop

My latest draft of my first short story "Broken," which is now “Ripped Up” and might be retitled “Earthly Tents” (Dr. Bailey’s suggestion), was workshopped again yesterday.

I’m glad my story was one of the revised drafts that came up for workshop because I felt like I’d hit a ceiling: I’d revised it as much as I could but I knew it still needed work. “You’re close,” was the way Dr. Bailey put it after class yesterday.

For this draft the workshop was less about believability and what works and what doesn’t and more about how things were working in my story, what was working well and what wasn’t working so well, and the feelings and impressions it left with the reader. Dr. Bailey tried to get the class to look at it in a different way, to look at my characters like real characters (plausible and developed) and to talk about how well my story accomplished the things short stories are supposed to accomplish (like the feeling the ending left the reader with). It was really exciting stuff.

My ending is still weak. Based on what everybody said in class, I’ve decided what I really need to do is rehearse more for the ending earlier in the story, move up the details about Alan’s religious life and add more about his relationship with his wife to bring out how lonely he is. Dr. Bailey told me he wants to conference with me before I do anything else to the story, and I’m eager to hear what he has to say. This story’s “close.”

Just Down the Hall:Living with Writers

Sometimes being ambitious isn't very fun. Late Monday night as my fingers were frantically punching the keys of my laptop to get a first draft hammered out for class Tuesday, I was beginning to think maybe I’d taken Bailey a little too seriously when he said "be ambitious."

But I got it finished in time for class, a 14-page rough draft of a story set in the swing era, told from two points of view: a white band leader and the young black singer he hires to sing in his band. I spent more time going back through my jazz class notes, flipping through books on jazz from the library and searching the Web for information on jazz ballrooms and 1930s slang than I actually did writing.

Thankfully class yesterday was only a peer review and not a full-blown workshop. I was partnered with Theresa, and we traded stories and marked them up. Class ended before we were done discussing the stories with each other, so Theresa just came to my dorm room after class since she just lives down the hall from me. We sat cross-legged on the floor and talked about our stories for while.

I really like being around so many talented writers, other people my age who take writing seriously. They're people I have a lot of respect for.

I live in Hassinger Hall, a small three-story dorm with the offices of the English Department in the basement. Three other writing majors live just down the hall from me, so it’s really easy to just walk down the hall and get some feedback or bounce an idea off Thersa or Dan or Liz. Some of us are even working on converting the business major in room 306 into a writing major.

Rob, a friend of mine from the summer workshop, and I actually swapped some of our old (poorly written, we now realize) short stories the other day. We gave each other the weirdest ones we’d ever written because Rob was somewhat dismayed about not being able to write science fiction (Tom Bailey likes only realistic fiction. No sci-fi. No fantasy. No horror. He once told us he likes to feed elves to his dogs).

Which reminds me. Tonight is Halloween. I put together a scary-story reading for tonight at 10 with some other people on my floor. I’m real excited. Garth, an English Lit major, is going to read some Poe, Theresa might be reading “The Lottery,” and I’ll be reading Stephen King’s “The Moving Finger.” It should be great.