Algonkian Class Week #7

Things are going slowly. Last week was focused on description - so is this week. I would rather that we moved on to something else, or made an effort to finish our stories. It looks we will not finish, even after spending 10 weeks in the class, at least that is what I gather from comments I have seen.

I would rather present a completed story for critique, but that seems not to be in the plans. That's another peeve I have, the coming assignments are kept "secret" until the week they are due.

But I am determined to reserve judgement until the class is over.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

An excellent book, another in the list of Pulitzer prize winners I am reading. It's told in first person by a hermaphrodite, raised as a girl for the first fourteen years of her life. When she reaches puberty she finds out the truth about herself and decides to continue her life as a man.

It goes all the way back to the narrator's grandparents, which I think is the strongest part of the novel, and works its way forward through the parents and finally to the narrator. Worthy of being called a Greek Epic!

There were a couple of plot twists that left me shaking my head as implausible, but I was so happy to actually have plot in a Pulitzer that I didn't really mind.

More distracting were the "asides", the parenthetical expressions, sprinkled throughout the book. It's author intrusion, and got on my bad side. It seems more prevalent in the later sections of the book.

Algonkian Class - week 6

This past week we converted what we had over to 3rd person in multiple viewpoints, including an omniscient narrator. An interesting exercise, but not right for my particular story.

This week we are working on description. Looks like the final three weeks will have us wrapping the story up - at least I hope so. I have never spent so much time on one story before - I'm sick of it!

FIrst Place GWA April contest

I got first place in the Georgia Writer's Association April contest with my short story Syzygy. That was a surprise, since I really had to dash this one off because of the class I'm taking. It's short too, only about 1200 words. Here are the complete results:

First place: Sam Smith "Syzygy"
Second place (tie): Janice Bearden "Apollo"
Second place (tie): Bobbie Christmas "Cosmic Revelation"
Third place: Rich Sestili "Cosmetonic Rocketronic"
Fourth place: Vicki Kestranek "Loose Ends"
Fifth place:Lisa Siegel "Midnight in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation"

I also entered the poetry competition, for the first time, and finished ninth!

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

An interesting novel, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer prize, and an example of the rule, "do whatever you want as long as it works".

The entire novel is a letter from a seventy-six year old preacher to his six year old son. That is the primary "hook" that keeps you reading; there are plenty of questions around that simple statement.

There is very little action or dialogue. There were three things that kept me reading through most of the first half of the novel. 1) tales of the grandfather, who was an abolitionist preacher. 2) the mystery about the late marriage and young son. 3) the hope that something else would happen.

No I'm not kidding about number 3. I kept hoping the author had another unconventional trick up her sleeve. She didn't.

There is another mystery that is introduced later - the godson of the narrator that stirs things up and keeps you reading to the end.

By the way, there is not a single chapter break in the entire book. Near the end there is a blank page before a significant little story - and that gets the reader's attention!

Algonkian Class Week Five

I have never spent so much time on one short story before. I'm getting sick of this particular story. I suppose that is one of the values of this workshop as opposed to others I have taken. We are focused on one story, and in making it as good as we possibly can. So far we are only up to the first story block.

Of course, I had to spew the entire story first. I found it extremely difficult to plan the story totally without writing something first. By spewing it all out in a rough first draft, at least I know where I want to go. The emphasis is on theme in this workshop. How can I come up with the theme unless I first have some raw material to work with?

Of course, this makes me want to go back now and rework all my stories to this level of detail. At least those stories that have some theme that can be exploited.

So far the good cop/bad cop technique of the editors has only shown up in one week. I don't know when the bad cop will return - probably toward the end of the class. I can't say that I am looking forward to it.

The Classic Slave Narratives

An excellent primary historical source. Four slave narratives from the nineteeth century are presented by Henry Gates. These are actual narratives written by escaped or freed slaves and published at the time. I was suprised to read there were thousands of narratives like these published - Gates has selected four as representative of the genre.

I found here what I was looking for - specifically the attitude of religious people toward slaves and the use of religion to justify slavery. Pretty chilling accounts of the debasement of the people touched by slavery, not only the slaves, who had no choice, but the slave owners, who went to great lengths to excuse their evil actions.

Plenty of material for novels here!

GWA annual workshops

I attended the annual GWA workshop day Saturday, my second year. It is fun and informative, and I would recommend it, with some reservations. Laurie went with me, and that always makes it more fun.

The first workshop I attended was on dialogue by Cec Murphy. It was great. I've been to his workshops before - he is energetic, knows his material, doesn't wate any time, and gives out good information.

In the afternoon, I attended two workshops on different subjects by an instructor who shall remain nameless. They were pretty bad. He was unorganized, easily distracted, and wanted to talk about himself and his own books (unpublished) more than he wanted to impart any information. After the first one I should have known better than to go to the second one, but I am always hopeful - it was just as bad.

But you have to expect that sort of thing at these workshop days. Next year things may be different, since KSU is taking over the management of the GWA

Test of new blogging software

Well, I abandoned drupal over the weekend, since the database issue could not be resolved. Errors everywhere, related to permissions to lock tables. The contributors at drupal had no solution, and didn't seem interested in finding one. No chance of getting godaddy to give me the required permissions, so I switched to serendipity - does everything I was doing with drupal, and no database errors.

Algonkian Class - week four

We're in week four now, and finally doing some writing. The assignment this week is to set down the beginning of our short story up to the first scene. To recap, so far we have presented three possible story ideas (which had to be based on real life events that either happened to us or we witnessed), wrote two possible beginnings, and three possible titles. The editors chose which of our ideas and beginnings to proceed with for this weeks exercise, as well as which title to use.

I have a couple of nitpicks at this point. Early on the class was very vocal in the forum area, commenting on each other's experiences, being polite and supportive. When we presented our story ideas we continued bantering back and forth for the few days before the editors reviewed our submissions. We got blasted pretty severely by one of the editors for being amateurs playing at editors. Of course, the course material stated that we were to be active in the forums, commenting on our fellow student's work.

Not surprisingly, all comments stopped after that little outburst, which was a shame. It's not like we couldn't tell the difference between a fellow student's polite encouragement and the editor's replies.

My other nitpick is the quality of editing of the lecture material. It needs a good going over by a good line editor. Somehow that doesn't instill confidence. It's almost as if it were hastily written. Of course, we shouldn't expect book quality work, but it is distracting. Aren't we always told by editors to submit only our best material? Here, in a workshop by editors, we have editting mistakes. Oh well.

Anyway, the final verdict is still out on the class. We are only in week four of ten. So far I have learned to take a more critical approach to the underlying structure of my stories, something I had avoided before, somehow just hoping for the best. We'll see if I can produce a better story this way. Of course, the ultimate aim is publication.

Library Thing

I have started to keep my reading list on Library Thing - see the "currently reading" block in the sidebar.

March by Geraldine Brooks

An excellent novel, and worthy of the Pulitzer. Brooks does a fantastic job of writing in a style that fits the historical period. Even more surprising, there is plot! Hooray! I get so tired of plotless, character driven, literary novels. I highly recommend this one.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

A wonderful book, much easier to read and understand than many people think. If you have been scared off from reading this because you have heard it is hard to comprehend, then get over it. In fact, I think the book is much easier, and more enjoyable, than the movie with Oprah Winfrey. I'm sure the screenwriters did their best, but it's tough to make a movie of a novel where most of the action happens in flashbacks.

To fully enjoy this novel, just ignore the whole question of whether Beloved is real or not. Every major character believes she is the dead daughter come back to life, so you should too.