re: The Story

To those who read and commented on my story, thank you. I'm going to take most of the comments into consideration and make some changes. Before I posted it I knew the ending and the beginning were a little shaky, so trying to solidify those will be the most important things and probably the hardest. I'm not sure how much more plot I want to add, but I'm open to it if it seems organic and true to my vision.

As for the ending, it was my intention that the reader wouldn't think that the girl gave the guy an empty note. I was trying to leave things ambiguous, like at the end of Lost In Translation. The note wasn't blank. Or...I didn't intend to make people think that it was blank. As for the concerns over the halo motif, the only thing I can say is that it's not a motif at all. The halos aren't meant to symbolize anything and I don't think they do. That's probably why it's a weak motif...because it's not one at all. Someone asked Faulkner what the Bear symbolizes in his story The Bear and he replied, after much speculation from the person who asked the question, that sometimes a bear is just a bear. So...in reply to the motif concern: sometimes a halo of sunlight is just a halo of sunlight. It's a good note, but I'm telling you that I did not intend for it to be considered a motif. If I had, I'd have used it more. There should be a threshold of repetition before something becomes a motif because it's somewhat confusing as to what is and is not a motif. The halo of sunlight is just an observation: Gene's observation of the sun being blocked by this girls head. That's all. It serves to establish point-of-view, setting and time. I didn't want to tell that: I wanted to show it. That's always been a problem of mine. If it was a pointless bit of prose I'd take it out, but it important to the construction of the story because I don't use a whole lot of description.

The biggest problem, obviously, is that the story is still too much in my head and not on the page. I know what I'm trying to say and I know what happens plot-wise...but it wasn't communicated well enough. That's my main concern. I know the story too well. I'll set it aside for a while, reread it and fix some things. That always helps, I think. Just letting it sit and forgetting about it for a while. Learning how to re-write is a bitch.

The bigger purpose of me posting the story (or saying that I would) was to prove to myself that I could still finish something. As I said in the note before the story, this is the first thing I've finished in 4 years. That story and this blog are big deals to me. They may not be huge deals to others, and truth be told they probably shouldn't be yet, but they're huge to me. I feel like writing every day is starting to turn me into a better thinker and a better writer. While I value the workshop process very much (and I do value and enjoy it), the victory for me was even being able to complete this. It's a big ego boost to be able to sit down and pound out a story that, for the most part, makes sense.


That's why I'll be posting a story every 4th Saturday.

Thank you, again.