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I'm in another writing workshop and I decided to really buckle down and try to get something together that I can use in my grad school applications for applying to an MFA program, honestly feel like this is my "last shot" as writing being something that I want to/can pursue as a career, this is what I came up with and probably going to be (after editing/another draft) what I submit as my manuscript.
I received what I felt was mostly positive feedback from my peers during my workshop with them, I think there were complaints about the language and some complaints stylistically, but I had a girl come up to me after the workshop and tell me something to the effect of "really, really funny" and someone else steal the seat of the guy sitting next to me to try and have a conversation with me for a few minutes longer than the average person has a conversation with me when I'm feeling nervous/uncomfortable and acting distracted/mumbling/trying to shut off the conversation.
I mostly feel ok either way, I feel like I am ok if this is the peak of what I write, ever, and that the main goal of my writing is mostly accomplished in that I wrote something that was enough to make girls try to interact with me so that I could ignore them and then write about it later on the internet.
Any sort of feedback is appreciated, thank you for reading this blog.
shouts out to sfydjklm, I don't know if he still posts or lurks on these forums, I used a portion of his username and his first name as a character in the story, also the detail of taking long showers in the morning because he didn't have hot water at home
http://www.scribd.com/doc/167544237/Ryan-Gosling?secret_password=2lmddzkp9lu671teiz69
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It's great that you've put this on the net. I've read the first page and the story sounds interrsting enough for me to read the rest later on.
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i don't even know what to say about what i just read. I think i liked it?
the intro definitely needs work. It's just too unnatural, i feel. I get you're going for declarative, matter of fact, emotionless style, but surely there's a better way to open up that paragraph. The subject/object are a bit confusing, and the first character introduced is the neighbor, which makes the reader focus on her. I think it would be fixed most easily by making it all true dialogue, and giving the neighbor a name, as well as placing the main character into the story first, and setting a backdrop for the dialogue -
John stands against the door to his apartment, looking at Cleo. "Can you take care of my cat for a while, John? I would take him to the kennel but I'm going to be gone for a couple weeks, probably." Cleo is John's neighbor. Cleo has loud sex in the apartment next to his. John thinks about this while Cleo says something about her cat having had trouble in kennels before. When Cleo stops talking, John says "Okay."
blegh. I don't know. I feel like the John part of the story is begging to be written in the first person. Actually, I feel like the entire story should be in 1st person. Every single section is in the point of view of 1 person, and you only get a look at the feelings of 1 character at a time. so why the omniscient?
there's also a lot of needless repetition. - "Also, she says something like her cat has had trouble in kennels before, so she doesn't want to take her cat to the kennel." - "The cat doesn't stop screaming. All through the night it is screaming." - "John wakes up and takes a moment to remember how to breathe. Breathing seems difficult,John thinks to himself." - "etc etc etc, all throughout"
- speaking of "which", why are random words or phrases "in quotes"?
the story doesn't really get going until Alan appears. before that, i don't give a fuck about john. actually, i dont think i ever gave a fuck about john in the whole thing. He just kinda sits around with no purpose or inclinations and says "well, i guess i do this now". anyway. Alan's voice is great. His story is great, the phrasing there is great.
when alan leaves, and the robotic narrator kicks back in... that bummed me out. And then you introduce another sociopathic depressive in guillarme. which bums me out further.
The black hole / bagel / dream etc scenes are way too heavy handed, I feel. As is the ending, the poem, and the flower commercial, though to a lesser extent.
you have a way with final lines. "She takes the cigarette with her." " At the end of this video,Guillaume throws the blankets over Rachel, swallowing her up like some kind of blanket monster." "“Seems bleak,” John mumbles to himself, getting out of the bathtub, as the video ends" - these are all very striking and confident lines.
