Still stuck with Casey. I know the first half is telegraphed, a few plot points strung together, and that’s what’s stopping me from doing the second half: I wanted to throw down the bones of the story, but it needs more than just the bones. (Semi-spoiler: Chekhov’s advice re hanging a rifle on the wall in the first act applies. You’ll see those nipples again. And, of course, it gets more grim.) John, in his joking suggestion for a title, points out that the bones without the flesh are dull. I’d tried to convince myself that the distanced, too-swift bullet-point style was somehow mythic, fairy-tale-ish, but, well, not quite, Mike. So the first half need revision and fleshing-out, and that means that — despite a couple abortive attempts — the second half ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, or at least not until we get some character details. Until we we find out that Casey asks Dad to take him to a Slayer show. Until we find out that Mom drinks mimosas when she thinks she’s catching a cold.
Longer perspective: in 1997, I made the mistake many English MFAs make, thinking that since, more than anything else, I loved to read fiction, I ought to write it. Not so. I see a lot of creative writing MFAs here at Big State U who think the same thing.
You’ve got to have a big ego to go after a graduate degree in creative writing. In my case, the talent certainly wasn’t of a corresponding magnitude. And the funny thing is this: lately, I’ve come to enjoy reading poetry far more than fiction.
I’ve been wanting to buy myself the Pittsburgh Book of Contemporary American Poetry, but I checked out The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry from the library, and it only makes me want to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on books by Elizabeth Lowell, Rita Dove, Richard Wilbur, Edward Hirsch, Robert Pinsky, Louise Gl
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