March 27, 2008...8:30 pm
A story’s progress
Early Sunday morning, I sat in an east-side Cosí café trying to get a handle on a fragment of a story I was preparing for my writing group. Something clicked around 2:00 p.m., when the foundation at the beginning started to gel. Then I reread the rest of the fragment to see what there was to work with—and, well, there wasn’t much.
Later that afternoon, I sat in a west-side Starbucks to give it another stab. I got a little further.
On Monday morning, everything clicked into place, I finished it and then sent it to my group.
At workshop last night, the story got a very decent response. I guess this means that my last-minute amendations were good after all.
I’m going to finish another draft of it and then send it off to find a home.
It’s been ages since I finished writing a real story.
It’s been ages since I submitted anything to journals.
Ages and ages.
I’m so excited.
*
A dear friend—so astronomically talented, and about to be published by a wonderful press—wrote to me: “Just finish the manuscript already.”
I wrote back: “Okay—I will.”
*
“So do you think the story works?” I ask J.
“It’s different,” he answers.
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“I don’t understand. It’s good.”
Pause.
I say, “Sorry to harass you about this, but can you explain how it’s different?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, ‘What do you mean?’”
“I mean, ‘It’s a huge departure for you.’ Didn’t your group comment on that?”
“No. They commented on the details that made the story a departure, but they didn’t comment specifically on it being a departure.”
“Well, it’s more rounded. More complete. Also, it’s very Babel.”
“But I’m not a reader of Babel.”
“Ever?”
“Ever. I do not read Babel.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you anti-Semitic?”
“What?”
“Well?”
“I love Sebald, I love Albahari—”
“All of them write about the Holocaust. There’s more to Jewish culture than that, you know.”
“Of course I know—”
“Are you only focused on victimization?”
“No! And their novels are hardly about victims.”
“But why don’t you read Babel?”
“The last time I tried reading a Babel story, I couldn’t get into it.”
“Just get through it. And then you’ll get into it.”
“Okay,” I say.
Pause.
“About my story—what did you really think of it?”
5 Comments
March 28, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Keep going!
It’s like a marathon–you don’t want to know how you look or how your running form is…just keep going and get to the finish line. I hope I’ll see you there, too (running my own novel-writing-marathon myself, going verrrry slow though).
March 28, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Let’s run together!
A friend and I are going to set up a blog space to detail just this purpose—blitz-writing, and now and then posting short updates/rah-rahs for each other, as we both suffer from major going-verrrrry-slowly syndrome. (Let me know if you want to join!)
March 29, 2008 at 11:18 am
Let’s do it.
March 29, 2008 at 3:31 pm
[...] who just won an NEA grant, will be here at 6:30, so I’ve vowed to quit the Net-surfing and revise my story from now till his arrival, and then we’re off to dinner and [...]
March 30, 2008 at 6:25 am
You got it, Jade.
I just roped in another writer last night. You’ll like him.
And I’m meeting the first writer later today to discuss the blog. I shall report soon!
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