As far as learning as a writer, this class has probably been hands-down the most helpful I have ever had. Definitely the most brutal criticism I have ever faced, but also the most helpful for growing as a writer. A note of warning, I am not nearly as pleased with my portfolio piece as I was with Fiction Workshop I. There is a lesson to be taken from this, I believe, which is that as a writer it is important to accept that not all your work is going to be consistent, and that works you like less will be published after works you’re more pleased by.
Having said that, I want to describe the workshop a little. It was broken up into two halves: Flash Fiction, and then personal submissions. For the first half we read short-short stories (flash fiction) and wrote four of them. Three of my stories are all the same just at different points of time. The fourth one is an individual piece. The more substantial portfolio piece is another novella, similar the one I wrote for Fiction I.
This was an interesting exercise, House on Fire. We were given two lists of words/phrases, and we had to pick one from each. Afterwards, we were told one word/phrase from one list had to be in the title, and the other had to be in the last sentence.
Unfortunately, I forget what the exercise was for this story. It’s a sequel to the first story, so reading the first one is crucial.
This was a really fun one to write. We had to emulate a certain style of one of the flash fiction stories we had read, and so I picked the concept of telling a story backward. I decided to zoom way out and see the overall story of the first two I’d written.
Again, I unfortunately forget what the exercise for this story was, but I enjoyed it!
The title of my Portfolio piece was Where the Heart Is. It is the beginning of a story regarding a boy whose father has recently died, has broken up with his boyfriend, and has moved away from home all in the course of six months, and moves from New York to Maine where his mom used to spend summers with her high school friends (including her late husband). Over the summer the main character learns secrets about his father, confronts a new romantic challenge and must learn to forgive what he considers unforgivable.
Where The Heart Is Submission 1
Where The Heart Is Submission 2
Writing Between the Lines 