Workshopping a piece is equal parts anxiety-inducing and exhilarating for me. The tension between my curiosity of what others have to say about the work from a craft perspective and what others may think of me as a person.
The first workshop for the Visions and Revisions class through the Madison Writers Studio was this week. It’s a little different when workshop is done via Zoom versus in person, but the difference isn’t off putting or detrimental. I rather enjoyed being able to listen and talk about craft, read other’s work, and engage in non-technical conversation. I felt so energized afterward that I had trouble sleeping.
That is a good thing.
The first draft of my manuscript was a struggle. A struggle over a few years. I started writing it while taking classes at StoryStudio Chicago in 2014. 4 Ways to a True Story was the class that started it, the class that resulted in “The Party.” Through its Memoir in a Year program, I finished a draft of my memoir manuscript. From 2018-2020 I finished the manuscript as part of my MFA. I put it all on paper, put it all on the line. I had emotional distance then.
Logic pathways bring calm
I have since learned that when emotion, any emotion, is overwhelming to me, my brain seeks logic pathways. It cuts out all emotion from the situation or event, and looks at it pragmatically, programmatically, physically. It shifts to observations. Elements rooted in facts, like concrete is hard, rain drops are wet and soak through fabric which in turn creates damp skin.
My brain describes the science of things rather than the feeling or sensation of things. Wind blowing doesn’t create a chill that tingles up the spine; it cools the water on the skin that lowers body temperature.
Only later does emotion factor back into the equation.
And apparently, this has made for some compelling writing, and placing the reader inside my brain and what it’s like to be me.
That much has been clear during any workshop.
Change in perception about living at home well into your 30s
What made this week interesting was a change in something I don’t know how to articulate. When I completed the first draft, and when I revised and worked on it during my MFA, being laid off and living at home with your parents was easy to understand as failure. Now, it’s common. Or rather, it is not as unusual as it was in a post-2008 financial crisis world.
I hadn’t realized how much that shift in cultural perception changes the emotional frame of my story, and how a reader today might interpret my choices, my desperation, my sense of urgency.
That made me curious, which also meant I had to do some excavation of feelings to understand the driver that set me on an adventure of self discovery and rewiring my brain.
Constant rejection. False acceptance.
Reading through the section of my manuscript where I get my work visa, and feel as if I can finally start my life again, that I am wanted somewhere, I see it as embracing acceptance after constant rejection. Embracing the only acceptance I thought I understood: third party acceptance.
Layoffs and rejection are common now.
If you’ve ever had to job hunt in the last seven or eight years, rejection is the name of the game. Some people handle rejection better than others. My first three, maybe four layoffs, constant rejection was hard. The last few layoffs, my mentality on rejection has shifted and I’m less bothered.
Back in 2012, I didn’t have the tools and mentality I have today, and constant rejection was detrimental.
After workshop this week, I’m pulling on that thread a bit to see where it leads.
Maybe leaving home at 30 isn’t such a big deal now, but it was to me, back then. Living at home equaled an overriding sense of failure, enhanced by the constant rejection from job applications. It can be hard to shake the sense that no one wants you, that you’re worthless, when the majority of the messaging your brain is getting is that you are not wanted, are not good enough, which can translate into a sense of worthlessness.
How to revise with this new perspective
With this new perspective, I find myself wondering how to revise this particular section of my manuscript.
The other thing is balancing with the rest of the manuscript.
There are ways to do that though. Drop some hints, add in some foreshadowing, and then call back to it later in the manuscript.
Some of the questions workshop had are answered later in the manuscript. That they asked about them was great. The section is doing the job I want it to do, but perhaps I need to add some breadcrumbs to pickup and carry as they read the manuscript.
It also dawned on me that “Little Man” is still the perfect opening, but I need to tie back to it more throughout the manuscript. It serves as a glimpse into what life can be like, and in a way my life with my dog is reflection of “Little Man.”
That should be in my manuscript.