one of the rules every single one of my writing teachers at the loft have laid down is that you can’t work on your story or even read the comments your classmates give you for an entire week. they say you need some distance, some time to let it all sort of filter through and what not.

but you know, i don’t follow anyone’s stinking rules.

tonight i read through ALL the comments i got back on my story “Branches.” it’s been quite interesting. the story is based wholly on a dream i had a few years ago. it’s just one of those dreams that stuck with me, something about it that never seemed to let go of me. so i turned it into a story.

the in class workshop went really well. i left glowing. the comments actually written on the papers handed back to me are what i read through tonight.

the story i tried to write is about a girl who doesn’t quite fit. she thinks meeting her dad will make her fit. it doesn’t and in the end she realizes that fitting isn’t all there is, that it’s ok to not fit.

i didn’t quite write that story, but i’m well on my way. more on my way than some of the comments might suggest.

they try, with their sincere suggestions, to make it the story they want it to be. some of them want it to be a story about meg, the main character, finding herself. some want it to be about meg’s relationship with a bossy sister. some want it to be about how finding her biological father will give meg direction. some want it to be about hot sister on sister action.

filtering through the comments has been educational. i see that you have to toss about 90% of what the reader wants and trust you know your story and what you’re trying to say. there are probably three things that resonated throughout all the comments, and i think they’re all things that can help make my story better– so it’s well worth the excercise that seemed so futile when i started.

it’s funny, because now when i read my classmates stories, i try not to direct them. i just ask questions. what the fuck? why in the hell? are you kidding me? those kinds of things. i try, with all my might, to resist the urge to tell them what i think the story SHOULD be– though sometimes it’s really hard. i’ve seen how that kind of direction can completely ruin a story. it happened to a classmate who had a story workshopped in the last class i took– she incorporated all the feedback into the story she turned in for this class and it was a trainwreck. it seemed she lost her vision for what she wanted to say and listened to us numbskulls. it’s really so sad that a group of such well intentioned people can wreck havoc on someone’s art.

and mostly i just wonder, do those people do the same things with the books they read?