Little Story #5

On the morning I published little story#4 I was feeling bad. I didn't love the post. I felt like it needed something but I couldn't come up with anything. I also couldn't come up with anything else to write. I didn't think I could keep doing the little stories.

And then a friend (you know who you are) said some extremely cool things to me about my writing. It wasn't just the thing they said. It was the feeling of someone getting what I was trying to do with the writing. Not everybody can do that. They may like the writing but can't articulate why. It's such a balm when they can. 

I did four semester workshops and a summer workshop in my MFA program. I hated most of that experience. It made it hard for me to be open to feedback. We brought copies of our writing for every member of the workshop and discussed the feedback in class. 

Allison Krause was one of the people killed at Kent State. She had graduated from the high school I was newly attending. The hippies in the school wanted the flag lowered to half mast for her. The jocks did not. A fight broke out in the yard around the flag pole. I wrote about it for a workshop. I wrote about a back and forth fight in which each sentence ended with the word fuckin. One of my fellow students gave it back to me with the end of each word circled and a g added. I guarantee no one said fucking on that yard that day. 

I wish I could remember who but I remember reading someone talking about writing feedback. They said that most of it was beside the point. 

The best feed back I ever got was about organization. It came from David Meltzer. He was reading something I wrote. He circled things and drew arrows to where he thought they should go and he was right. It changed the way I edited my own work. I asked JoAnne to read a poem of mine once. She said, take out all the ands then put back the ones you really want. 

These little stories are harder to write than anything I've ever written before. I feel flaccid and lackluster.  I don't really understand why. I got the idea because I was telling so many of my stories to a friend. If anyone talks to me long enough I start telling stories. And I want to hear their stories.
I am editing but I'm trying not to edit too much. For now, it only matters that I get something written. The goal is to write one a day for the month of June.
One of the nicest thing a person ever said to me was after reading set of essays I'd written was - if there were more I'd still be reading.