"Performing Surgery without Anesthesia" Response

          Revision has always been a terrifying process for me, one that I frequently shirk in favor of merely polishing minor errors. The initial feverish, intense process of creating a first draft is so creatively exhausting, it’s difficult to muster the energy to radically change your own creation. Another factor that makes “cruel and ruthless” objective revising difficult that Offutt didn’t discuss is the tendency to write autobiographical characters. Just as the writer makes herself vulnerable through the story as a whole, if she sees aspects of herself in the characters, they will be particularly difficult to view objectively. Realizing upon revision that a character based on aspects of the author’s life or personality is boring or whiny isn’t just tough for the revising process: it’s a blow to one’s own self esteem. 

Offutt dwells several times on recognizing what the story is, rather than what the writer intended or envisioned, and revising accordingly. This is where I think the group workshop process becomes most valuable, in gauging what the story really is from an objective rather than subjective eye. From my own experience in this class and others, workshopping a piece of mine brought out different perceptions and unexpected possibilities I had not envisioned or intended, at least not consciously, in my work. 

I do question, however, whether the revision process really makes a difference through dozens of drafts and many years, as Offutt says he has occasionally done. At that point, I think it’s possible the story will have been revised so much that it bears little resemblance at all to the original draft. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as the changes were probably positive, but I wonder if a story that is not “operational,” for lack of a better word, after 10 years is even worth salvaging. 

Ekphrasis Exercise

This was inspired by Raoul Hague's "Untitled" sculpture, created in 1975 using reshaped walnut tree trunks. The shape of the sculpture reminded me of a female body, so I worked from that premise and developed this short piece.

Juglans regia

In the dark, I see her stomach rising and falling like the phases of the moon. She hasn’t much time left, but I can’t help but pause in the doorway to see the light falling silver on her skin in the dark, electrifying and gilding. The walnut tree outside was dancing and moaning with the wind and somehow she was one with it, two great limbs of pale woodenness surrounding an absence, a cavity where something was and is not anymore. I’d been carved out years ago and left her hollow, concave with wanting. The grain is irregular, dipping here and there in droops and folds, but I know it is beautiful. I climbed these limbs when I was small and hid myself among them. 
We ate walnuts by the handfuls then, cracking shells and leaving them littering the front porch. Walnut breads, risottos, roasted with sugared sweet potatoes so the aroma spread itself throughout the house like a thick blanket coating my hair, my clothes. I had no other companion; sometimes she didn’t feel like my mother, more like a second self. When she cradled me at night I felt like I could almost sink back into her, complete the circle again to make her stomach full and round like in the pictures she showed me on the mantle. The walnut tree was strong and full then. She was beautiful in those pictures, long hair flowing down onto her shoulders all the down to her stomach, encircled by her own arms. She stood in front of the gate of the house, face dappled with the walnut’s shadow, her body as full and strong as its limbs. The picture was still on the mantle, but I no longer lived within her or within the confines of the house that had been my kingdom. When I left fifteen years ago, I felt as though I were carving out some portion of her as well, hollowing out the core of her being. She was hollow ever since, growing smoother and leaner with the wind and rain. I wanted to stay, but my roots had grown beyond the ragged fence and I felt the walls of the house pressing in on me. I had outgrown the taste of walnuts; I preferred harder, bitter flavors. Yet at the beck of a spidery handwriting’s call I’ve drifted back, back to the crumbling house and the shell-speckled lawn. 
She will not last much longer, the hospice nurse said. They’ve cut the malignancy out of her stomach (I cannot help but feel offended) but still she falters, weakens. I wonder if I am a malignancy too, a bacteria worming its way into the wooden whorls it once called a home. A few hours, and she will never been empty again, only filled with something I cannot give her. I want to stay with her but I don’t feel strong enough, I want to brush the leaves from the open window off her bed and murmur Oh Susannah, Oh Susannah as I brush her hair, still long but faded. I want to graft new stems onto the hole, to make her gaping body smooth again.  
Her stomach is a waxing crescent, stiller and stiller by the minute. I smell creaking wood and hear the walnut tree splinter in the wind. 

