When I first signed up for this class, I was honestly pretty worried about having to share my work. I was excited to learn about craft and improve on my writing, but I’ve always had terrible view on my own work. No matter what I wrote, I always seemed to find something wrong with it, which isn’t necessarily bad because nothing can be perfect and EVERYTHING has the potential to be improved upon, but I would count up everything I found wrong and immediately assume that no one had ever written anything so terrible. This outlook was probably due to me not having the opportunity to be in many creative writing classes throughout my academic career, but I had always thought that writers were supposed to feel proud of what they had written, and I never felt like that. I guess this is just a long way of saying that this class has really built my confidence as a writer, especially through the workshop process. When it was my turn for my story to be workshopped, I was literally sweating buckets and I even began editing my story to prepare for a lot of negative comments. Obviously the workshop wasn’t like that at all. It actually surprised me to hear everyone’s positive comments and even when we went onto the critique section, everyone voiced their comments in a positive way and gave really helpful suggestions. I had gotten so far into my head and so fixated on the idea of wanting everyone to like my story that I had forgotten why I started writing in the first place. I love writing, it makes me happy and I enjoy telling stories that connect with people. Sure, sometimes it sucks and I may hate ever word that I bang out on my keyboard, but it’s still a labor of love. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the biggest part of the workshop and class that I’ve learned so far is to just write. I’ll probably never be the next Shakespeare or Stephen King or Barbara Kingsolver, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the things I do write are good and bad. My writing is made up of good things and bad things, and it’ll never be perfect, but all that matters is that there’s something on the page. This entry is longer than I thought it’d be, but here’s my ending note: You will always be your harshest critic (sorry for the cliché), but that doesn’t mean that the people around you share your mindset. Just put your work out there and you might be surprised with the response. Also: Everyone did a wonderful job during this round of revisions and should be proud of themselves! 🙂
Category: A.F Journals (Page 1 of 2)
Chapter 10 focuses on the revision process. There were a lot of points in this chapter that I found particularly helpful. The first point I found helpful was the advice regarding stepping back from your work. I tend to have a rule while writing where I can only write as much as I read (almost a “restocking of available words”). So, my process is that I write as much as I can, resulting in a finished product or something close, and then I put it down and read for a few days to get a new perspective or to read words that aren’t my own. Then, I go back to my project and finish/edit it. I’ve found that, for me at least, this approach really helps me, especially since I can be overly critical of my work to the point where I get into a mental rut. Taking a break from one’s work is incredibly important for the editing process because it allows you to distance yourself from the words that a “past you” wrote. I also appreciated the sections that gave a quick summary of what you should be looking for during revisions, such as character developments, point of views, description, etc. While previous chapters went over these topics, I like how the author of this section summarized the truly important aspects of each chapter. For me, I think this chapter will be helpful to glance back at to make sure I’m really meeting the “requirements” of each section while I’m editing. The last point I found helpful was the advice regarding editors. I’m lucky enough to have a person in my life who isn’t afraid to be honest and critical about my writing, but it’s also important to have a person who understands craft elements to look at your work. That’s why I’ve really appreciated this class because I’ve never had an opportunity to share my work with other writers who face the same difficulties and challenges when writing creatively.
Prompt: Read chapter 9, Theme.
Response: This chapter was especially helpful to me, as I’ve been stuck on what the “meaning” of my short story is. It was helpful to read about how you shouldn’t necessarily write with a theme in mind and that the theme is not synonymous with the overall message of the work. Personally, I’ve been struggling with the type of story I want to tell, and that struggle has kept me from actually writing. When the author of this section just tells the audience to “not think about it”, it definitely seems like hollow advice. Yet, as with most of the chapters, the “theme” seems to be to write and revise, even when you aren’t sure about the meaning or the plot or the characters. All a writer needs to do is try. Refocusing on theme, I guess I had it in my head that whatever theme an author presented also needed to have some sort of solution, which is ridiculous now that I think about it, because many works don’t offer solutions to their thematic problem. George Orwell didn’t have a solution to a dictatorship police-state, but the work still handed the audience that theme. Like the author of this section says, all the writer needs to do is state the problem correctly, and then a theme can arise from it. I also appreciated how there was a discussion of how an author presents a theme and how the audience receives the theme. There’s a fine line between interpretation and misinterpretation, one that I hadn’t thought about. An author can present their theme in a way that leads to audience interpretation, yet subconsciously the theme is still absorbed by the audience. If an author isn’t confident in their theme, then it can be missed entirely. I think that I’m focusing too much on creating a theme that I know will be interpreted the way I want it to be, rather than allowing the theme to be created naturally and organically. Overall, I think the biggest lesson to take from this chapter is that the theme doesn’t have to be shoved down a reader’s throat, and that it doesn’t have to instruct an audience to be meaningful. All the theme needs to do is connect to the story and come from a natural space.
Prompt: Read Clementine, Carmelita, Dog by David Means.
