In this blog post I will compose a short story from the three texts assigned to me. I am creating a dialog between myself and these three authors while they give me feedback on what steps to take to compose a good piece of writing. This assignment, to me was the most difficult one yet. I am awful at writing any type of fictional story.
The three texts that were assigned to me were as follows, give them a read:
It was a rainy Thursday night, I was at work like I am every Thursday night. I was talking to my regulars, serving drinks and listening to music. If I didn’t mention before I am a bartender at a little dive bar near the Philadelphia Airport. My bar is usually slower until late at night, just the usual customers, but I had noticed a male and two females that I have never seen before. They walked in looking defeated, wet and tired. I welcomed them in, asked them their names and drink of choice and asked what brought them in. They explained they were coming from the airport and they were set to do an interview in Philadelphia the next day. They told me their names were Don Murray, Mary Karr and Anne Lamott. Those names sounded all too familiar to me, I exclaimed that I knew of them and their writing, they were happy I had recognized their work! They noticed I was doing my school work, which is what I do on slow nights at the bar. Don asked me what I was working on and I responded that I was writing a draft for my blog assignment for my English Composition class, he was excited and asked if I needed any advice! I did need advice so I asked him “What do you believe would help me understand my writing process more?" Don responded “The writer, as he writes, is making ethical decisions. He doesn’t test his words by a rule book, but by life. He uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others. It is an exciting, eventful, evolving process.” Wow, did that open my eyes, I thought to myself “using language to reveal the truth to himself” that is amazing, I have never even thought about it like that I need to write it out to reveal my truth, I get that! I responded with “Thank you for that insight, that really spoke to me!” He asked if I had any other questions and oh boy, did I! I asked him “How can I decide when my work is good enough to be finished and turned in?” He responded with “Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness” “So basically what I am hearing is nothing is ever going to be perfect 100%, so why not find glory in a writing piece that may be unfinished even if it is finished in your eyes” He nodded. “So last question! What do you think the basic writing process steps are to a good writing piece? He responded with “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say. It is not a rigid lock-step process, but most writers most of the time pass through these three stages” I smiled. I had hope in my writing, because these are the steps I usually pass through while writing. I thanked him for all of his motivating words and decided to start a conversation with Mary! Mary said hello, and told me she would be more than happy to add on to the advice and asked me if there was anything she could add. I responded “Of course I have questions for you, thank you so much for asking! So my question for you Mary, I have an extremely hard time starting my writing, whether it's the topic, the question anything. I just can't find the words, is there a way to go about fixing that?” She responded with “In the beginning, when there are zero pages, you have to cheer yourself into cranking stuff out, even if it later lands on the cutting room floor. Each page takes you somewhere you need to travel before you can land in the next spot.” “Wow” I responded, did that change my outlook on drafting. I asked her “How can I know if my writing is any good? I think to myself often that it is not good enough.” She responded “Even the smallest towns have coffee shop bulletin boards or community centers with a writer’s workshop now. Even the less good groups can help you by speaking for your potential reader—they’re way better than the echo chamber of your own head.” She was one hundred percent right, I couldn’t possibly know how good my work was until I tried to actually get it out there. “Final question Mary and I will get out of your hair!” She nodded. “I am going to ask you the same question I asked Don, How can I know when my writing is good enough to be finished and turned in?” She laughed, and responded “Writing, regardless of the end result—whether good or bad, published or not, well reviewed or slammed—means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world. And you do that by fighting for elegance and beauty, redoing or cutting the flabby, disordered parts” Her response was a breath of fresh air, and no where near the response I got from Don, but both answers really spoke to me. “Thank you so much Mary for all of your advice and insight, you really made me think about my writing in a different light!” She shook my hand and said she wanted to leave me with one more thought “None of us can ever know the value of our lives, or how our separate and silent scribbling may add to the amenity of the world, if only by how radically it changes us, one and by one.” Lastly, Anne comes up. I engage in some small conversation and notice she has been drinking water all night. I asked her if she would like anything else and she told me about the story of her sobriety and how she has now been sober for 34 years. I congratulate her and tell her that she should be proud of herself for taking that step to better her life. She noticed I asked everyone else questions so she asked me if I had any for her. “Yes, I do have some questions actually. I mentioned this before but I want your input. I have trouble getting my writing started, to jot anything down to come up with ideas, how do I put my mind to it and come up with good content?” She giggled at me and took her cheetah print glasses off and put them on her head and explained “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts” “Really shitty first drafts, Why would you want them to be shitty? Shouldn’t they be good to start your writing off with a good slate? She laughed again “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.” “I like that idea a lot, so it’s basically only something I am going to see, even if I don't finish it or have to revise it to no end, at least I started it and got something down. Rough drafting is something I have always wanted to do but am no good at, so what is your drafting process? Well…. She continued “ I’d write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of. The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest of the day I’d obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write a decent second draft. I’d worry that people would read what I’d written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide.” “Wow, that sounds like something I would do, just drafting word for word and making it super long and boring, but I guess that’s why you have to draft and write down all your thoughts, because if it there on the page you can piece it apart and put all the ideas back together again right?” She responded: “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something— anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.” “Well Anne, you have really given me a handful to think about, you are very outspoken and you have given me advice that makes me want to change the ways I go about my writing process. Thank you so much for all of your insight and congratulations on your sobriety" I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe it was 1:00AM, I called last call and kindly thanked each of the authors for their time writing motivation they had given me. I started closing up and got a brainstorm of all the ideas I could put into my draft, I took my notebook and eagerly started my blog post. Hopeful and happy.
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Ashley GaylorI use this blog as a place to reconnect with my author self Archives
May 2020
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