"Put One Foot in Front of the Other and Breathe" Response

          Celia is a troubled student who connects with a boy online, only to find out that he is not who he pretends to be. In pursuing him, she alienates her parents and her high school best friend, Tess, who warned her against the relationship. When his true identity is revealed, Celia realizes her thoughtlessness and immaturity towards her family and her only friend.
          I thought the subject matter of the story was very timely, especially considering there is an entire TV show now dedicated to uncovering the truth behind suspicious online relationships. It's also easy to see how Celia's loneliness and alienation fed into her love for "Cain" and obsession with their relationship, eventually ruining her academic future and her relationship with Tess before the ruse was even revealed.
          However, there were a couple flaws I found in this story. For one, it was apparent from the very beginning that Cain was not going to be all Celia hoped, both from her describing her narrative from the very start as a "sad little tale" and Tess's foreboding warning that "You're gonna get matched with some creepy stalker." From these constant reminders that this story will not end happily, it is neither surprising nor moving when it doesn't. The warnings of Tess and the worries of her parents are exactly confirmed; I can't feel sympathy for the narrator if she ignores all good advice and is then surprised when good doesn't come of it. For me, I want the "stakes" of the story to be higher. If she has a secure safety net of her family and their support before she takes the risk of dropping out of school and traveling to Colorado, the risk isn't too large. She can come back home, mend the relationships with Tess and her parents, and ease into school again. I would like to see the "real" Cain, as that would add a greater sense that she has been deceived, and thus more sympathy for her. Instead of a cute college student with "sandy blonde hair and brown eyes," it would be more interesting if we saw he was an unhappily married 30-something with 2 kids, a desperate loner intent on scamming her, a teacher at the school rather than a student, etc. Never seeing or having direct, face-to-face conversation with Cain leaves the story feeling incomplete. One suggestion to remedy this could be that Celia uses the last of her money to travel to New Mexico, still believing they can be together, only to realize he is nothing like he pretended even in conversation. There are other options to be tested out, any of which would add a lot more depth to the story.

"Wounded" Response

       Through the frame of his friend Mikey’s self injury and following nighttime hospital trip, Jason flashes to and from his past experiences (each characterized by wounding or wounded people, from my perception), both as a child farming with his grandfather and his interactions with his bizarre and flawed neighbor Nick, eventually inhabiting multiple moments at once as the morning dawns. 

The characteristic of this story I enjoyed most was the author’s masterful use of visual imagery. This worked, I think, especially for a story like this, which transitioned quickly between scenes each characterized by a particular set of sensory details. Certain key images from each scene reappear, like the angled columns of sunlight and the feel of cold concrete of the porch, in the last brief scene, which I perceived as Jason, in his sleep-deprived and emotionally exhausted state, blending the subjective narratives of his own past. I also enjoyed the eerie parallelism in description between the wound on Mikey’s leg, with its natural diction as in “a yawning valley, flanked by two immaculate cliffs of flesh…” and the description of the land hewn by young Jason’s shovel, as “the incision that interrupted the smooth ground.” The more the reader picks up on similarities like these, the more these scenes separated by place and time seem to correspond. 

However, I think a little more emotional linkage between the scenes would be helpful, especially between the conversations with Nick and the hospital scenes. From my reading, I’m picking up that guilt is a major emotional element in the story, as it is mirrored at the beginning of the story, when the narrator says “I knew that he had been struggling with things, but this never seemed likely,” and at the end, when he wonders, “What could I have done to stop the bleeding?”. Is the narrator implying he should have picked up on Mikey’s mental troubles, and thus does this story become about his expiation of guilt? I can feel the element of guilt or wounded-ness in the scenes with the grandfather, at Jason’s inability to shovel and work to his grandfather’s standards, but not in the conversations with Nick. I like the haziness and quick jumps in place and time of these scenes, as those qualities characterize memory, and I don’t want the connection between them to be laid out explicitly, which would damage the tone of the story. However, the inclusion of just a little more introspective thought during these scenes would help make the linkages a little more clear. 

