Category: Workshop update

Short Story in Progress and Genre Research

by Shoshana, posted in On Reading, Workshop update, Writing Update

I guess it can’t be called a completed piece because it just got workshopped in class, but it is almost completed, I believe. This was a departure from my usual fantasy and sci-fi writing, which I don’t do very often. I went ahead and tried to write a story that is one we’ve heard quite often: woman gets into a relationship, relationship is abusive, woman runs. But I wanted to do it with a new twist, and out came a story called “Of Ghosts and Sky.” It’s a departure for me because even the tone sounds different, turning it into something else that I haven’t really written before.

Completed (almost?): “Of Ghosts and Sky”

Word Count: 4,777

Pages: 16 (double spaced)

It’s a good feeling to get something different out there. I can’t describe exactly where the story came from, but when my roommate read it she said she nearly felt a panic attack coming on. Apparently, my work still does the heavy feeling of anxiety/horror well, even when I’m not aiming for overtly horrific, and that’s what I wanted to bring across. So I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve. It’s not finished, of course – my workshop in class said I had some things to adjust to make it more effective, but I think that with some changes it can be a really effective story.

Speaking of doing effective stories: I am working my way through Stephen King’s non-fiction book, Danse Macabre, his analysis of horror in not only literature but television and film. It is right up my alley as part of my studies at college have been film and television as well as literature. I’m hoping that it gives me a better appreciation of what to look for to create more effective horror. It’s given me a lot to think about in terms of what kind of psychology and themology should be going behind every story, and where the horror in a story really comes from. I really love his analysis of classic monster/horror books such as Frankenstein and Dracula as well as his recommendations about things to go out and ready/see. I am certainly tracking down a copy of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House after everything he said.  I can’t believe the mess they made of the movie by comparison to what the book describes… though should I really be surprised?

I now have a list of stuff I need to go read, but I’m tearing my way through this book as best I can. I seriously recommend.

Workshop Update: Late but Just remembered!

by Shoshana, posted in Workshop update

I can’t believe I forgot to explain what happened with “No Hero” during workshop.

To recap, I had completely lost my mind with worrying obsessively over this story. I was, in fact, so completely sure that it sucked that I dreaded going to class. It was the oddest moment in the world for me to come in and sit down and wait patiently while we talked about someone else’s work while I had jitterbugs in my stomach. I actually took out a copy of my story and began hacking into it, making notes and such, while other people were talking. All because I was so nervous. It was crazy.

Then people got to it and… wham. They loved it. I got praise from everyone, pretty much. Sure, there is the one caustic, rude literature nazi in the class who I spoke about in a previous post, who the Pretension Police should come and take away. He wouldn’t be impressed if the Queen of England came in dancing the tarantella and wearing a hat with fruit on it, but he even had a couple of nice things to say. I got the girl who is so Danielle Steele meets The OC that it makes me crazy, and the older woman who came to the class just to ‘write her memoir’ (which I can’t stand hearing her pronounce over and over). I got the guy who is the comic book fan (which made me happy since, well, he’d be the hardest to please), the two poet graduate students, the quiet writer chick, and this guy Pietro who I’ve had class with a ton of times. I knew I had them from the way they talked about the story… but…

I didn’t get them quite enough. They were excited about the story but not too much. They had seen parts of it coming, they had still found it fascinating, but there had been a predictability that had dumbed down the oomph. I did that so it would appeal to both comic book lovers and non-comic lovers, but it took something away from the big reveal I had at the end. I made the story more about the issues that I was raising than I was about the majesty of a super-hero in action, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Still, I managed to cover the spread from one side of the room to the other…

I’m just a little too picky for words. I’m in the middle of taking what the professor said in our meeting afterwards and in her commentary letter to me and editing the paper. Her talk with me was actually refreshing. She warned me against going to MFA programs for writing, that writers like me who enjoy the genre writing of horror/scifi/fantasy don’t always do well in ‘literary programs’ and that I might do better just getting into the genre writing by going to conventions, talking to people, and just going out and experiencing life. Basically, she told me that what I was doing was what I needed to do. It was, really, just the meeting I needed.