Response: There were multiple craft elements that I appreciated in this story. First, I liked how the focus of this story was heightened by the sense of smell. Plot wise, it makes sense, due to the fact that the main character is a dog. Sense of smell is obviously more developed in dogs than humans, so instead of using sight and emotions to develop the story, Means relies on describing the scene in terms of scent. It was also refreshing to have an omniscient narrator instead of a dog-narrator. While it is technically in first person, as there are some moments of the narrator speaking directly to the audience, this allows the reader to be in touch with how the dog does not think like a human, instead relying on senses and instinct. The narrator gives the audience few hints of humanism during the story. These are mostly used to describe things in terms of a human outlook, as describing them through a dog’s perspective proves to be too challenging or unexplainable to the audience. If anything, I would describe this story as having a passive plot, as we are only given the dog’s perspective. There are context clues as to what happened to human characters, but there are really no emotions attached to any of the descriptions, except for the parts when the dog realizes that the death of his female owner causes scents to change around the house. The plot is driven primarily through instinct, conveying emotions only through the response of the reader. The dehumanization of a dog character, especially when dogs in literature and media are often created to be more human than some of the human characters, was refreshing to me. The lack of emotion from the dog and the pure instinct that drives the plot actually created a powerful narrative about grief, loss, change, and natural instinct.
Prompt: Read Chapter 8
Response: This chapter focuses on voice, specifically the types of voice, style, and finding your own voice. I’ve never really gotten notes regarding the voice of my stories, which is either a good or bad thing. Personally, I feel as though I haven’t really struggled with finding an adequate voice within my stories. Sometimes it can be awkward at first, but like the author says, I tend to, “not worry about it”. When I write in a voice different from my own, I like to try embodying the character and talk to others in a way that the character would. I did appreciate the distinctions between formal, conversational, and informal types of voice, and while the voice of your story should be consistent, I do think that there is room to change the voice depending on the situation the character is in. Like every chapter we’ve read in this book so far, everything builds and connects to each other. The voice of a first person narration should be more consistent than say, a third person narration, as with first person the narrator needs to be consistent with their character. One of the tips that I liked was how the author continuously said to just write and not worry about voice. It’s more important to get something on the page rather than having words that are perfectly fitting to the voice.
Prompt: Read Brandon Hobson’s Escape from the Dysphesiac People. What was interesting/compelling?
Response: There were many aspects of Hobson’s short story that I found particularly interesting. For starters, his use of allusions to historical figures and events was done well, given that he was writing about a particular time in American history. From character names like “Andrew Jack”, referencing Andrew Jackson, and the countless references to the Trail of Tears, the audience is given context clues about when this story takes place, rather than Hobson flat out telling them. Hobson’s use of monster theory also compelled me. There is a set of ‘theses’, more of a criteria actually, created by a man named Jerome Cohen regarding what makes a monster a monster in literary works. Hobson’s description of some of the characters, specifically the white non-native Americans, fit well into this set of theses. On page 59, the characters describe Carl as a “cockeyed, pale, and ten-foot-tall beast”. As Carl is a white ‘American’, he physically looks nothing like the Native American characters, and his exaggerated appearance fit into the thesis stating that monsters must look inhuman. The white ‘Americans’ also fall into the thesis that states that the monster must dwell at the gates of difference, meaning that they act as a divide between one group of people and the next. Whether Hobson knowingly made use of monster theory is debatable, but I found that connection to be interesting. On the topic of craft, I enjoyed how the ending is somewhat open ended, as he doesn’t explicitly state the fate of the main character. This gives the audience room for interpretation. Did our main character follow the trail to a new life in America or did he follow a cherry-blossom trail to an afterlife. The latter of the two explanations brings another question. If the main character died, then who are his ‘grandchildren’ that he was writing to? Native-American society as a whole? Open-ended stories like Hobson’s relies on interpretation, which is compelling to the audience as driving force of this story takes place during discussions when each reader can explain their own interpretations.
Prompt: Read Chapter 7, Setting and Pacing. What was interesting/helpful?
Response: Setting, like the author states, is one aspect of writing that is easily forgotten by both reader and writer alike. Yet, setting is critically important, as the characters and plot are tied to their setting. The author gives the examples of how Jay Gatsby isn’t who he is without New York or how Winston Smith isn’t who he is without the gaze of Big Brother looking down on him in Oceania. I knew that setting was important, but this chapter was really eye-opening to the fact that you need the perfect among of setting description within your story without making it boring or sidetracking to the plot. I think it can be easy for someone to over- or under-write their settings. In my own work, I like to think I do a good job at incorporating the setting with the characters and plot, but I think I may overwrite setting descriptions in some points. But, like previous chapters have said, it’s better to start with something overwritten than underwritten. The other topic that the author wrote about was pacing, which is kind of an afterthought to me, although I recognize how important it is. As writers, we need to be able to manipulate time for our characters without having it correspond to readers. If our characters are sitting through a twenty-hour opera, we can’t have our audience reading about every detail of a twenty-hour opera. It seems as though the author of this section recognized how important pacing was, but there doesn’t seem to be any tips besides trial and error. The author says that if a work has multiple flashbacks, then the story may have started at the wrong place, unless the flashbacks add to the artistry of the work. I think that this is an important sentiment to hold, especially when it comes to writing. I’m the type of person that thinks everything needs to be perfect in the first draft, but everything from characters, plot, setting, pacing, etc., needs to undergo some trial and error, or else you won’t develop as a writer.