"A Little Less than Nothing" Response

        Tyra is a popular, beautiful, and self-aware high school girl living in Everett, Washington. She alternately approves of and disapproves of her two friends, Bretta and Haley, and struggles to move past the heartache of a breakup with her former high school boyfriend, Darren. One day, an outfit her father had warned her against wearing causes an older male teacher to implicitly proposition her, and she rejects his advances with disgust, deciding to change her pattern of dress to avoid incidents like these in the future.
        One characteristic of this story that I really admired was the narrative risk the author took in writing for a character of a different gender than himself. I believe this is the first story we've workshopped as a class to do this, and I commend the author for his bravery, as I know I've tried and failed to write a convincing character of a gender besides mine. I think his female character's voice was convincing except in small instances when typically male expressions slipped out, like "I mean, hell..." I also enjoyed the wry, sarcastic, and often offensive voice of the character developed throughout the story, especially in lines like "How's my little nail painter this morning?" when addressing Brita, who is half-Vietnamese. I can see how the character has internalized some of the misogyny present in our culture, like when she asks Haley to tone down her "sex appeal" so Tyra appears more beautiful, and when she implicitly competes with Bretta, who is dressed better than usual, but denigrating her appearance as looking "like a maid."
        I enjoyed the story's unlikeable characters, but I wish the plot did more to showcase them. As the story is now, there doesn't seem to be any real conflict until the next to last page, with the exception of the small dispute with Tyra and her father at the very beginning. The characters of Bretta and Haley are mostly fleshed out to be crucial side-characters, but once the girls reach the school they are almost immediately discarded and never heard from again. The story is short enough as it is that the conflict can be complicated and prolonged without having to sacrifice any of the valuable narration at the middle of the story. I don't buy that the narrator would so immediately and so unequivocably turn down the teacher's offer, given how eager she seems for recognition of her beauty and talent, and the wistful way she describes her former relationship with Darren. Also, there are a few places when the characters, as teenage girls, become cliched. In the dialogue when they arrive at school, the use of "like" and "totally" make Haley seem like the walking "dumb blonde" cliche. Perhaps to remedy this, the perception of Haley as dumb and almost worthless could be a projection of the narrator's self-importance, and Haley contributes to their conversation intelligently. This would call into question the reliability of the narrator to accurately depict reality, which would make her descriptions and actions much more shaded with doubt and subjectivity than presently, where everything she says is exactly confirmed.

"The Young Man and the Lake" Response

         Mike is an aspiring professional fisherman preparing for a major tournament against the disapproval of his father. After a night out of underage drinking and a conversation with his father, Mike discovers that his friend Dave is planning to use his possible tournament winnings to go to college, rather than pursue professional fishing together like they’d planned. 

I loved the opening paragraph, with its humor and direct address to the reader, but it didn’t seem like either of these characteristics were sustained across the whole of the story, something I would have enjoyed. I would like to know why Mike is addressing us such, who he is addressing, and from what temporal distance the narration is occurring. Another thing I enjoyed about “The Young Man and the Lake” is the precise employment of terms to describe the fishing equipment and techniques, which clearly reinforces what the reader will later learn about the narrator, that he has a long-standing passion for fishing. 

The primary conflict of the story seems to be the troubled relationship between Mike and his father. Though this conflict was partially resolved with the conversation the two had after Mike returned from the bar, it didn’t seem to fully conclude. A full and complete conclusion isn’t strictly necessary for a story, but I feel like the relationship shown in the story ended in nearly the same place it began, with the father unsure of his son’s chances of winning the fishing tournament and disapproving of lack of future plans. The conversation with the father introduces the second conflict, of Mike feeling betrayed by Dave’s plans to enter college and forgo professional fishing. This second conflict will end the story on an inconclusive note, but I think it was too recently introduced to give the conclusion the weight it deserves. Finally, some specificity in the setting of the story, as well as the age, appearance, etc of the characters would have been helpful. We know the lake that the young men fish at is “Goose Pond,” but little beyond that about the setting or characters, beyond that they are underage young men in a presumably rural area. 

"Three Things Cannot Long Be Hidden" Response

        The speaker, Lanie, is a police officer assigned to partner with the fiancé, Philip, of her sister Rachel. Lanie and Philip had a brief affair before Lanie realized his identity, and she is now pregnant with her future brother in law’s child. Lanie must deal with the guilt of how she has betrayed her sister, and the emotional trauma of working a difficult case with someone she now detests. 

There were several things I enjoyed about this story. One thing was the in media res opening, which there the reader immediately into the principle conflict of the story, that of partnering with Philip. Another thing I enjoyed was how the narration gave the reader certain clues about the speaker, ones that from her characterization we can assume she would be unlikely to expend time and energy explaining. An example of this I found was when Lanie says that “Philip is one of those cops who are good cops but bad people, which you would think would be impossible…” The reader knows that there are many “bad” and corrupt police officers, but the fact that Lanie comments that this is so unlikely gives a clue to the fervency with which she loves her profession. 

However, I would have liked to learn much more about Lanie, Rachel, and Philip as people, particularly the relationship between the two sisters, as this could give more of a clue as to why Lanie cannot bring herself to tell Rachel about Philip’s infidelity. Right now, her silence on the matter seems inexplicable. The addition of more introspective thought, narration, or memory, rather than mostly dialogue, in the scene between them, could help this. Second, the story begins on a high note of tension, with Lanie’s exclamatory curses and sentences like “My insides freeze over.” It seems like the tension already begins so high that it cannot build steadily to the climax. I would suggest beginning with more neutral language that still communicates her distress, or rearranging the scenes of the story so the tension can build more steadily. Also, the first page of the story makes a reference to a “screw up” Lanie made the previous month, which is why she was assigned a partner. The reader never learns what this mistake was, but including it could give characterization and a point of vulnerability to a character that seems somewhat impenetrable.