When it comes to writing, I would identify myself as a novelist. I love to write longer pieces and can find the idea of writing fewer pages to be stifling. I tend to turn in lengthier pieces than many of my classmates--and those pieces still often beg for more pages. This has been a challenge since both Intro to Fiction and Intermediate Fiction courses are focused on short stories.
In Intermediate Fiction, my tendencies are challenged even more by "short short" assignments. Short shorts can be no more than four, double-spaced pages long. And yet they have to contain so much--or at least, contain very little done very well. Rather than having full-scale workshops, where the entire classes discusses the piece, we break into groups of four people and go over each person's work more informally.
I used my first short short as a chance to experiment. The experiment failed--at least judging by the feedback I received.
Today I have to e-mail out my newest short short to a different small group of students. This piece is a bit more conventional--also, I'm hoping, a bit better. I am both excited and nervous about hearing their feedback. I feel as if I understood short shorts more when writing this one. In my previous short short, I crammed in a lot of different scenes but this piece is more focused on a particular moment.
While I don't see myself abandoning my novelist aspirations to crank out short short anthologies, I definitely see that I'm being stretched as a writer by these activities--and surprisingly enough, I've actually enjoyed writing these short shorts, even if they may not be my best work.
No comments:
Post a Comment