The story did well, in recap, but not as well as I would have liked. Its not high art by itself so I’m thinking of expanding it to its own novel. Superhero fiction is becoming big and I think it can do something, so I’m going to give it enough room to move. On its own, it is almost finished.

Workshop submission sent, now begins the nail-biting

by Shoshana, posted in Workshop update, Writing Update

I’ve done workshops before in college, in writing groups. This time, however, something seems to be different. The class I’m taking is called the Advanced Writing Seminar, and its the most dedicated writing students who are willing to brave a late-night class to work throughout the semester to better their writing. Perhaps that’s why I’m so nervous? I submitted a short story set in a super-hero setting and for the very first time, my stomach was twisting. I was pretty sure that I had created an absolute piece of dreck.

Now, I know that those who know me are going to say “but how is this any different from you always freak out about your work?” The truth is, I really do tend to… freak about my writing. I don’t have much by way of confidence in it, deep down, and so I fidget and freak and worry and bite my nails. That’s normal. I find it part of the process that allows me not to get too big-headed about writing. This time I didn’t transition from the nervous stage into anything else. This story just sat there like a dead cat, as if to say “You got close, but no cigar, buddy.” 

Sigh. Maybe I’m freaking over nothing and maybe I can’t accept that not everything is going to be perfect on the first try. I gotta get used to smacking at something with the literary hammer until I get to the place where the story is perfect. This one is not perfect by far, but maybe that’s a good thing to. I can attend a class and be nervous once in a while. I can be worried. It’s not against the law.

The story’s called “No Hero” and it’s about three girls who work at a convenience store in a world where superheroes run rampant. Many of the heroes in the story are homages to the LARP I ran recently called Heirs of Prometheus, with mentions to other people’s characters, just as sort of an in-joke for me and my friends. Of the three girls, two are obsessed with superheroes while the other one is disdainful of the whole superhero craze and culture and the story follows what develops between the three of them one night at work. Its really, in the long run, about what makes a hero. The main character, Karen Unger, was a non-player character creation of mine for the LARP as well and I always had a fascination with her. Her whole story seemed to live in my head, as did a couple of other of those NPC’s. I’m glad I still have them in my head. More fodder for stories later.

I don’t get workshopped for two weeks. Plenty of time for me to bite off my nails in worry.

A word on workshops

by Shoshana, posted in Workshop update, Writing Testimonial

If there is something I love and dread more than anything else about trying to be a writer, it is workshops. They are the fodder of the pretentious windbag and the aspiring new Danielle Steele. They are, in fact, the place where you go to find out if your writing is in any way good and instead have to play nice with people whose writing makes you want to claw your own eyeballs out and spill the goo on their papers. 

Case in point is the untitled bit of cynical, jaded New York CRAP that I had to read for class. A young narrator, cryptically arrogant and harmed by the tragedies of his intelligence and the cruelties of a fickle urban world complains about how the world is unfair, not nice, generally sucky, and spends his time ramming creative metaphors about the modern world being equated with filth down the reader’s throats. In the end, the witty windbag narrator goes on and on about the way the world is and never really does ANYTHING in the entire story. A day in the life of a gasbag who complains about other gasbags. 

Welcome to the modern ‘hip’ writers, the jaded and cynical cats and kittens who think that the world is just so ‘over’ that they don’t know how to write about a single happy thing. They are the overly serious, take themselves way too seriously humans who can’t see a ray of light if it came down and singed their nosehairs. They’re the kind who get published in the trendy mags and make the world sound like a dripping, festering sewer full to the brim with happy idiots and only one, miraculously intelligent person: them. They are the sole voice of intellect in a land of foolishness, and they are there to set you free.

Please. PLEASE. Grow up.

You are not the only voice of truth in this world. You are not the only one who has insight. And your jaded, cynical bullshit is not only not fun to read, it has no plot, no purpose, and is much the stuff of a famous quote: all noise and fury and nothing more. And frankly, I’m tired of it. PASS. Go back and find your plot, man, you lost it under all your emo.