So, I feel weird about doing this, but I've revised Folded, and replaced the post with the updated copy. The changes this time are minor, though overall, they're pretty big.
Some people reading this blog have probably read "Folded" before, as I showed it off to family and friends, and posted an earlier draft of it online (more on that later). Either way, here's a quick* history of the story, in case you don't know it:
I was in my fifth year at UNH, finishing up my degrees, taking a fiction writing class. Our first short story was due at the beginning of September. I actually didn't procrastinate. I had an idea of what I wanted to write, and I knew that once I started, it would flow out. So, two days before it was due (I know, that doesn't sound like much, but for me, it's a lot) on the morning of September 11th, I sat down to write. I will always remember that date, as it was 2001. Not long after I started working, my best friend sent me an instant message, I turned the TV on, and didn't get any more work done for the rest of the day.
In our class later that day, Professor Denman acknowledged the gravity of the day and extended the due date until the beginning of October. She could have just pushed it back a week, but I think she understood - perhaps instinctively - that the next couple of weeks would be tumultuous. Looking back, I do wonder if she thought some of us might like to write about it, as a way of dealing with such an unimaginable event. I don't think anyone did. I think we all wrote about something as far away from it as possible. Writing can be a great tool for coping, but sometimes, when the wounds are too fresh, it is also a great tool for escaping.
I put the paper off, again, picking up where I'd left off, and finishing it the night before it was due. I handed it in, and it was read by the rest of the workshop a few weeks later, to mostly positive commentary. Some people were put off by the 2nd-person narrator, and most wanted more details of the relationship. Looking at my notes from that class, there seemed to be a definite split by gender on the line "She always wanted something more from you." The guys liked it (one noted: "That's the way I usually feel in relationships."), while the women were confused or put off, mostly, I think because there was not enough detail about the relationship.
Looking back at the original draft of the story, it didn't change much on first revision. One major change was the removal of a large chunk near the beginning that was basically me ruminating on my time working at McDonald's. I like some of the details I used, but for a short story, it was just too off-topic. All of the dialog from that scene was cut, as I decided to keep actual dialog as part of the narrative until the very end. I tweaked just about everything on that first revision, then again in a second revision that would be submitted as part of my final portfolio.
At the very end of the semester, I picked up my portfolio from outside the professor's office. In her comments on the story, she commended me for my revisions, and suggested I submit it to Aegis, UNH's literary journal. So I did, and then I forgot about it. I'd submitted to Aegis a couple of years before, and received the submission back in my mail box with a short rejection letter. More of a notice, really. I never saw "Folded" in my mailbox, but I didn't think that was odd. A couple of months into the Spring semester, a classmate asked if I'd seen the latest issue. I hadn't, so she fetched me a copy. There, in the back, was "Folded, by Matt Pedone". I'd been published! In a campus literary journal. I was still excited. They only published two short stories a year, so it was a little victory to be chosen.
Since then, I've gone back to the story a couple of times, touching up language here and there. recording it as the vocals to a bunch of techno songs I wrote in GarageBand. Lately, as I've tried to get back to writing, I decided to do another major overhaul, analyzing every line of every paragraph, tightening up what I could, expanding where needed. What I think works best about the original is the compactness of the writing, the flow. It's not long, sweeping descriptions, pages of narration of a single event. Scenes are laid out in a couple of sentences.
For example, I wanted to show the apartment better, but I couldn't just have him walk around looking at stuff. I couldn't really even have him lounging around different parts of the apartment, as that would break up the flow too much. I think my edits maintain that flow, while giving a better picture of the story. Hopefully my edits worked. I wanted to punch up the opening a little, a couple of paragraphs that I don't think I'd touched since 2011. I wanted to make the castle towards the end a little more real. Again, I hope I've done that, and not just ruined one of my better stories. Time will tell, I suppose.
To read an earlier version of this Folded, click here.
*Believe it or not, this was quick for me. I'll try** to be better in the future.
