So this is my week to get my brief "memoir" critiqued in my writin' class. The class is Tuesday night and I had to have my draft posted to the class web page by last night. Lots of mixed emotions swirling about on this . . . on the one hand, the piece I put together is terrible and sitting through a critique of it will be murder. On the other hand, for that half hour of class Tuesday night, it will be all about ME. That part I like ok.
I might overstep how awful the piece is, but not by much. Compared to the other work that we've read so far, it's competitive. On an absolute scale, however, no one will be offering me any advances. It's not fun when you're someone who thinks they have some sense of what good writing is but then find out how that is an entirely different faculty than writing something good yourself. You sit back, read from the top, and think "who wrote this?"
There is a small part of me that secretly hopes my class will be fooled into thinking that my piece is good. Extra credit if someone uses the word "lyrical" to describe it.
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I can remember the first time I read Hemingway's collected short stories, thinking that they were just so darned simple and matter of fact. The language was not dense and everything was just so real and understandable that it seemed like i could do that -- hell, anyone could do that. man, what a reality check. It just doesn't work. It's kinda like acting, I think. The best actors make you forget that they are acting and just make it look so easy. Hemingway's short stories make writing look easy.
So when are you posting the memoir?
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