You can find a new short story placed in the fiction section, here!!

Well, I use the term “new” loosely because I actually wrote this story in 2005, during my last workshop class (Advanced Fiction) for my Creative Writing major. This story suffers from a lot of problems, and a few of the less critical ones are:

• It’s extremely amateurist, in my opinion, and I make a lot of mistakes on that story that I now try to catch in the 1st or 2nd editting session.
• For the story to truly be a diamond instead of a lump of coal in need of polishing, it would have to have not only another editting session, but great big chunks of it will need to be re-written.

However, none of those things will be done for the simple reason that I’ve lost the story thread. I lost it when I was writing it. This story suffered from what I call “Academic Workshop Syndrome.” Basically, it was drafted to fit a template that I had been taught since Introduction to Fiction. I had never been told what “good” fiction was, simply what it was not and it seemed that everything I wrote fell into the “not” category, especially anything that would be considered genre fiction.

Often times I’ve ranted and raved about how the academic world often views genre fiction and how snobby “literary” fiction enthusiasts and writers can be. From the beginning I was flat out told that I would not be writing anything that fell into the “genre” category, and if I did, I’d fail. Obviously, if I wanted to write genre fiction, I wasn’t interested in being a good writer, I was interested in being a prolific writer — you know, a whore for the money. Like even writing genre fiction guarantees a good income!

Anyway, I found myself in a surreal, unhappy place with the workshops offered through my university. My introduction to fiction teacher actually gave us a comparison of literary fiction vs. genre fiction. Besides the more believable points, such as stories that are character driven (literary) versus plots that are more action/plot driven (genre), there were some very unbelievable points. Supposedly, one way to know if you were reading literary fiction is if the author included bathroom scenes, bowel movements, or didn’t refer to the characters’ bodily functions as “peeing” or “going to the bathroom.” Apparently, literary fiction didn’t shy away from being dirty and nitty-gritty in its details! ‘Course, I’d rather not ready ANY fiction about bowel movements, and I think it’s pretty unneccessary and boring to include bathroom scenes — hey, we all do it, we can basically assume it — but what did I know? I was just the student.

ANYway, it was under this kind of environment that “Tuesday Matinee” was born. I knew the character had to go through some internal struggle and come to some conclusion (think “character driven stories,” Himani!), but I tried so hard that half way through, I found that I didn’t really know what I was doing with my story. It was missing something important. I needed to rethink where I wanted to go with this. But, I didn’t have time for another rewrite, so I just forged ahead, finished it off, and turned it in for my final portfolio. It wasn’t too bad, as all things go, and I got an “A” on it. But…it lacked life and kind of simply chugged along.

That’s not to say it’s a horrible story. It has some very interesting elements in it. I really like my character development and I think that the characters are what kept the story readable. In fact, with the exception of Angela, I found myself really liking the characters I have made. In the workshop, I was asked multiple times if Cactus Wren was a real town (which it’s not), so I knew the environment was believable. I’d like to revisit Cactus Wren and write another story with these characters, especially Hui (I love him! ). You can also see my emerging style in this work here and there, where I let myself shine through, and I think if I had allowed myself to do that much more instead of worrying if I was making good “literary” fiction, I would have been much more satisfied with the end result.

(You can read “Tuesday Matinee” in the fiction section)

12:44 am | Category: Writing | |

2 Responses to ““Tuesday Matinee”” 

ID: 6 March 21st, 2007 at 4:55 am aileen says: hey himani! I see you’ve still been busy with writing! You have such a passion for it, girl. I really think you were born to write and you live to write! keep it up!

ID: 7 March 21st, 2007 at 12:36 pm Himani says:  QUOTED aileen: hey himani! I see you’ve still been busy with writing! You have such a passion for it, girl. I really think you were born to write and you live to write! keep it up! *sniffle* That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s said to me. Thanks Aileen! You’re the greatest. Keep in touch, kay?

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