Contrary to the popular feeling, I was so excited to be handed the semester project assignment sheet. I made an elaborate plan, it was going to be the best thing I had ever written in my entire life. I was unbelievably thrilled to be able to re-write history and kill Hitler. It was going to be awesome, really.
Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned. Reading the posts of my peers, I realize this doesn't follow the typical project progression. Everyone else was upset with the assignment, but realized halfway through the project that it was actually unbelievably interesting and they were so excited to finish and everything came together in the end.
Me, on the other hand, was excited in the beginning, and beyond frustrated by the end. My story was large, it was too big to be squashed into a short story. My problem, I guess, was that I refused to let go. I wanted to do my characters justice, and make them as full and as fleshed out as DeLillo does with his characters. I wanted to become the writing style that I said I disliked so much, and include so many details that my reader was drowning in them.
I didn't, and I feel ashamed of what I produced. It was a shell of the brilliant, beautiful idea I had in the beginning. I wasn't happy to be done and to call it "finished." I worked for hours and hours and hours, and what I came up with was extremely lackluster. Instead of the diamond I expected, it was that really annoying rock in the park you always stub your toe on.
I learned a lot from it, though. I realized how much research it takes to pull together a beautifully detailed work of historical fiction. This project gave me new found respect for all the authors we've read this year, even the ones I didn't like as much. Finding my own balance between history and fiction was excruciatingly difficult, but I'm glad I tried it. At the very least, it'll teach me not to be so cocky next time.
2 comments:
What you're saying here (and the DeLillo comparison makes this clear--and reflects just how high you were aiming!) is that you wanted to compose a fully developed *novel* in the space of a month, and you ended up with a short story. Maybe some folks do manage such a feat, every November, but I'd suggest that few NaNoWriMo'ers are aiming for such a complex postmodernist research-based meditation on history and fiction. Your ambitious idea had to come to terms with inevitable limitations of time and space. You failed to write the *novel* you'd imagined, but that doesn't mean the short story "failed."
The fact that you were disappointed is a reflection of how ambitious your aims were. Having read the draft you produced, I disagree with your estimation of its "failure."
hail from brazil (:
it seems our projects might have a lot in common. I've been studying postmodern literature (whatever that means) for quite a while now, specially DeLillo, Pynchon and Wurlitzer. love your blog, love the writing style and honesty. historical fiction is a pretty tough one to tackle, but here's hoping you won't just give it up.
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