Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

"My Way"

“My Way”

So here I am trying to wake up while at the same time fishing around for a blog thread to write about. After the first sentence something usually comes to mind. Yesterday I worked on my shadow writing where I am taking the EWW course along with the students. For some reason I wrote a synopsis of the vignette first and then the vignette. I am not sure exactly what this accomplished except that it freed my mind from having to suspend a whole lot of detail as I wrote. When I finished I had the story line, less everything else. Writing the vignette became an exercise in appending those details on the structure of the synopsis. The technique worked out OK and I wonder if I’ll be inclined in the future to use this model again. Maybe that’s a glimmer of how the last two lessons of the EWW are going to play out.

My students are working hard, however most are using the workshop to test drive material that is already well developed. I don’t mind if they do this but when they do they miss much of the benefit the course offers. They become very rigid and struggle pounding that square peg already written into the prompt requirement of the vignette. Instead of spreading butter and seeing how it flows they are chipping at cement. They are going to make that old dress fit come hell or high water.

Then when I suggest this or that I feel an immediate frustration….”That isn’t my story, Percy,” they say and I think…of course it isn’t we are exploring some of the possibilities that were eliminated shortly after you birthed the story and brushed ideas aside that locked it forever in concrete.

For everybody the course is becoming a struggle, like the One Act Play course. In that I have more latitude as a dramaturge to make content recommendations… There it is part of my job however in a Novel Workshop, there is less wiggle room and writers are more sensitive to considering content changes especially since they tremble at the thought of having to rewrite major portions or perhaps the whole darn thing.

It is the same old issues that keep cropping up. Central Characters are not central characters, Life changing events are not life changing events, wants needs and desires are not compelling and we have yet to get to the crisis that will start small and get bigger and bigger. Still I guess I should quit grousing and be grateful for what I see happening. Like the one act Play, eyes are beginning to open and while the awakening is not happening as designed by the course it is none the less happening. At least I am trying to remaining fluid and flexible as they struggle to find themselves and grasp the lessons the course offers in the most painful and convoluted of ways. There is simply no easy way to go from an intellectual recognition to a visceral understanding without some suffering. I should realize that by now being an old curmudgeon.