any class that has me saying “ok, i’m just gonna be a bully” is probably not going to be a good class for me. last night, i made the bully proclamation. we workshopped two stories that while wonderfully written, really needed quite a lot of work.
my FFJ (whom i met in a vodo writing class) always makes the claim that she’s a storyteller and not a writer. for a long time i would give her shit about it. claiming she was just too lazy to write. but last night’s stories for class got me thinking.
i think to be a fiction writer you have to be both a writer and a storyteller. the women who submitted stories last night were great writers, but not so great storytellers.
it kind of made me angry. not because i don’t like to help people with their stories, but because both women announced that these were the first stories they’d ever written. grrrr. this is an intermediate fiction class. the loft offers plenty of awesome beginner fiction classes. so, in my mind, it just comes off as totally, totally arrogant to take an intermediate fiction class when you’ve never even written a story. where do these people get off?
what makes me the angriest is that i really nailed these women under the belief that they had been through the workshop process before. i even accused Miss Beadle of making her main character coy. . . which as the vodo said “is a pretty serious charge.”
but any character who hints at what’s bugging her for 16 pages but doesn’t come out and say it is fuckinng coy. god, i get all worked up. at least the vodo eventually backed me up, though he watered it down with “might appear coy.” and i was balls out “is coy.”
kelly sees Miss Beadle and Jags (as the other woman will be known because she drives a jaguar) as having blindless confidence. which is a nice spin on it. i call it total ignorance. like writing is just so easy that anyone can just pop in and write short stories that are wonderful and be worthy of grants and stuff.
blech. maybe i’m just jealous. but i’m of the belief that you kind of have to pay your dues and develop the chops for such things. or maybe i am just a big bully.
“The big bully of the writers’ workshop sat in the chair behind me. I knew she was the big bully of the workshop because she swaggered in carrying a Moleskine notebook cradled in her left arm like a Marine cradling his AR-15. I tried picturing her in my mind with a bandolier of pens strung across her (admittedly enchanting) chest but it just made me want to giggle, and I knew if she heard me giggle she’d single me out for extra taunting, so I stifled it and just stared straight ahead, biting my lip.”
24 Feb 06 at 7:44 pm #what’s that from?
24 Feb 06 at 9:47 pm #From my head.
24 Feb 06 at 10:39 pm #nice.
also, i schlump around with a backpack and though i have a couple of moleskines, i’m mostly just rocking it with a red mead spiral bound notebook.
24 Feb 06 at 10:58 pm #Heh, heh. UH said “HEAD”. Huh huh, ha ha.
25 Feb 06 at 8:30 am #