Tracing Outlines

Having reread parts of Kamila Shamsie's Kartography, I'm beginning to understand when I started turning my focus from setting up the scene of my characters' surroundings and moving towards chronicling their emotions, instead. In short stories like Idle Chatter, Postcard Memories, I'm Fine, Blue Line, etc there is a clear sense of where the story's taking place, especially with IC, PM and IF. There was a distinct shift that started with a much larger concept called 'Autumnal Destination' which spread across to everything post AD: moving to dialog, moving to emotionally driven stories that were very, very heavily open to interpretation rather than creating the mood through environment. It was my experimental phase: something I still haven't left behind me, if The Carousel Man and Numb are any indications. Those two pieces are completely different from each other and from past achievements. Gray differs in its need to play with time: telling a story nonlinearly is ridiculous. But ridiculous in a fun, over achieving sort of way.

In this first draft, I've struggled with pacing: whether I'm going too slow for instance, has been a primary concern especially with the breath of material that needs to be covered. But then, the common and automatic argument becomes: you really don't know what to do with things until and unless you're finished, and the last thing this project needs is to self-destruct by overthinking it. A tendency I sometimes struggle with. If today's workshop emphasizes anything, it's the remembrance that I still have the inclination to overwrite. When I was being "workshopped" at the 'Lounge, one of the comments received stuck with me and here I'm paraphrasing:

"There are some people I accuse of writing pieces that are undercooked but you are probably the only person I know whose pieces are overcooked."

The comment stayed with me and particularly rings true now; my verbosity is apparent within hours of meeting me. Or having a conversation with a relaxed me. It was nice to know that my professor Paul F. actually thought that my work was usually well written as it is, because it's a nice affirmation. Ironically, I was quite definitely set on this being my weakest submission to date and instead, it's turned out to be the strongest.

The moral (if there must be one) in all of this? Always underestimate and push yourself to be better than you are because there's no other place to go than up, right?

:)