**But, I probably won't be.
2014-05-27
Good Reading, Slow Reading
Looking over my profile at goodreads.com, I realized that most of what I've been reading lately has been non-fiction. From books on the history of time and science to a sci-fi star's foray into the internet world, what I've been reading has been interesting, but a little too real for someone trying to develop a writing habit. There's nothing wrong with reading something informative, if out of your realm of studies. I'm not an astrophysicist, and I don't plan on studying cosmology, but Hawking's book was fascinating. I am a fan of science (and, I would argue, a scientist by profession), so Otto's "Fool me Twice" was a little more in my wheelhouse, though not necessarily anything I needed to read other than academic interest. The issue I have is that I read too slowly.
Sure, I read George Takei's "Oh Myyy!" and "Lions and Tigers and Bears" in the span of three days, but they were short, and not terribly deep. Fun, and occasionally touching, ruminations on social media, but not a magnum opus on the state of society in the internet age. "Fool Me Twice", on the other hand took me about 3 months to read cover to cover. It was thirty-six pages longer than Takei's two books combined, but much of the end matter was made up of footnotes and references. I'd say the two books were about the same length.
"Fool Me Twice", however, goes well in-depth into the history of science and how it relates to the US. I would argue the first quarter of the book is devoted to the history of science and of the US. It starts with current trouble the author has had in trying to make scientific issues talking points during election campaigns, then goes back over 500 years to talk about the origins of modern science and democracy, as the two are linked (simplified version: as science gained popularity, people realized that anyone could attain the knowledge to make decisions about their world, meaning they had power, not the king, whose sole claim to power was divine right). He fawns over Jefferson a bit (professionally, not personally), then launches into a history of science in the United States, from its gloried status through World War II and the start of the Cold War/Space Race, to its decline as the Cold War dragged on and nuclear panic spread, to the attacks of the 70's and 80's after various debacles and disasters. Honestly, the book kind of drags on. Much like this paragraph. The book is interesting (hopefully this paragraph was, too).
Shawn Lawrence Otto would probably be a little miffed that one of the tidbits that sticks in my head from his weighty tome is this: if it weren't for the Cold War, we might not have the Interstate Highway System. Not sure if that means there wouldn't be the vast network of interstate highways, or just that each state would have been allowed to mandate their own speed limits much earlier. The world may never know. Or care.
The point of all of this is that I wish I read faster. I've been trying to alternate between non-fiction and fiction, as well as between kindle and hard-copy. I have a shelf full of "to read" books, and a handful of titles on my kindle (as well as about 40 books on an Amazon wishlist), and the hardest thing is waiting to finish one book before starting the next. According to goodreads.com, I am currently reading 5 books right now, which is kind of true. On the kindle, I am reading The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon, mostly because I took a few classes with her at UNH, and hadn't kept up with her writing career. Simultaneously, I'm trying to read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, because we were flying to Washington DC, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to use the kindle (turns out, I could have). I'm also reading three non-fiction books, one of which is a cookbook, the other two being textbooks. All three of those have been put on indefinite hold.
Once again, I run into my slow reading problem. It took me two (relatively short, I will admit) plane flights, as well as some extra down time to get through the first 50 pages of "Love in the Time of Cholera". Yes, it is deep writing, packed with detail and meaning, but it was not a slogging read full of ponderous prose (cf. "Quicksilver" by Neal Stephenson). Even Bacon's "The Twisted Thread", which features a little less depth than Márquez's masterpiece has taken me weeks to get to 34% (blessing and curse of the kindle - you can easily know how far you've gotten, and how much you have left).
This relates to my writing, and to this blog in the sense that I feel like I just don't have enough time in the day. I should. I get home between 5:00 and 6:00 on a normal work day. If Sarah is at work, I have the evening to myself. I usually have to cook dinner, but that only takes an hour. I should be eating by 7:30 at the latest, and done by 8:00, leaving me a good two hours to read and to write. The problem is, when I get home from work, I want to decompress. I don't want to do much of anything. I want to plop down on the couch, turn on the TV, and turn off my brain for a bit. By the time I haul my ass off the couch to make dinner, I'm done doing real work for the evening.
This is a major problem, and one I have to correct if I want to be a writer. I am not taking this seriously enough. I have to find my drive. I have to push myself to go into the office and sit down and write. Sit down and read. No TV until I've done this for 90 minutes. No making dinner until I've done this for 90 minutes. An hour and a half of reading and writing. Hopefully, I can make this work, and hopefully my drive will take over. Maybe I don't make dinner every night. Frankly, I don't think that's the worst thing in the world (I could stand to lose a few...well, actually well more than a few pounds).
