I started a 10-week writing course a few weeks ago. Joining a writing class is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I had high hopes of finding something in Austin that met in person, but honestly, there weren’t many good options.

Still, I wanted to get back into purposeful writing and give myself a goal of actually finishing a new short story. I thought that the structure of a course would help me: having goals and deadlines to meet, along with set things to learn about each week, is exactly what I need to help me make progress.

I joined an online course from Gotham’s Writer’s Workshop. So far it’s been pretty nice. I’m not learning a ton of revolutionary (it is a like 101 or intro course), but I’m getting a lot of practical tips I can apply to my writing. Additionally, we get two chances throughout the course to present work to the class and get critiques. Mine is coming up soon, and I just finished the piece I’m hoping to submit.

Week one - Introduction

If this newsletter has transformed into anything, it’s become a sort of regular journal. A therapeutic exercise, so I figure I’ll just talk about how I felt each week. In week one, I felt a little out of place, silly even. I know intellectually I shouldn’t feel silly, but still, I can’t get that part of my brain to stop thinking that pursuing something artistic earnestly is somehow cringey.

Anyway, we didn’t do much; we mainly introduced ourselves.

I write:

In the summer of drought and dying things, the men came to me, parched and seeking relief from the heat of their memory.

And

During the summer of drought and dying things, I drenched myself in the cool water of men’s memories.

Week two - character

In week two, we talk about character: what makes one compelling, what it takes to build an interesting one. I suck at building characters. I think ultimately I tend to write the same character over and over and over again. Maybe it’s because I’m really only interested in that type of person in real life or maybe it’s just that I’m bad at really understanding how people are different in the real world.

My character has been changing a lot, though. I’ve noticed it happening more and more, especially in the last year. I sometimes wonder if other people have noticed the work I’ve been putting into myself, though I suppose ultimately that you should do the work for yourself, not for other people.

Still, I’ve reduced my anxiety a lot. I’ve improved my depression. I’ve helped friends and family get into therapy. I’ve talked about my own experience with therapy. I’ve started working out again (11 times in a month which is big for me). I’ve gotten into collecting and caring for plants. I’ve made new friends. I’ve completed a new short story. I’ve read more and written more. I’m doing all the hard stuff to be a better person, even if others don’t really see it happening.

I write:

After swimming, L and I went to the diner. Sunburnt, damp, and starving, I ordered a burger (hold the pickles and mustard) and L fumbled around the menu before settling on a side of hash browns and a Diet Coke. Pale and thinning, L ate small bites between waves of nausea. He pecked around his plates like the common chaffinch. I was greedy: eating whatever was dropped in front of me like it was the last meal I’d ever be offered. L thought it was quaint, telling me it was one of his favorite traits about me.

“It’s great,” he said. “To watch someone take actual joy in eating.”
“I’m not sure it’s joy,” I told him. “More like impulse or compulsion.” 

Week three - plot

During week three, we talk about plot: how to structure it, whether or not it’s important. I gained a lot from this week, actually, and it’s the first week we started critiquing other people’s work.

It helps to read other writers’ work. Before, when I was in school and doing workshops, it always felt like a competition. That was probably because of my anxiety: I felt the need to prove myself, to shine above everyone else. There’s still a touch of that here, but I’m learning to let it go. Instead, I’m appreciating the writing for what it is: a draft, not a finished piece. I’m looking at other people with comparable (or better) skills than mine and thinking earnestly about what their stories are lacking and how I can apply those lessons to my own.

Which is probably what you’re supposed to be doing in a course like this.

I’ve been writing in the mornings too. Cookie wakes me up at 7:00 every day for breakfast (he is NEVER late) so I’ll feed him, take my medicine, take him for a walk, and then head to the coffee shop for an hour before work to do some personal writing. It’s been nice to dedicate time to myself. I’ll have coffee and listen to music, and write maybe two to three paragraphs. Sometimes I switch this up and go later in the day to a coffee shop or beer garden alone, have a drink or two, and work on my writing. I’m learning it’s okay to be alone, welcomed even.

I write:

About a 3 part plot structure taking place entirely in a single train car. A neurotic man bumps into an attractive man late at night in a train car. He spends the night obsessing that he must know the man, but he can’t figure out where from. He devises a plan to get the man to leave and look through his things for any sign of identity. Unable to find anything that hints at who he might be, he gets more and more insane before finally resigning himself that he’ll never know the answer. He gets up to go back to his private room and bumps into the man again, who laughs at the incident again, this time seemingly using the main character’s real name.

With this proof in hand, the main character decides he is going to stalk this man when he leaves, doing everything he can to find out who he is and what he knows.

Week four - point of view

I wonder a lot what my point of view is. Both in the abstract and the concrete: what do I have to say, and what POV should I say it in?

Currently, I think I’m interested in writing love stories between men. Or at least I call them love stories. I think I’m interested in obsession and desire, in destruction and consumption. I’m interested in the things people don’t say to each other, not what they do. I’m not really interested in telling people how to love or what love is, really just highlighting how different it can look.

When I’m writing a short story, part of me feels this intense pressure to write some grand work of literary fiction where domestic bliss is captured through the ordinary turn of events happening in modern life. But another creeping part of me finds that boring. When I was a younger writer, I wanted to write about disaster and magic and strange things that just make sense. I sort of turned away from that, telling myself I couldn’t do it well, but now I’m trying to embrace it more. I don’t really want to write about a normal world; I want to write about a world that’s a little bit strange.

I write:

The man (I haven’t finished this assignment)

The woman

The man was crying again, and Angela was doing her best to console him. He did this often: bursting into self-pitying sobs at the smallest sign of push back or disagreement. She supposed he had some sort of complex. Most likely, he had a rough go of pleasing his mother and father. High-expectation types who never learned to let things go. 

She was the opposite: resigning herself to being the back-padder-in-chief. A life spent whispering “it’s okay, it’s okay” to many others just like the man; rolling her eyes at the absurdity of it all, assuring them all “I’m not mad, we just disagreed.”

The Waiter (I haven’t finished this assignment)