Stop Breaking Her Ankle:Revising and Workshopping Part II

“Earthly Tents” (or the story formerly known as “Ripped Up” and “Broken”) is coming along. One of the most important things I’ve learned recently is not to withhold key information about your main characters from your readers. Details like a character having been divorced really affect the way a character acts and perceives the world and, just as importantly, details like that affect the way the reader sees and understands that character.

That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned recently, probably because it’s one of the biggest problems that exists in “Earthly Tents.” The reader doesn’t discover anything about Alan’s spiritual life until about page 11. The reader doesn’t learn a lot of details about Alan’s divorce or his kids until about pages 9 and 13 (and this is only a 14-page story). This is a problem because Alan’s children, divorce and spiritual life are his main motivations throughout the story, and the reader gains a deeper understanding of Alan through his words and actions during the story if they know those details up front.

Dr. Bailey taught us that it is usually good to somehow incorporate a thread of the story’s conflict into the very first paragraph of the story. In my story the main conflict is Alan trying to cope with the loneliness and pain of his divorce (which we don’t even know about until page 6).

I have to admit, though, this has been a fun problem to fix. On Monday I sat down on the floor of my dorm room with Scotch tape and scissors and a copy of the latest draft of “Ripped Up” (Draft 7, the seventh time Mrs. Miller has fallen off that stool in her kitchen. Rob’s told me I need to stop breaking that poor old woman’s ankle). I started cutting out paragraphs and rearranging the details in my story, and I created a new draft. I’m going to use this draft to do a rewrite, smoothing the transitions between the scissored sentences, adding extra details and basically just revising the piece again. The process is really exciting because once I get done with this rewrite, the story is going to be noticeably better.

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...