Writing Communities and The First Draft

I have written a lot in the past week. I've finished a draft of the story I mentioned earlier, the one where my protagonist changed genders on me. I wouldn't have worked so hard on it had it not been for my friend, Rae, who gave me a firm deadline of when she wanted to see the story. I owe her one. I don't know how any writer makes it without a community to cheer her on and help her sort through ideas. I'm so very grateful for my community in AZ. We're losing our punk novelist to Chicago but that' okay. We'll be in touch with her through the internet.

The last time I met with this group, we talked briefly about writing sex scenes. I've done it when I was assigned to do so in a class, and I feel pretty lame making that admission. The question is why not write more about sex? Anyway, I pushed myself to explore sexuality in this story more than I have in the past. Here's an excerpt of the draft:

It must be, DeAnn thought, that her sister was not a sexy thirteen. Not like she'd been the year before. She gathered this by the way the boys in gold chains paused to look up and down at Crystal then turned hugely away. DeAnn had warned Crystal about her little girl hairdos. That day, her sister wore her hair in an afro puff, which sat like a geranium on the crown of her head. "Not cute," DeAnn had told her. Crystal said that DeAnn's straightened flip, which swept down over one of DeAnn's eyes, made her look, quote, "extra cheap."

DeAnn was not insulted, was never insulted, by Crystal's assessment of her especially when the boys in chains were turning to glance at DeAnn again. DeAnn was cute. Boys liked her because she was cute. Boys wanted to have sex with her. She liked sex. She'd had sex at least a dozen times, maybe two dozen times. These encounters happened in basements, swimming pools, in wooded fields, at the mall, or in cars if the boys could drive. She couldn't explain how amazing it felt to be with a boy in an unlikely place then go home to eat dinner with her mother and sister. It felt the way Christmas felt before you knew. It felt like someone outh there thought you were special. Sometimes, before she did it, DeAnn thought she migh explode into a cloud of atomes from anticipation. But afterwards, as she'd pull on her jeans, she never felt special. She felt nothing. Mostly she felt alone.

The boys were still checking her out when DeAnn looked over at them. They stood near the school staircase, a huddle of backpacks, chains, sneakers. DeAnn and Crystal had not gone to public school in years, since Crystal was in second grade and DeAnn in third, so when they walked through the doors of Edward Bigley High that morning, DeAnn was holding her breath trying to feel how her body was different from the jangle of sounds and rhythms she would join. This was her father's idea that the girls attend a "regular" high school.

Who's Afraid of a Little Short Story?

I have not written fiction for days and days. Instead I've busied myself with gossip sites and swine flu. When it comes to The Piggy Flu, I've learned that fear and apocalyptic thinking are deeply ingrained in many of us including me.

I learned that Maxwell has an album coming out for the first time in 7 years. I searched the web for information on the release, listened to Maxwell interviews, listened to Maxwell's first single, watched You Tube videos of classic Maxwell songs. I gorged on all things Maxwell for two hours. Then I was done.

I woke up at 1 a.m. to watch Prince's interview on the Tavis Smiley Show. I learned that Prince is really really little. I mean his shoulders are--zip--one inch across, with a grown man's head on top. I still love him, rickety though he may be.

I drove to a movie theater to see the Tyson documentary (telling myself that the documentary is a good character study which justified me spending two hours in a theater instead of writing) but the movie wasn't playing at my neighborhood theater so I came home and took a nap.

What I haven't done is work on my latest story.

This story, this story, what can I say? It is stubborn. I wanted it to be about a gay teenage boy but it insisted that the main character be a straight teenage girl. I wanted the mother to have a specific illness and the story talked back, hand on its narrow hip, saying, "What's her illness got to do with anything?"

The introduction to the story is up for revision as well. I've polished and re-polished the intro, making each word sparkle, but I've realized that it gives up too much information too fast. In fact, the problem with the introduction is also the bigger problem with the story which is this: I've been messy with the structure and exposition.

I remember hearing or reading that basic facts of a story (who, what, when, where) should be released early on but that the secondary exposition, facts which help to unfold the narrative, should come more slowly through the text. That sounds so simple, right? But I've been fooled into exposing too much too soon in earlier drafts because I'm writing a first person reminiscent narrator. The narrator is fully grown and she's talking about one year in her teenage life. I believed my narrator was wise and so I offered a lot of what she knew right away. What I didn't think about is how, initially, she would present herself to the reader. Nobody confesses or hints to deep secrets when they first meet you. People let you know what they want you to know and the rest of it is held close to the chest. Having a first person reminiscent narrator is like meeting someone at a party and then getting to know them better over time. You're not going to learn everything at first, only what she wants you to know.

One story that handles secondary exposition really well is "Lawns" by Mona Simpson. There's another story, whose author and title escape me now, that does it even better than "Lawns". When I got to the end of that story and the narrator confessed that he'd found his Vietnam Vet father in the car, I cried. All of a sudden, the emotional distance of the narrator made sense. Before that point I thought the narrator was a stoic New Englander.

I would like to pull off a revelatory moment like that in my story.

I am afraid that I won't pull it off even though technically I know what to do. Knowing and doing are not the same. And it's spring. I'd rather be outside wearing my flowing turquoise and brown skirt (shown above) that I got for $8.95 during a shopping excursion to my favorite resale shop, My Sister's Closet, which is yet another way that I put off writing...