In case anyone is interested, and because I promised I’d post it, I thought I’d let you know that the short story I wrote for my course is up on The Community Storyboard.
It’s the story of a man who lives an alternate lifestyle, who is faced with suddenly having to look after his ailing parent.
I received a 26/28 for the unedited version – what you’ll see is the edited version, which I submitted to my professor today for my final mark. Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
I’m inspired – not by the article on the front page of the paper yesterday, but by its headline: Focus on those who inspire.
I can’t count how many times in the last month I’ve been asked the question, “What inspires you?” This question was my first assignment in my short story course and it continues to come up. Like here: on Opinionated Man’s blog just today.
My answer is ‘everything.’ All people, all things. There is nothing that can’t inspire me if I am in an imaginative mindset. And that leads me to a question for anyone willing to put forth an answer. If you consider the fact that you potentially inspire someone, does it make you want to be on your best behaviour?
Personally, I don’t think it should. After all, if everyone was always nice, pretty, clean, healthy and polite, we wouldn’t have antagonists. If our homes were always neat and tidy, would we be able to come up with a trash heap for a setting? If we all believed in the same things, would we be able to imagine strife?
Conflict is what a good story is made of. We NEED people to be at their worst once in a while. Misery, while not something most of us strive for, is necessary for the well being of the written word, as is sickness and death. Beauty is nothing without ugliness. Yin cannot exist without Yang and vise versa.
Think about it. What interests you? Conflict. Happiness that has overcome defeat. The struggle…
I can be inspired by a rock if it’s in the way, or if someone trips over it, because it’s all about the human interaction for me. It’s even better if, whoever trips over it swears like a sailor. Yes, I can be inspired by a scenery. But without life, it’s only a scenery.
What inspires you? Or, better yet, WHO inspires you?
In other news, the tree formerly known as Nosehair is sporting a fancy new orange eyebrow
A first world problem has arisen. It was bound to happen. Because I have some experience in writing short stories, I’m kinda ahead of the class. We’re learning, at the moment, terminology such as character, setting, conflict, theme, point of view, and narrative unity. Not to toot my own horn, but most of this stuff I already manage without thinking about it.
So our first major assignment is to write a first draft of a short story. We’ll be marked on the above points. Fine, no problem so far. I am, however, having a problem with the second major assignment. Why, you ask? Because we have yet to learn about ‘style.’ In the second assignment we must fix what the professor tells us we need fixing – which is the first half of the mark – but then we need to apply to our story what we have yet to learn about style and writing in our own voice. The problem is, I don’t know how to write, not using my own voice and style in the first place, so that I have something to be marked.
I’ve thought about trying to write the first draft in someone else’s style, but I know I’ll be so unhappy with it I won’t be able to hand it in.
I have to say, I’m probably enjoying my online courses more than I have a right to. When I was a teenager I hated school. I took off every chance I got – would drive to Niagara Falls for a day instead of going to classes. But now that I’m an adult I don’t understand my mindset back then. Okay, sure, to me high school seemed pretty useless. After all, what better way to learn about life than live it? The walls of an institution didn’t seem the most conducive setting for LIFE with capital letters. I suppose, now that I’m writing about the life of a teenager in my novel, it’s good to look back and remember as much of that time as I can.
But I digress.
This post is supposed to be about my current schooling. I passed my grammar course with a fairly decent 83% and now I’m on the last phase to getting my certificate – Writing Short Stories.
Before the course started I thought I was just going to sail through it, much as I thought I would with the grammar course. Why wouldn’t I? After all, I can bang out a respectable short story in an afternoon. When I received the lesson plan however, I was stopped in my tracks. You see, the course will take me almost up to Christmas and I will have one short story to write. First I must submit an idea. A few weeks later, my task is to hand in a first draft, and at the beginning of December I must write the final draft.
So I’ve got all this time to write a short story. No problem, you would think. But I’ve got all this time to write a short story, and that’s the problem! To come up with ONE idea and ruminate over it over the course of two months is torture to me. You see, I’m what is commonly referred to these days as a ‘pantser.’ I get an idea, but I not only have to write it down right away, if I don’t actually write the story right away, I’ll lose it.
You might say, so just write the story and have done with it. Hand it in when it’s time. That would be fine, except my OCD won’t allow it. If I know myself well, I will write it, review it, edit it, edit it some more, and given that much time and that much editing, it’s going to look like a pile of steaming crap by the time I go to submit it, because I’ll have overthunk it to death.
I have decided, then, to try for once to actually take my time. Do the whole outline thing, maybe even draw myself a storyboard; create characters before I write the thing… I’ll treat it like an experiment. Do it the way the other half – the non-panster – does it. It’s going to be a challenge.
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