Reading: The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

Moving: Oops

29 March 2000: Two excuses

Last fall a coworker started a writing class at Dot Org. I have not yet contributed anything, mostly because most of my writing is journaling and partly because I admire but do not share the self-confidence people have who show their work to their coworkers. The bulk of the work submitted to date has been one woman's novel. It reminds me of Songs in Ordinary Time, an Oprah book DMB gave me for Christmas in 1997 or '98: a small town packed with characters, all fully realized and interlocking, and lots of secrets. (The family secrets make them both Oprah-esque.) Today, the last Wednesday of the month, I did not go to the gym but discussed Chapter 6 and Following instead.

In the evening I did show my work. It was the fifth and last class of my Colorado Free University class, Finding Your Voice as a Writer: Getting It on Paper. Rachel suggested we bring a short piece to be workshopped. I brought "Breathing Stuffed Animals." I consider it journaling, but unique among my attempts it is a self-contained episode, compelling, and doesn't assume any backstory.

Only two other people (of the fourteen) brought anything. Mine, minus the first sentence but otherwise as it appears on the page linked above, makes a single, double-spaced page of 10-point Adobe Garamond. One fellow brought in a single-spaced single page and another a chapter.

I haven't mentioned the class much because it's disappointed me. I wanted in-class writing exercises like those Jessie describes or the one Beth mentioned a while ago of having to describe a barn through the eyes of a man whose son has just died, without mentioning the son. There has been nonesuch. For the whole of March, five Wednesdays, I have felt like this class was too introductory for me and also have not introduced myself to my classmates much. Rather than act superior (deservedly or not), I've kept my trap shut (eventually, I do learn my lesson). Therefore, when my classmates and instructors exclaim over this story, as they did, I should take their praise with the exact same grain of salt that I have accepted everything else with.

I do trust my own judgment (and not just my vanity) when I state that my piece was superior to either of the others' [pieces*], but also I remind myself, given what they haven't read and haven't said well and haven't said at all, that that is a matter of course.

* I added this word to clarify that I meant plural possessive, not plural-with-a-wrong-apostrophe.

The only suggestion anyone had was to excise the latter half of the "As she browsed" paragraph, and that's a good criticism: it's telling, not showing, and betrays the resentment of the journaling author too transparently.