Workshop Over :(

I really enjoyed workshop. It was extremely fun to see what kinds of stories people could come up with—everyone had a different style, and I feel like our stories revealed a certain aspect of each of our personalities. The stories that some people wrote really surprised me (in a good way) because I hadn’t seen that aspect of them before, whereas some stories made perfect sense considering what I knew about the author. Either way, I enjoyed seeing what everyone could come up with, and I was extremely impressed with what each person brought to the table.

It’s true that some styles appealed more to me than others, but I could definitely say honestly that there was not one story that I didn’t enjoy reading. All the stories had their strengths, and I learned something from each story—whether it was a new word that I’d never used before, or an especially striking description.

My inbox definitely feels empty without the much anticipated workshop story emails. I think it would be fun to take another course like this in college, even though I’m not majoring in English or anything.

WDYL Day 1

The first day of “Who Do You Love” presentations was great! It really made me want to read stories by each of the authors. Some of the presentations even completely changed my perception of the author—like Donald Barthelme. I didn’t really like “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” because I didn’t get it at all, but Claire’s presentation made me want to read “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby”. The excerpt she read to the class was great, and the absurdity of Donald Barthelme’s writing was really humorous. (I can’t seem to find it online though, so I’m a bit sad).

 One thing that I really took from the presentations is what Alex shared about Tim O’Brien—how he looked to capture a particular feeling/emotion (instead of an actual specific event) in his writing. This was especially struck a chord in me because that’s exactly what I want my writing to do (…even though actually doing that is a whole other story…). Sometimes I have all these emotions, and I think that I can’t possibly be alone in feeling like this, so it’d be a lovely thing to put on paper. However, to write stories that actually elicit all the right emotions in the reader requires a lot of skill. I’ll keep working on that. J

Sex/Murder Debate

My stance in the Sex/Murder debate is that it depends on the particular author’s style and whether or not they can pull it off. If the writer can blend it in seamlessly with the rest of their story and it comes across as natural and not forced, sex/murder scenes can be great for adding a bit of excitement into a story.

I actually went and looked up the sex scene in The Godfather book and I thought it was a bit too graphic for my liking—so authors have to keep in mind who their audience is. I know The Godfather probably wasn’t written for teenagers, it’s probably more like adult fiction.

One sex scene that I thought was really well done was the sex scene in the book Memoirs of a Geisha. It came off as really funny (to me at least), and this made sense when considering that the narrator was a young girl then, and that we are seeing it through her eyes. She likened the event to a rat and rolls of fabric, and it was just a really ridiculous metaphor, so ridiculous it was funny. The author definitely intended it to be funny, so employing the exaggerated metaphor was very effective.

Writing for Workshop...

I wrote my story for workshop one night when I was feeling particularly “emo” over the fact that I feel my parents really don’t understand me sometimes—typical teenage drama. I managed to blow that up into a whole dramatic letter about being abused by one’s parental units, I’m not even sure how that happened. All I know is my fingers were rapidly tapping at my keyboard, and before I knew it, the letter had formed (the letter Astara gets from her mother). I didn’t even plan on it being my workshop story. It was simply a way for me to express my emo-ness, for lack of a better term. After I finished the letter and the first bit of the story, I sort of just abandoned it in the “My Documents” folder.

Then like a month later, my workshop date was looming ever so closely…and I really didn’t have any inspiration for a new story, so I opened up the story I had began and read it over. I sort of liked it, so I decided to continue it and see where it leads. I really like the fact that I had written the story spontaneously though--I think it enhances the content of the story.

And fyi, the description about Kenny and how freaking gorgeous he is was also in another separate story that I started but never finished…but I really really liked the description so I put it in my story.

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.