I know it’s been a while since I last blogged. Five days in fact. Man, I must be busy. And I would’ve blogged about this yesterday, but…well, I had biology and creative writing homework. Yeah, school’s basically taking over my life more than it usually does. God help me.
Anyway, yesterday afternoon was my first meeting with my thesis adviser. It was me, him, and another student who is also working on a novel. The idea is that we all collaborate to help each other out with these projects (of course, my adviser isn’t asking us for advice if he’s working on his own novel, but that’s beside the point). Since I’d already sent them both the first two chapters of my thesis project Rose, they had read what I’d written and had some feedback.
Let me tell you, it was very illuminating. The biggest thing about my work is that I’m always looking for holes to plug up, but they found some holes I’d missed, proving to me that I should not go into the field of repairing ships or they’d sink. What they told me was that the opening of chapter one was a little too lighthearted for a horror novel, and suggested a way to make it more of a dark, creepy story like I’d originally intended. They also gave me some suggestions on how to make our stalker much creepier and also recommended maybe I try switching to first person (and seeing as Rose is all about the main character’s point of view, that might be an idea I’ll keep).
So now I have until Friday to come up with some new material and send it to the both of them, and then we all meet up a week afterwards. I’m going to start with a little experiment to help refine the stalker’s character, and then I’m going to basically start rewriting Chapter One of Rose. The original opening, like I said, was a bit too lighthearted, so going back and redoing it should create the atmosphere I’m going for. And it’s not as if I haven’t rewritten an entire short story before on the suggestions of my peers. What is Chapter One anyway, besides a short story that can be continued by several succeeding, interconnected short stories?
Obviously a bad analogy, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I’ve got to get to work, so wish me luck on the writing/editing front. And by the way, I turned in my short story Evil Began in a Bar on Wednesday to my creative writing class, so my classmates will be coming back to class Wednesday with feedback. I’ll be blogging about it then, but I’m hoping for good things.
Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.
Rami Ungar The Writer 
Those are quite some changes they suggested, but sometimes you get too close to the story and need someone else to tell you a way to improve it. Good luck!
And I can’t wait to hear what your classmates think about “Evil Began in a Bar”!!
I’ll probably see or hear from some of them during the week, so I’ll ask them then. Or I’ll ask how long it took for them to figure out the twist in the story. Should be interesting, whatever the results are.
Good Luck!
Thanks Pat. I appreciate it. Good luck with everything you’re doing too.
If I haven’t said this, I really like the name Akira. And best of luck!
No you haven’t, but I’m glad you like the name. And thanks for the support, Angela. I appreciate it.
Still jealous! Would that I could go back to school and do a fiction story for a thesis. Almost as awesome as getting paid to write 😉
You could tell your wife you want to teach at the university level. That would be a good excuse to go back to school.