“You aren’t bleeding in this,” my Clarion instructor said, holding up his print-out of my story. “I want to see you write something close to the bone, something that bleeds.”
After I finished crying inside because I was a failure, I thought, “What does that MEAN??”
“Okay,” I said to myself, “What is the most traumatic thing I can think of? What thoughts themselves make me cower in fear?”
Oh yeah – my mom! My very next Clarion story was a thinly-veiled autobiography about what it feels like to be in the custody of an abusive schizophrenic. There was no catharsis in writing it, but I did get analytical about my own fear. I kept thinking, “Maaan this is not SCARY enough. This is nowhere near as horrifying as my memories.”
(When my classmates read it the next week, I was very gratified to hear them say “This is scary.”)
Oddly enough – the story (current title “In Loco Parentis”) itself feels bloodless to me. I don’t care so much about it? When it gets rejected, I mostly think, “Yeah it’s not that interesting.”
I wasn’t trying to bleed into “Flying Cars,” another story, but it feels more personal to me. Maybe because I wrote it about people I care about, rather than myself.
I thought blood meant personal trauma – maybe it means touching on those things you would fight to protect. I care about the characters in this story and furthermore the story touches on my own beliefs about life and what’s important.
So I guess I finally bled into a story. Thing is, every rejection I get for “Flying Cars” makes me feel like I’ve been STABBED THROUGH THE HEART.
Bleeding into your stories has a definite downside.
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2 Comments
Are irrelevent · September 11, 2015 at 5:33 pm
Has it ever occurred to you that your instructor is a bit of an idiot?
When he says *you* didn’t bleed in your story, he can only *possibly* mean HE didn’t feel cut by what you wrote.
The difference between the story relegated to a niche market, and the story that’s a million+ best seller and the story that gets nominal exposure in some vanity anthology and then dies…is how it makes the *reader* feel.
That not only doesn’t necessarily have to do with how the author felt, it can sometimes be in spite of it. I only write non-fiction…news blurbs, political op-eds (which, in retrospect, should be considered a sub-genre of fiction, since my opinion of anyone is based on *my* perception of said person, and thus, is wrong 😉 ). I *consistently* get more comments (and more re-posts, rebuttals, etc.) about the pieces from which I was more detached, more calculating.
Don’t bleed on or in your stories. Sharpen them….make them a razor edged instrument of *exquisite* perception. Slightly alter the situation just a little bit – what happens if we change this order, what changes if the audience knows the character already knows *this* before speaking/acting…make. it. *CUT*
I can pour my *soul* into my writing…but it will be a waste of effort if I don’t touch *yours* with my words when you read it…and I have to touch it the right *way* too. We’ve all read that one story that left us just putting down the book and backing away because “eeeeesh.” If I keep my soul to myself and still trace that spider web thin line of hair raising perception where you know something happened to you, was done to you, “clicked” for you….we’re both better off.
Don’t write anymore stories. Forge daggers.
Marie · September 18, 2015 at 12:37 pm
You’re not wrong -though I will say any error is on the side of the student (me) not getting it, not the instructor.
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