Prompt: Read Chapter 6: Writing Dialogue. What was interesting/helpful/informational that you found?
Response: This chapter focused on writing dialogue. Specifically, the author discussed what makes dialogue effective as well as what makes dialogue ‘bad’. Personally, I struggle with writing dialogue because I tend to overthink what my characters would say and what sounds right for that scene. I think most people struggle with dialogue for the same reasons, though there are many who overuse dialogue in the wrong ways. The short section about using adverbs and avoiding the said paradigm was especially helpful to me. Going back to our discussion surrounding description, I think I try to make everything 100% clear when characters are speaking, which causes me to fall into the adverb trap. While it’s okay sometimes, you can’t have lines that, almost comically, describe how a character said something. I’ve also heard the warnings of many teachers and writers who preach that we need to avoid the word, “said” at all costs, since it is overused. I’ve followed that advice, but seeing the reasoning behind why said is the quid pro quo was eye-opening to me. Said is overused, but it’s for a good reason. The author explained that using the word said is commonplace and expected by readers, allowing the dialogue to move in a snappy, conservation-like fashion. Obviously, this makes sense, as a writer wants to make their dialogue life-like enough to make the story poignant. In my future writing, I think it would be good to try using said more instead of struggling to find other placeholders.
Prompt: Write an entry focusing on an aspect of the story, “Our Children”.
Response: Vanessa Cuti’s short story, “Our Children”, is written in first person. Nothing would be odd about this, except for the fact that the narrator seems to have no sense of introspection. From our discussions regarding characters, the narrator in this story definitely fits in the category of a “bad” character, yet most authors write in moments of introspection for their characters. These moments give us, the readers, a taste of a “bad” character’s more redeeming qualities as well as fleshing them out as a well-rounded character. In Cuti’s story however, the narrator is convinced of quite the opposite while acknowledging that she has done some bad things. Her attitude is, “Yes, I’ve done something wrong and ruined many lives, but I’m the good person here!”, which is, in my opinion, a lot more believable. We, as people, are full of denial, especially when we do selfish things for selfish reasons. As we can see in Cuti’s story though, the narrator acknowledges that she’s done something wrong for selfish reasons, even if she never intended it to go as far as it did, yet she also places blame on others whenever the opportunity presents itself. One aspect of the story that I liked was the lack of dialogue. From a craft perspective, it’s hard to write a story that is based solely on one character’s thoughts, feelings, and descriptions of the world and people around them. It also shows just how little the narrator truly cares about the thoughts and opinions of the people closest to her. We never really hear dialogue from her ex-husband or from her children and we briefly hear from Dan himself. The narrator wants a regular, typical family life where she is a mother and wife and everything is just wonderful. But as soon as she begins to feel a sense of normalcy, or even boredom, she wants to drive fast, smoke some weed, and have sex with Dan “like it was in the beginning”. If we heard from other characters in the story, the narrator may be convinced that something is wrong with her and that she needs to evaluate herself. By just having the narrator and her thoughts, we see just how quickly and dramatically her thoughts progress, from wanting to leave her kids in the woods to grow old in to immediately wanting to “look the part” of a mother. Cuti’s decision to have a first-person point of view is seen clearly in these moments of the narrator’s identity crisis.
Prompt: Write an entry noting points that interested you in Chapter 5
Response: This chapter focused on description. Description seems like one of those writing concepts that are easy to grasp, but when someone tries to write, it turns out to be harder than initially thought. Even seasoned writers and authors have trouble finding the right words or the right shot to describe. The author of this section talks about many traps that writers tend to fall into. For example, the overuse of adjectives and adverbs tend to be a trap that many fall into. I know that in my own writing, I definitely overuse adjectives and adverbs. It can be a really hard habit to break, but the author then goes on to say that even if one doesn’t know how to say something exactly, it is just important to get something on the page. Words can be used as placeholders, even if they aren’t necessarily the best words to use during description. This, to me, was an uplifting point during the chapter. I always feel like my descriptions are terrible, so much so that I tend to overthink my word choices, which gets me nowhere. I also think that it was important to go over how each sense can be used within writing. I feel that many writers focus on describing what characters can see, rather what they hear, smell, taste, and feel. Using the senses can enhance a description that relies heavily on sight alone. Going off this, I enjoyed the section about synesthesia. For me, I had never thought about using synesthesia within my own writing, and I hadn’t focused on it in works that I’ve read, but while reading that section, I couldn’t help but think about how some of my favorite stories most definitely used this technique. Lastly, one of the most important lessons I’ve taken away from this chapter is that it is better to over-describe at first, rather than under-describe. A writer can always edit and revise, but it’s harder to do if you don’t have much of a description to work with.
