So, in my memoir class, we write one workshop class per quarter. The first quarter I wrote my Priscilla piece, which I'm not sure I will return to. Winter quarter I wrote about my mom's death using the Winter Olympics as a setting. Spring quarter, I wrote a parent group oriented piece about my daughter and a cake for a fundraising auction.
UW will 'publish' or at least compile an anthology of student writing. I've volunteered to be our Anthology Curator. Not sure really what that means but mostly assembling a large file of all the pieces, which Dennis can help with (ie do).
Each quarter, we get comments from everybody about our piece. That's the workshop model. When I got the comments from the winter quarter piece, I looked at them and threw them in the file cabinet.
I think I want the winter quarter piece in the anthology. Who knows, maybe submit it somewhere else. In addition, I might be able to use the services of copy editing class to further revise it.
So I dragged out all of the workshop comments and started going through them. Revising. Eliminating, Adding. Murdered any darlings that didn't advance the story. Supposed to be 3K words, currently sits at 3100 words. And still I revise and revise. Took much of the day yesterday and today constantly combing through it. Amazing that even when looking at the tenth contribution, I see something NEW that doesn't make sense.
Am I making myself crazy or is the piece getting better??? Imagine doing it for a whole book!
It's good for me, right? I am grateful I have the time for this work.
Picture taken from a blog "Passing notes in an English class" by Professor Benavides, of Our Lady of the Lake University in Texas. Comic used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.
1 comment:
Wow. Nice
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