So I have my first fan. Well, not my first fan but my first "writing" fan. Last Monday this girl, we'll call her Pleather Star, comes up to me at the beginning of class and starts telling me about how she's been in this really funky place because of this class and that she's e-mailed the teacher about her funky place and she's in a funky place about her story and also in a funky place because she's just quit smoking. She said she resolved that she would come to the first class after Spring Break (which was last Monday) and "make a friend." So I was the friend she decided to make. In the process of friend-making she told me about how much she *loved* my piece she'd read in the last workshop we'd done. (Which was the first workshop that she'd worked with me on.) (The piece, FYI, was an assignment in which we were to use the weather as an oppresive force that was also symbolical of the relationship between two characters. My story was about these two gay guys going through a sexual drought while there was a real drought happening in the desert city they lived in. Pleather Star loved the story because I used a lot of water words.) So I, of course, told her how much I loved her story about the "icy fog"... which I did in actuality. So we spent our chatter forming the mutual admiration society.
Then in class the teacher read some more pieces out loud - which is kept anonymous for the most part. During this section he read aloud a piece I'd written for the "character description" assignment in which I was writing as Lucifer, the snake, watching Adam being formed. (Here I think I'm incredibly clever because I was writing AS Lucifer while PHYSICALLY describing Adam and in turn CHARACTERISTICALLY describing God AND THEN telling you that Lucifer and God are TWINS so really I was PHYSICALLY describing all THREE of them and giving you PYSCHOLOGICAL insight into Lucifer!) (As I mentioned before... I'm still working on "dumbing it down.")
So ANYWAY - Pleather Star says that she really wants to workshop with me again so will I please sit with her on Wednesday when we are to workshop our 2500 word story.
Wednesday comes and I end up in a workshop group with Pleather Star (who smells heavily of smoke), the novelist (he's just so sickenly good at everything) and Chemmy (I'm calling him Chemmy because I have no idea what his real name is and we can't understand what he says because of his thick Chinese accent and apparent lock-jaw). (Also - Pleather can't stand working with Chemmy because his English is so bad and because everything he writes is sci fi or horror.... so he writes things like the "he prodded the hearth right before the Aborghoiabat monster broke along the door.") Then the teacher decided to join our group as well.
So Pleather reads my story (I'm actually writing a Fried Green Tomatoes fanfiction) which is in the voice of a 12 yr old, southern hobo girl and of course loves it and gushes about how she loves the "voice" and then talks to the teacher about it. The teacher agrees and says that he loved the Snake piece voice as well. Pleather then turned to me and said, "YOU WROTE THE SNAKE PIECE??" Um - yeah. "OH MY GOD - YOU'RE A LITERARY GENIUS!!"
Epilogue:
In the last half of the class the teacher asked for people to read aloud a page or two from the story so Pleather grabbed my paper and read MY two pages aloud. Then this last Monday she asked me if she could have a copy of the snake piece because she wants to frame it and give it to her friend that likes snakes. (Apparently she'd been looking for a prose snake-related piece for a while and she was thrilled to learn that I, her new friend, had written the one she'd liked.)
Just wait until we start poetry - I'll knock her socks off!
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