"But wait: John's scooter, dented from the impact, stares sadly alone and abandoned and anthropomorphic on the sidewalk." - is poetic as fuck. love that line.
i don't even know what to say about the self-referential humour, the false? earnestness, and the pervading sense that i'm not reading a story, but merely watching a story on a muted televison while the train voice girl emotionlessly narrates. Except for Sergei / Alan / Kay's parts. Those guys seemed like real people with intentions and purpose. I couldn't care less about John's "complex feelings of depression", and the connection between the cat and Alan's story are too blatant to be enjoyable. Guillarme i'm on the fence about. His relationship with rachel is interesting at least. he's got a very well formed character and tone, with some unique traits that aren't merely manic loneliness, like John.
sorry for rambling, but those are my thoughts. overall i thought it was rather interesting. there were a lot of really funny scenes (some of which i didn't know if i was supposed to laugh at...)
i'm thoroughly confused on how to feel about what i've read.
Also - girls try to interact with me so that I could ignore them and then write about it later on the internet.
guy sitting next to me to try and have a conversation with me for a few minutes longer than the average person has a conversation with me when I'm feeling nervous/uncomfortable and acting distracted/mumbling/trying to shut off the conversation.
wtf man. how can you write about people so much if you ain't got no people skills. at the very least plaster on a fake smile and pretend to listen when someone pays attention to your work. if a person went out of their way to acknowledge my writing i'd be giddy for at least a half hour. and i'd probably write a brag blog about it too.
edit - oh god i wrote so much. D:
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@Fishgle
I feel like what you wrote was mostly positive and that I was eliciting, mostly, the sort of responses that I intended to elicit.
Your main complaints about the story, I felt, were
1. The language of the story, which I feel is a natural thing to resist since the language is strange and is trying to draw you into its own logic. I'm not sure how successful I am here because I feel that at times I am able to push the reader into accepting this as the logic of the story, and that other times I undermine myself. The first time I workshopped the Guillaume part of the story (which was originally probably twice as long) one of the comments that I got (and made me resistant to change anything from that story) was that the story was strange at first, but by the end they found themselves thinking and feeling in the same way as Guillaume. I think that the different perspectives sort of takes away from this, which makes the language less successful here than it could be.
2. Parts that you felt were "heavy handed": definitely understand this, most of the parts that I think you are referring to are the most recent additions to this story.
3. The characters. This is something that I anticipated, and am mostly ok with and in acceptance of. Some characters are more "universal" than others in terms of people being able to relate to them, like Alan, and some of them are very specific and alienating, like John and Guillaume. I don't know how effective it would be, or how much I would like my story, if characters like John and Guillaume were easier to relate to. There's passages that I left out or cut that talked, specifically, about the detachment and alienation that these characters feel, I (would like to) think that there's a very calculated and controlled sense that these characters are unable to really deal with reality, that they are detached from it, etc. and are aware of this inability but still unable, or unwilling, to get past it.
Thank you for reading my story and providing feedback.
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Is your entire life like, a performance art project with a goal of mimicking / parodying Tao Lin?
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On September 17 2013 11:48 woooo wrote:
Is your entire life like, a performance art project with a goal of mimicking / parodying Tao Lin?
It depends mostly on what you're referring to:
1. my writing: this story is especially influenced by that style, I remember being influenced somewhat by Richard Yates, I think Zachary German's Eat When You Feel Sad was a bigger influence. I think that the themes, the things that I'm interested in, naturally, as a writer, are things I've been interested in for as long as I've been writing. I remember feeling really influenced by the style and wanting to experiment with it because I felt that this kind of language was better able to express things that I wanted to express in my writing, and this is mostly the result of that. I think definitely you can point at my writing as being derivative or mimicking that sort of style- which I feel is mostly ok as "a young/aspiring writer trying to find himself".
2. my posting here: I think that mostly the similarities would be the use of quotation marks, I feel like I'm mostly playing around with that and experimenting with it because it feels like an interesting idea. Probably mostly then, to answer the question.
3. my actual entire life: I feel like my whole life is a performance art project but being myself.
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>2. my posting here: I think that mostly the similarities would be the use of quotation marks, I feel like I'm mostly playing around with that and experimenting with it because it feels like an interesting idea. Probably mostly then, to answer the question.
Scare quotes, excessive use of parentheticals and slashes, describing sensations in excruciating (dull) detail, using tildes followed by a very specific number: all mannerisms which I thought were very similar to Tao's.
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On September 17 2013 11:48 woooo wrote:
Is your entire life like, a performance art project with a goal of mimicking / parodying Tao Lin?
Never heard of Tao Lin before. Now things make more sense lol.
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EPT
