"Short Story" Follow Up

Apparently I caused some consternation in my family with my "Short Story." Of course that was not my intent. Some concerned members were worried it was a way of expressing my current state of mind and that I may be suicidal. I am sorry to the people I caused stress.

Here is the email I wrote to address the Story:

I'm glad you liked it but not glad you think that it reflects my life. I'm going to do a follow up on it on my blog, but the original title was "it is so fun to be so bad" Basically, I tried to incorporate a lot of bad writing techniques. Like too many adjectives. And way to many similes. And even a dangling participle. (What exactly was standing on the chair?) And the suicide at the end is there for 2 reasons. One- a story needs a beginning, middle and end and that is a quick end, and two- a suicide just because work got deleted doesn't make sense without some more information (like maybe the person was broke but this was going to be a best-selling novel and rescue them) so again, it is bad writing since it doesn't give any reason for the person's behavior. Plus, suicide is never heroic. That's lame. Anyway, I like to write poorly written stories because at first is seems easy but then you have to work to make it really bad and not just kind of bad. The fact that most people did not recognize it as purposefully poorly written story means either it wasn't bad enough or it must be a nerdy English major type of thing to do and only other English majors would get it.

(End Email.)

One member complained that I never write happy stories. In response to that I'll say I think I've only written a total of three stories in my life. 1) The fake story about Dottie scratching me. 2) My NaNoWriMo novel that no one has read and 3) The Short Story from earlier this week. So it isn't as if I am writing tons of depressing stories.

Also, happy stories are harder to write. Sad stories are easy because a story needs a climax and a climax is caused by drama or tension or some kind of bad thing happening. Will Lassie ever make it home? Will Lad survive the snake bite? (Don't even get me started on poor Black Beauty.) Will Kip run out of air while trying to save the Mother Thing? Most stories have a lot of sadness in them, but are not thought of that way because they turn out happy in the end. In the Short Story it did not have a happy ending because that would have taken too much work. This illustrates what English teachers and professors are always telling their students. You will get a bad grade if you write, "The author was suicidal because she wrote about suicide." Instead you have to examine what the suicide means to the story. Just because many Shakespearean characters were misogynistic does not mean the Bard was. Or, he could have been, but you are not allowed to draw that conclusion from his writing.

Another example is one of my favorite authors, Robin McKinley, frequently writes about women characters who end up doing heroic or unusual things. Her characters are not 2 dimensional "strong woman character." They have flaws, but they over come them and everything turns out right in the end. In a letter to me (I wrote her first) Robin McKinley says she never liked reading the typical "girl" novels about fashion and high school boyfriends. On her website she writes (paraphrasing here) that she was frustrated with the lack of stories involving an strong female lead. So, in this case, Robin McKinley's characters reflect...what? Herself? What she wants women to be like? What she thinks women are like? Even with her own input, all you can securely say about her main characters are they are similar in the ways discussed. Then back up the observation with quotes. Just because Robin McKinley says she disliked reading about girls and what they wore to high school does not mean she thinks girls should not dress fashionably to high school. All it means is what she said. She does not enjoy reading about it.

Going back to my Short Story, in the absence of a personal interview, all you can glean from my story about me as a writer is I need to go back to school to learn to write better. Nothing in the story links the character to me as a person. One clue is I do not wear ties. Not to work, and not ever. Except at some restaurants, females generally don't wear ties. In order to ease fears, I have granted a personal interview through this blog and informed my readers that the character is not me. And furthermore, I will say with 100% certainty, I would never commit suicide. Ignoring ALL the other reasons why I wouldn't do it, outside of my human family, the ones I care most about are my dogs. Sure, I try to have a plan in place in case I die an unexpected death (yikes) but to purposely take my life and therefore put their lives in danger is unthinkable. I worry enough about what will happen to them if I "pass on." No way I would voluntarily put them in such a horrible situation.

One more note on the sad topic of suicide. We have been having a lot of Suicide Prevention Briefings because in the AF, suicide is the number 1 cause of death, other than traffic accidents. If you ever do suspect someone is suicidal, and cannot get a hold of them on the phone or email, you must go find them, asap, before it is too late. Don't believe them if they tell you they are fine if they are showing some of the telltale signs. Our briefers tell us most suicides are preventable, but either people are afraid to get involved because of the risk of offending the person, or they do not believe the person will actually kill themselves.

A pretty weighty topic for this blog. I'll be sure to put disclaimers on any future stories and maybe I'll even take the time to try to write a happy story.