Here's what the workshop did with my stories

So what we were supposed to do in the workshop was read our stories aloud, but in the following sequence: paragraph 1 from first story, paragraph 1 from second story, paragraph 2 from first story, paragraph 2 from second story, etc, interweaving the paragraphs from each story so we had an 8-paragraph story of 400 words. What was so curious to me about this exercise was that when I wrote the stories separately, each narrator was a completely different person, yet when the grafs were interwoven, it all sounded like the same "I." And similarities in the stories I hadn't noticed shone through: abandonment, language. 

I don't know whether this exercise would work with children, but it might well work with high schoolers.

 Untitled (so far)

            I don’t know who I am talking to. I don’t know whom I am talking to. Mrs. McHenry knows if I should say “who” or “whom.” She marked my 10th-grade papers for grammar. Never spelling. I’ve always been good at spelling.

            We drove into Dubrovnik from the airport. The winding road up the coast offered glimpses of the blue Adriatic, diamonds of sunlight floating on the surface. Thank god they drive on the right side of the road here.

            The cardboard sign I made for when I sit on the street is perfectly spelled, but I’m not sure of the grammar. “Im lost in New York City need to get to Richmond, Va. for my mother’s funeral. Please help.” Should I put a comma in there somewhere?

            At the hotel I let Dominic talk to the desk clerk. Dominic seemed to inhale languages as soon as he stepped off the plane. I watched him chat up the clerk in his baby-Serbo-Croatian. The clerk laughed, shook her head, repeated some word several times.

            I lost everything when my boyfriend took my suitcase. I didn’t notice. I’m napping at his friend’s apartment. Not really napping. I smoked a joint right after breakfast, well, it’s not a joint, it’s crack.

            At lunch in the old city, inside the medieval walls, Dominic told me the clerk almost didn’t give us a room because she thought he was  Serb. “There’s no Serbo-Croatian language anymore,” he mused. “She said I need a dictionary to translate from Serbian into Croatian.” I didn’t know. I was a typical American, monolingual and condemned to stay that way.

            I don’t notice when he takes the suitcase. I don’t notice when he doesn’t come back. I don’t notice when his friend says I have to leave. I notice when he pulls me up from the chair and pushes me out the door. I notice I don’t have my suitcase. I notice when I pawn my pearl necklace so I can eat dinner. I notice how cold it is on the street.

            Dominic led me up to the top of the wall, where we walked until we could see the water. I tried to imagine the war, when Dubrovnik was bombarded. Dominic said, “Wait here,” so I watched sunlight drip into the Adriatic, the bright fade to glow, the shades of blue deepen to navy. The stone wall chilled in the dark.

Slice of Life, #29

            Communities of writers are wonderful and necessary. They nurture and provoke, engage and challenge. They can take many forms: writers’ groups, workshops, reading series, salons, open mikes (“mic” looks to me like it’s pronounced “mihk” and only came into use when “mic” was engraved on recording equipment in the 1980s; “mike” was the word before then). I am in several: a writers’ group I’ve been in for more than 20 years (and it’s been in existence for more than 30 years); a continuing workshop with an old friend focusing on short fiction, as well as the Blueprint Your Book workshop with Minal Hajratwala; the Big Words reading series; and the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon and Open Expressions Harlem.

            Today the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon met at the Brooklyn Workshop Gallery for an afternoon with featured poet Cynthia Manick. Cynthia led a workshop on character poems, with examples by Patricia Smith (“Medusa” was really powerful), Lucille Clifton, Carol Ann Duffy, and Cornelius Eady, and direct address poems, with examples Chris Abani. We then had the opportunity to write our own examples, with many amazing poems written in just 10 minutes. Cynthia read some of her own work. And then the open mike, with, again, many beautiful pieces of writing. And of course, the Two Writing Teachers, with their Slice of Life Story Challenge in March, and National Novel Writing Month, in November, which pushed me to finish the first draft of a novel some years ago (it still sits, with half a dozen attempts at a second draft, in a drawer).

            There are more out there. In April, National Poetry Month, there are at least a couple of 30 Poems in 30 Days challenges. I hope you are in more than one writing community; maybe you can join one in April.

            Write on!