Slaughter

That’s what it sort of felt like by the time class ended.

Two of my fellow students came up to me before class as we waited in the sitting area outside of our classroom.  One of them asked me if I had a Southern Baptist background.  There’s a religious bent to my story.  I told him no, but I had a repressed background.  The other guy sat next to me and told me very sweetly that he liked my story.  Those two things helped me feel a little less nervous. These guys seemed like they were on my side.

We were going in reverse alphabetical order, so Thompson went first.  Whew.  He was dignified in how he received what people were saying.  I tried to assume his posture.

Then came my turn.  KC always asks what works first.  It’s helpful.  It makes a person feel better, kind of like one of those pressure machines for cows that sooth their central nervous system before the blade comes down.  I got a lot of positive feedback for a short time. 

Then he asked what didn’t work.  It seemed like we spent way more time in that arena.  I listened and took notes.  It was a really interesting experience.  I’ve worked one-on-one with a lot of editors and authors, but to have them all in the same room, contradicting each other, disagreeing, invested in communicating what they thought about my writing, that was something else. The largest part of me hovered at a distance, observing.  The other part yearned to sit in the corner with my fingers in my ears.

I have stood in front of hundreds of people and revealed some of the most intimate details about myself and my life.  This blog has been a truth receptacle of the same variety.  In both instances, I am fairly confident.  I’m clear about my intent and my ability to communicate.  I have an inherent and unquestioned connectedness with my God when I’m talking about my real life, my real self that affords me the ability, even if I’m nervous because I’m invested, to be confident.  In those circumstances no one can tell me it’s wrong.  And if they do, I’m under no obligation to humor them. 

This creative place is a different place.  A tender and fragile place.  And it’s not that I haven’t accepted, and flourished, from criticism of my writing before.  I’ve been knocked down a peg or two or 7,459.  Because I’ve been raised to seek growth, I have been able to learn from these experiences in my past.  There have been times my mind has been blown, wonderful times when entire worlds have been opened up because of an observation someone has made about my work.  This is no different.  I’m sure.  It’s just new.

When KC was talking for SO LONG about the things that didn’t work in my story, I wanted, yet again, to stand up on my desk and yell, “HEY! I’ve never written a short story before! I only had three weeks to work on it! These guys probably worked on their stories for months! They probably read short stories all the time! I only submitted to you and this short story class because the head of creative writing said something about the way you treat your favorite students!”  With that many exclamation points.  And maybe that last part’s the crux.

Someone once said to me, “Gaaby, you can’t always be the favorite.”  To which I replied, “Why not?”  That’s just how I roll. 

In my dreams – you know, the ones where this day had nothing to do with slaughter – there seemed to be a remote chance that I might blow KC away with my command of the English language.  I thought perhaps I was in for a whole mess of praise.  I thought maybe he’d say, “Gaaby, this is the most amazing first short story I’ve ever read.  Did you say you’d written a novel? Can I read it? Can I send it to my agent?  Let me take you under my wing and nurture your career. Drop this class. You don’t need to be in college.  You just need to focus on becoming a New York Times best selling author.”

But, really, when it comes right down to it, what fun would that be? 

What he said in class and wrote in his critique is that stories are built out of more substantial materials.  He said an awful lot of it consisted of my main character thinking about stuff, at length.  He said I could cut almost everything I currently have to make room for more.  What he said in maybe ten different ways was that he wanted more.  And who can fault a guy for that?  It’s the same stuff I got with the first draft of the other thing.  Hilarious.  That darn peeling onion.  When people have come to me grappling with what seem to be the same problems for the hundredth time, I encourage them rather than to see it as a step backward, to see it as a step deeper.

So I suppose I ought to take my own advice.  When we were leaving the classroom, KC caught my eye.  He told me to look over my classmates’ comments and come see him next week during office hours.  So when I got home, I did just that.  I pulled out the marked up copies of my story and I studied them.  I’m going to tell you the truth.  No one was as harsh as he was.  They said lots of great things.  One of them said it was his new favorite story of the class. Many of them said my descriptions were wonderful (too wonderful, I’m sure KC would say).  My favorite kudos was that my last paragraph was “totally kick ass.”

And the truth is, it was totally kick ass.  Those sentences are two of my favorite lines I’ve ever written.  That doesn’t take away from the fact that all the things KC said were true.  Those things can exist in the same place.  There’s something inside me that thinks maybe he was so harsh because he sees something of value there.  I’ll let you know next week if that’s the case or if that’s just another one of my fantasies.  Regardless, at this particular moment, three and a half hours after the butchering, after processing a little bit out loud through this forum, I have this centeredness.  I have this hope.  In writing this, something seems to have shifted into perspective.    

Here’s what I’d like: I would like to get to the end of this class with no more than half of the insecurity and tenderness I have right at this moment – or I had earlier today.  I would like to be rid of this pathetic and deceitful thinking.  I’m not entirely sure how to accomplish that, but as Bestie B would say, I can see the next indicated actions.  They seem to be to pray, to write, to keep walking forward, to go to KC’s office and hear what he has to say, to engage fully in the process of honing this skill, learning how to make art the best way I can.  Since I have started this class, while I haven’t written much fiction, I have written at least eight pages a week right here in this blog.  That might not seem like much to some, but to this writer who’s been lost in a drought for the past year, it seems consistently like a hell of a lot.