Saturday, October 2, 2010

Interesting Week...

...one could say a very successful week, but only in certain ways.

I'm working on a fiction piece right now that's going very well. I hope to have it done by Tuesday. Or at least "done enough" to turn in to my fiction professor. Like many writers I know, my pieces rarely get finished. There's always something else I could find to fix and make better. Eventually, I just get to the point where I say, "Enough's enough. Time to let it fly free and exist on its own and work on something else."

I'm proud of the story idea and where it's going. The characters feel alive to me. I hope they come across that way on the page.

I also had a very good experience in my Poetry class. I submitted a poem for a class workshop and it was very well received. I also got many excellent suggestions on how to tighten up the couple stanzas that just didn't sing as well as the others. Talentless hacks! Get out of my choir! Heh.

Also, for about the last 12 years or so, I have been attempting to find a friend I had in the first and second grades. His family moved and we wrote to each other for a while, but that eventually fell by the wayside. Of course, we were only, what, 9 at the time? Go figure.

Anyway, every couple months or so, I would spend two hours trying to find him on the internet. It was a little difficult without any knowledge of where he had lived for certain. But I tried. And tried.

In my fiction class this week, my professor was talking about the core group of readers he used to get feedback on his stories. He mentioned each by name. With the last, he mentioned the guy was from Kanab, where I grew up. The name was the same as my friend's older brother. And I can't recall any other families with their surname in Kanab. It was an electrifying moment.

I asked my professor for his friend's contact info, and explained why I wanted it. I sent an email to his friend and got my friend's email address.

Then I took a couple days to think of how best to approach the email I was going to send. I didn't want to come off as some obsessed stalker.

I wrote a brief email, explaining how I had come by the address and gave a brief summary of the highlights of my life since he moved.

Yesterday I received a response. It was a lot of fun to read, and I hope it will be the beginning of a reconnection.

Now I kind of want to try and track down who I now realize was my first crush.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

" I also got many excellent suggestions on how to tighten up the couple stanzas that just didn't sing as well as the others. Talentless hacks! Get out of my choir!'

That's a wonderful like. Seems like things are picking up for you.

As to finding old friends, I had your experience a few years back, relating to a couple of persons I met when I was in my late teens in Florida. One found, who's an attorney in Florida, found me and we've gotten together (here) a couple of times over the past year when he's been in town for meetings. The other, a woman who's a therapist and the older sister of a girl I dated way back when, and I touched base five years ago and we talk regularly.

Great to do that...and find things haven't changed.

Glad you're feeling good about your writing. It's not easy.

Adam said...

Thanks! I was rather proud of that line when it came out.

I agree. It's very hard to enjoy my own writing most of the time. It is fun to write and I even enjoy the revision process.

Maybe I am cut out for this writing thing after all...

M. E. Morris said...

Twelve years? That's dedication! It doesn't help that I have very common first and last names.

Adam said...

Yeah, your name was a bit of an obstacle, especially with the popularity of Glee, and its star, Matthew Morrison.

I think I managed to find your name on your mission website once, but I wasn't sure and couldn't find it again after that.

But the whole thing's going to make an excellent non-fiction piece at some point.