| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the end is not end I'm trying to shut the pity party down, it's just that it's been such a hard semester. Not so much that the work load was any tougher than last fall (man, I had it good this spring when I just took one class)...I mean, it was a decent-sized work load, and the fact that I still had to do my summer independent study term paper didn't help....but no, that's not the issue here. The issue here is that I feel as if I didn't make any progress this semester - that I didn't improve one iota. That the same issues I started with in August are, come December, still here, bright and sharp and in my face. My characters are still flat. They are still remote and unreadable. What's worse is that I truly and honestly thought I'd done better with this story. And while some students felt like they knew my main character, most did ask for more (but "more" would be fine as long as there was the idea that there was a there there to begin with). I actually felt OK during the workshop--mostly everyone seemed to genuinely like the story itself. And so when mostly everyone said they wanted more of M., the main character, I was fine with that. But then, after class, I read VDW's comments and just felt crushed. He said barely anything positive in his written comments (to be fair, he said more during class, but the devil-on-my-shoulder side of me says he was just doing that for show) and lamented how, once again, my character was flat and even the scenes where I was departing from the plot points did not work because ultimately, within those scenes, I returned to the plot points and thus sacrificed those non-plot point moments. Then, in places where I felt that I'd really fleshed M. out with some internal thoughts and emotions, he marked down comments saying that she seemed particularly flat and remote. You've got to start thinking differently he wrote. I just want to scream. After our last meeting I really thought that I "got" what I was supposed to be doing. But I guess I didn't get anything. And now I feel as if I've just been running in place all semester and now I only have two more semesters to go (and two more fiction workshops) and I'm feeling stuck and crappy and down-on-my-self and pissed. I'm meeting with VDW again next Thursday....I'm taking in my story and I'm going to make him go over each section and I don't care if he thinks I'm a dense brick wall incapable of learning, I'm going to make him show me what I should have done instead. I'm probably going to annoy him, but that's his problem. He gets the big paycheck and I get to annoy him. 12:16 pm - 12.06.03
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money can't buy happiness but it does buy small pieces of of serenity - 15.07.12 - 4:29 pm sh)t's about to get real, y'all - 31.05.12 - 9:46 am why the hell not? - 29.04.12 - 8:38 pm Hear that lonesome whistle blow... - 02.04.12 - 5:18 pm a faith in something I can't see - 30.03.12 - 3:33 pm |
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