Six Words (and a few more)

October 19, 2007

Whew! I’m beat. Long week.

So, my Tues. night writing class came to an end. It was a truly great experience for me.

It was as if a (ok, how many cliches can I come up with here?) door had been opened, a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel, a footstep appeared next to me on the sand…

Just kidding. But it really helped me to get in the write (<–OMG, I totally didn’t mean to use that pun) mind set for my book. The class helped me to get the opening of my book off the ground (oh, wait, there is another cliche). And, it gave me that much-needed kick in the arse to get back to my writing regularly. So now i’m back. Or, it’s back. (I have to say, doing this blog again regularly has helped as well).

I’m taking another class now. It started last night (Thursday), and it’s all about how to structure your book, how to plan, sketch out characters and chapters. The first night was cool, we discussed prologues and epilogues. I had a prologue for my new book but in the last class I took it out just for the duration of the class so that I could focus instead on the first chapters. Last night it was cool to revamp it, rework it. I think it actually informs the book even more now. Should be a good class. I’ll keep you informed.

This week in the Creative Writing class I teach I showed the students the ’supposed’ 6 word story written by Ernest Hemingway. I say supposed, because really (as far as I know) it’s never been proven that he wrote it, though it seems likely he did.

Anyway, here it is:

For Sale: Baby shoes. Never used.

I also found on the Cliffnotes website someone’s analysis of the ’story,’ which was cool, because it has some great guidelines for fiction/short story–and we have just begun (last week) our foray into fiction; they are turning in their first fiction piece on Tuesday. The Cliffnotes website breaks down stories into Characters, Setting, Plot, Conflict, Theme. And we used this guideline to talk about other stories, namely Manuel Munoz’ “The Wooden Boat,” from his book, Zigzagger (yes, i’m still teaching from that book!) and Brady Udall’s “The Wig,” from Letting Loose the Hounds. Both of the stories are short shorts and are wonderful.

The first paragraph of Udall’s story:

“My eight-year-old son found a wig in the garbage dumpster this morning. I walked into the kitchen, highly irritated that I couldn’t make a respectable knot in my green paisley tie, and there he was at the table, eating cereal and reading the funnies, the wig pulled tightly over his head like a football helmet. The wig was a dirty bush of curly blonde hair, the kind you might see on a prostitute or someone who is trying to imitate Marilyn Monroe.”

For our in-class writing activity I asked the students to come up with their own 6 word stories. At first they seemed intimidated, even flustered by the task. So I showed them more examples of 6 word stories from Wired Magazine, which had done an article about them and asked several famous authors to contribute. To see that article click here.

Some samples:

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Farewell, love.
- David Brin

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon

After we read, and laughed at many of these (I mean, come on, William Shatner wrote one for gosh sakes) they seemed to ease up a little and got into it. They wrote some zingers– I wish I could print some of them here but I didn’t ask anyone if I could. Maybe i’ll have the class put together/publish a little zine of them. I even wrote one, here it is:

The nun ran. Sirens. Convent burns.

But… this was not my first draft. I went through a few drafts to get it to that, in fact, the first draft was this:

Running nuns. Sirens. Convent burns down. (<–yucky first draft)

I showed this to the class (the writing in my little notebook) and they were really excited to note how the story changes meaning from the first ‘draft’ to the last. The idea that maybe it was the nun who had set the fire, as opposed to just a bunch of nuns running from a fire. It was a really cool exercise for them to see how stories take shape and how important revision is.

Ah! My work here is done!

(or, in the infamous words of Zelda Rubinstein, playing Tangina in Poltergeist: “This house is clean”)

So, now my dear friends, readers, listeners– it’s your turn. Leave your own 6 word story in the comments section. Maybe I’ll make it a contest! The winner of the best 6 word story, voted on by my readers, gets a prize (maybe a collage postcard!)