90 minutes. I can do this. I will read. I will write.
Sure, I read George Takei's "Oh Myyy!" and "Lions and Tigers and Bears" in the span of three days, but they were short, and not terribly deep. Fun, and occasionally touching, ruminations on social media, but not a magnum opus on the state of society in the internet age. "Fool Me Twice", on the other hand took me about 3 months to read cover to cover. It was thirty-six pages longer than Takei's two books combined, but much of the end matter was made up of footnotes and references. I'd say the two books were about the same length.
"Fool Me Twice", however, goes well in-depth into the history of science and how it relates to the US. I would argue the first quarter of the book is devoted to the history of science and of the US. It starts with current trouble the author has had in trying to make scientific issues talking points during election campaigns, then goes back over 500 years to talk about the origins of modern science and democracy, as the two are linked (simplified version: as science gained popularity, people realized that anyone could attain the knowledge to make decisions about their world, meaning they had power, not the king, whose sole claim to power was divine right). He fawns over Jefferson a bit (professionally, not personally), then launches into a history of science in the United States, from its gloried status through World War II and the start of the Cold War/Space Race, to its decline as the Cold War dragged on and nuclear panic spread, to the attacks of the 70's and 80's after various debacles and disasters. Honestly, the book kind of drags on. Much like this paragraph. The book is interesting (hopefully this paragraph was, too).
Shawn Lawrence Otto would probably be a little miffed that one of the tidbits that sticks in my head from his weighty tome is this: if it weren't for the Cold War, we might not have the Interstate Highway System. Not sure if that means there wouldn't be the vast network of interstate highways, or just that each state would have been allowed to mandate their own speed limits much earlier. The world may never know. Or care.
The point of all of this is that I wish I read faster. I've been trying to alternate between non-fiction and fiction, as well as between kindle and hard-copy. I have a shelf full of "to read" books, and a handful of titles on my kindle (as well as about 40 books on an Amazon wishlist), and the hardest thing is waiting to finish one book before starting the next. According to goodreads.com, I am currently reading 5 books right now, which is kind of true. On the kindle, I am reading The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon, mostly because I took a few classes with her at UNH, and hadn't kept up with her writing career. Simultaneously, I'm trying to read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, because we were flying to Washington DC, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to use the kindle (turns out, I could have). I'm also reading three non-fiction books, one of which is a cookbook, the other two being textbooks. All three of those have been put on indefinite hold.
Once again, I run into my slow reading problem. It took me two (relatively short, I will admit) plane flights, as well as some extra down time to get through the first 50 pages of "Love in the Time of Cholera". Yes, it is deep writing, packed with detail and meaning, but it was not a slogging read full of ponderous prose (cf. "Quicksilver" by Neal Stephenson). Even Bacon's "The Twisted Thread", which features a little less depth than Márquez's masterpiece has taken me weeks to get to 34% (blessing and curse of the kindle - you can easily know how far you've gotten, and how much you have left).
This relates to my writing, and to this blog in the sense that I feel like I just don't have enough time in the day. I should. I get home between 5:00 and 6:00 on a normal work day. If Sarah is at work, I have the evening to myself. I usually have to cook dinner, but that only takes an hour. I should be eating by 7:30 at the latest, and done by 8:00, leaving me a good two hours to read and to write. The problem is, when I get home from work, I want to decompress. I don't want to do much of anything. I want to plop down on the couch, turn on the TV, and turn off my brain for a bit. By the time I haul my ass off the couch to make dinner, I'm done doing real work for the evening.
This is a major problem, and one I have to correct if I want to be a writer. I am not taking this seriously enough. I have to find my drive. I have to push myself to go into the office and sit down and write. Sit down and read. No TV until I've done this for 90 minutes. No making dinner until I've done this for 90 minutes. An hour and a half of reading and writing. Hopefully, I can make this work, and hopefully my drive will take over. Maybe I don't make dinner every night. Frankly, I don't think that's the worst thing in the world (I could stand to lose a few...well, actually well more than a few pounds).
90 minutes. I can do this. I will read. I will write.
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