The Great December Fiction Writing Challenge

A few weeks ago, an ELA teacher friend of mine was challenged by a friend to write a short fiction story involving a scooter, due by December 31, 2012. She, in turn, challenged a mutual teacher friend of ours to do the same, but her story must involve a train. This mutual friend challenged me to write a short story including a 1972 Chevy station wagon with wooden side panels (I'm not sure why that kind of car for me, but there it is). My initial reaction was, "Gulp!"

Image from ucapusa.com website

You might recall that I recently posted, on December 7, about how I struggle to write fiction. In that post, I made up a term for my condition: dysfictographia (the inability to write fiction). It's not an actual inability, but I do find writing fiction hard for me. But how could I let my friends down, especially since they had similarly been challenged? And what excuse could I give, anyway? I had plenty of time on my hands during winter break. So I went for it. I sent it out to my friends and family yesterday. Here's what I learned along the way.

First, don't make any prior assumptions. When I heard about the 1972 Chevy station wagon to be included in my story, I thought, "OK, good, we used to have a car like that when I was a kid. I'll draw on a memory for my story." For some reason, when I started writing, I wrote about the time we were carjacked in Ecuador. How did I get from childhood memory to adult traumatic experience? Who knows, but the thought journey certainly contained brown cars and children in back seats. It was a much better story because it contained all kinds of strong emotions dredged up from the depths of my memory. This idea-generating experience reinforced the power of letting students choose story ideas drawn from personal experience and fictionalizing them. It also reminded me that plans can be changed, often many times during the process.

Secondly, the more personal the story, the more I wanted it to be good. This involved getting lots of advice and revising with a critical eye. My December 7 posting about struggling was written during our short story writing unit. I wrote a story with my class during that unit. It wasn't that great. I wasn't that invested in it. I was writing to model writing and thinking about writing. I asked for advice so the students could hear what kinds of advice could be solicited and offered. With my station wagon story, on the other hand, I wanted to talk through my idea with someone from the very start, getting feedback on "What do you think of my story idea?" Once I got an initial draft done, I asked my two young adult daughters to read it and give me feedback. I got advice like, "This part didn't make sense to me", "Why would the character...?" and "You should flesh out the middle" to which I responded, "What work does that need to do for the story?" (a question I never in my life thought of asking before, but was crucial for knowing what to write). I sent out draft two, and draft three, until they said, "Enough! You know what to do!" I did. I rearranged, cut, rewrote, fiddled with words and punctuation, expanded, and agonized over the title.

Image taken from sachachua.com website

During the short story unit, I had students share their stories with peers through Google doc commenting. The peer comments helped their stories develop, and cheered them on when confidence was fading, but was not the writing support I experienced with my daughters. As fate--or the shifting attention span of the academic calendar--would have it, I ran across an article from the December 2012 issue of Voices from the Middle, NCTE's journal for Middle School educators, called "Writing for a Built-In Audience: Writing Groups in the Middle School Classroom" by Gretchen Hovan. This article talked all about structuring writing feedback groups, describing a process much like I experienced with my station wagon story. I also found a Writing Workshop Feedback Protocol developed by the National School Reform Faculty of the Harmony Education Center which fit into the NCTE article nicely and laid out a procedure that students could follow easily. I will try it during the Poetry Writing unit in February.

Finally, there is great satisfaction in sending a story into the world knowing it is your best effort. It is also scary and makes me feel vulnerable. That's what comes of making it personal, I guess. My worst nightmare is laid out on the page for the world to see, but at least I got to choose a happy ending.