Flip-Flop-Free:Fall Break

I’ve just gotten back from fall break, a nice little vacation from marking up drafts and writing critique letters (that’s all I seem to do anymore). Not that the stories weren’t good. Before the break we were workshopping three drafts per class, and I was just starting to get tired of watching all of us make the same mistakes — plot-driven rather than character-driven stories; unrealistic, unbelievable, flat characters; implausibility; etc.

As the workshops have progressed, we’ve all really started getting a good grip on what makes good writing, on how to “read like writers,” as Dr. Bailey likes to say. We’re all paying closer attention to details, expecting characters to act like real people, and, I think, starting to make more insightful criticisms than before. He's probably going to assign us our second big short story sometime this week, and since we’ve all learned so much these past two months, I’m eager to read all the new drafts my classmates are going to write.

Dr. Bailey highly encouraged us to revise and rewrite over the break to save ourselves a headache during finals time at the end of the semester when our portfolios are due.

It was really great going home and doing the things I’ve really missed (seeing my family, hanging out with my friends from high school, sleeping in my own bed, eating my mom’s cooking and showering without having to wear flip-flops), and the break also gave me a chance to really sit down and work on “Broken” in a comfortable, familiar place where I could really focus. I spent a lot of the break kicked back in the big swivel chair in our basement with a cup of coffee (mostly cream and sugar) doing a rewrite and watching Alan become more alive on the page. His voice became clearer and more distinct as I filled in the gaps in the details of his life.

I’m actually really excited to have this draft workshopped or at least critiqued by Dr. Bailey because I feel like I’ve made some big improvements to it but it could still be a whole lot better. I can sense that it’s not done yet but I couldn’t exactly tell you why, so I'm eager for some feedback.

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.”