The Critical Eye...

I’m always amazed immediately after reading a story from Workshop—all I can do is gush about how awesome the story was, how clever the plot, how well-written. But that doesn’t make for very helpful feedback in terms of edits/revisions, so I have to force myself to look over the story with a critical eye. It usually helps if I take a break from it for a little bit, and then I look at the story again. Usually the second time through, I have a lot more constructive criticism to hand out, in terms of how to make the story even better. As I force myself to go into this critical mental “zone” more and more, I’ve actually gotten better at seeing flaws in writing. Part of it is also hearing other people’s critiques during workshop. I’ve picked up some common errors that a lot of people get critiqued for, and I’ve started to look for those more and more. This critical eye will help me when I’m editing my own story, I think. I’m really glad I’m one of the last people to go—hopefully everything I pick up from the workshops will allow me to write a better story! Although currently, I have major writers block. No inspiration at all for my story. Hopefully that will change soon…

Just by the way…one thing that surprised me is that my previous studying for SAT writing (the multiple choice) has actually helped me point out grammar inconsistencies and grammatical errors…so I guess it wasn’t completely useless (haha kidding, it helped a lot).

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

After dinner yesterday, I started reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz—and I didn’t close that book until I read the last page. I loved it. At first, I was sort of disappointed that it wasn’t about Yunior’s life—I really liked Junot Diaz’s short stories written from the point of view of Yunior—but as I got to the middle, I realized that the book was narrated by Yunior (for the most part—a little bit is narrated from the point of view of Lola, Oscar’s sister and Yunior’s ex-girlfriend)—just with a focus on Oscar, a friend of Yunior’s. With this story, Yunior has emerged from underneath the shadow of his late brother, Rafa. Yunior is a confident and attractive Dominican male—and he tries to help out Oscar, an overweight “nerdboy” that loves writing, and loves girls (although they hardly ever reciprocate). Like all the short stories we’ve read by Junot Diaz, this one is as blunt and raw and real—taboo subjects avoided? No way. Curbing of profanity? Hell no. Although these elements are risky to include—more often then not, these detract from the writing—Diaz blends these elements so seamlessly into the substance of the story that they end up enhancing the writing. These are a (large) part of life in the ghetto, and Diaz isn’t shy about telling it as it is. This truth is why I love Junot Diaz. His stories are so believable—the words on the page aren’t just letters, they bring the characters to life—they bring the story to life. I never find myself doubting that the stories aren’t true—with the amount of details, the carefree spontaneity of the dialogue, the little flaws and imperfections so characteristic of real life—the story is seeped in truth. I like the fact that the characters aren’t perfect. I like the fact that things don’t always work out for the characters. I like the fact that the characters do things that are blatantly stupid in the lens of hindsight. And Junot Diaz exploits these desires of the reader to be able to identify with the imperfect characters—that’s his secret...along with the perfect dose of humor and swearing, that is ;)

Workshops...:)

So far, I’ve really loved everyone’s workshop stories—the creativity of my classmates never ceases to amaze me. After each story, I’m always left breathless—I wish I’d written that! And I really think that we could compose a book—a collection of shorts from the PRISM class of 2011. Each of us, as writers, have our strengths and our weaknesses—our stories appeal to different age groups, people who like different genres, and perhaps more to a particular gender than the other—but that’s what’s so great, in my opinion. Sure, we don’t all have flawless stories, but each of us writes a story that no one else could—and that’s the magic of it. Honestly, a lot of the time I think people’s stories are great—a work of genius—and I hesitate to criticize it because my judgment is subjective. I may think it would make the story better, but it might actually not work with the author’s style. Oftentimes I go through the stories and simply proofread it—most of my red pen marks are actually made to highlight parts that I like (“Great descriptions!” “great characterization!”). If there’s something that isn’t clear, I ask the writer to clarify it—I try to give suggestions on how they could go about doing it, because I know how hard it is to have someone criticize something, but not actually telling you how to go about doing it. With some stories, I can’t give much more suggestions than those, simply because I thought the story was extremely impactful, and everything builds up to that point. Editing it further could mess up the foundation of the story.