Update for February 21st, 2011

I have been taking a Fiction Writing course along with my graduate studies, learning some new tricks to my trade. The focus of this class seems to be short story writing, finding one's "voice", and making the most out of the least. Essentially it is about the economy of words--trying to engross the reader as succinctly as possible.

Some other things I have been focusing on, is trusting my own images. I have to cut down how much effort and time I spend in "explaining" what the reader likely already knows and can see for themselves in their own imaginations. Even though I have this urge to make my readers see what I see, I have to trust that their imaginations are just as able as mine.

For the most part, the assignments I have been given and handing in have been well-recieved and generally interesting. The biggest challenge I have so far is trying to say what I want to say in 400 words or less. But I guess if I can't express a scene or dialoge in 400 words or less, I'm not doing my job to get to the point. For a novel writer such as myself, the short story or short prose approach is a challenge and it may seem like a death sentence for creative expression. No hard core novelist likes to cut or chop up their work to bitesize chewables.

Possibly Shifting Gears???

Lately I have enrolled in a Fiction Writing course that seems to be focusing on the short story--not exactly what I had been hoping for. I never felt strong writing short stories or anything less than a few thousand words long. But there is something to be gained from trying to get the most out of as few words as possible. If anything, short stories force the writer to economize and try and get out the best out of the least. Short stories seem to train the writer to do as much as possible--set the scene, establish the characters, establish the conflict, resolve the conflict--in bite size chewables.

Some people like short stories. Some people don't have the patience or endurance for a novel. Some people don't have the attention span for a novel. But these days I am finding fewer and fewer people are finding the time to even read these days.

The class I am in has at least given me some new ideas and an excuse to write more. It has also provided me with a new audience and feedback I don't normally get. Most writers depend on some feedback to guage the value or interest in their work. Aside from critics, writers don't normally hear from their readers.

I think this class will essentially allow me to experiment and tweak how I produce scenes or chapters. It will also allow me to see what types of things might turn people on or off to a story I produce. We'll see.