The Writing Life...Editing is a Merciless Process

“Several delusions weaken the writer’s resolve to throw away work. If he has read his pages too often, those pages will have a necessary quality, the ring of the inevitable, like poetry known by heart; they will perfectly answer their own familiar rhythms. He will retain them….Sometimes the writer leaves his early chapters in place from gratitude; he cannot contemplate them or read them without feeling again the blessed relief that exalted him when the words first appeared—relief that he was writing anything at all. That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all; surely the reader needs it, too, as groundwork.” – Annie Dillard in The Writing Life.

I feel like this paragraph describes perfectly the way I feel now that I’m going back and editing my story. I’m hesitant to delete anything because I do feel a relieving sense of familiarity when I look back upon the words that I wrote before. I feel like each word, each phrase is so much a part of my story that I really don’t want to change it. However, Annie Dillard definitely advocates for mercilessly editing a story—“How many books do we read from which the writer lacked courage to tie off the umbilical cord? How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag? Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer personally?” These metaphors really hit home for me, especially the one about removing the price tag on presents—I think Annie Dillard strikes a good point here that sometimes what we the author think is necessary to keep in the story may not be necessary for the reader, and may instead be distractingly superfluous. I will keep these words in mind as I struggle with editing my story and deciding what to keep and what to delete.

Most Helpful

Reflecting on this class, I felt that the thing that was the most helpful to me was actually reading the short stories from Scribner’s Anthology and discussing them in class. I really enjoy reading, and it was awesome that I could do something I loved for a grade. What made it really helpful, however, was the fact that I was exposed to so many different styles—some I didn’t even know existed/worked (for instance, Lorrie Moore’s and Donald Barthelme’s very unique styles). Usually when I read on my own, I choose genres and styles that I am already familiar with and what I already like—but this made me read some things that perhaps I wouldn’t choose from the shelf of the library on my own. It made me realize that good writing can come in all forms and styles—(who knew that a story written entirely in second person could be so captivating?!)—and it inspired me to try out different styles when writing in the future.

Also, the in-class discussion helped me see what different writers were good at, what elements make a great story, and what made each writer unique. I really enjoyed the discussion and seeing what people had to say about a particular author.

From the discussions, I actually learned a lot that helped me improve my writing—like brainstorming the story arc, learning about the importance of details/descriptions, finding conflict and a resolution, etc.

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).