Remarks are not literature.
            -- Gertrude Stein

Tomorrow night is my last creative writing class. The evening will be devoted to writing the final, a five-part examination of one's individual development in the practice of writing. One part, "Your Plan To Stay Alive As A Writer From This Day Forward," must be prepared in advance so that the instructor can look at it and give you written comments before you leave. Other sections, which can be outlined in notes beforehand, include an analysis of your individual writing process, changes in your perception, techniques, or attitudes, and a description of things you did outside of class that have contributed to your growth.

I wouldn't know this much about what's required here at 11:00 the night before if a classmate who was absent last week hadn't called to inquire about what he needed to do to prepare. I'd planned to get the sheet out tomorrow, maybe 2:00 or 3:00 (the class begins at 6:30). I see now that would not have been wise.

Two weeks ago, having nothing new to turn in (that is, no further work on the several short stories I had begun), I presented the April 22 and April 23 pieces from this space, the ones about Big Trash Week. I identified them as pieces from my on-line journal, fodder for my future book of personal essays to be called The Gestures of Trees: A Suburban Year, and submitted them with no revision at all. I included a scrawled note about why the fiction fragment referred to had not come to presentable form, and said of the journal pieces, "I could turn out three of these a day if I had to."

I guess I didn't realize how arrogant that sounded. Last week I got the manuscripts back with comments on the "problems" with the pieces -- that they're flat, reeled off on autopilot, lacking in engaging tone. "The piece has great potential," my instructor wrote, "but needs a stern rewrite."

I was taken aback, and a little angry. Part of the reason I was abstemious at turning in production, both this semester and last, was my reluctance to present fiction that was still in early draft stages. I'd been encouraged to turn in what I had, no matter how rough, and I had done that, to great profit from my instructor's remarks. In class I had talked about the struggles to bring a recollection of something that happened with my daughter to a poem or a piece of fiction rather than a personal essay because they were too easy for me. Then I turn in things I think have some polish, and find that, evidently, the gloss is not quite as smooth as I thought.

Over the last few days I came several times to the brink of stopping this area of my writing -- the OLJ -- entirely. The reluctance to "reel[...] off on autopilot" a report of things I did on a given day has me laboring for a minimum of an hour and a half to produce about a thousand words that have some shape, some point to be made or insight to be recorded. I work on these things, and then learn they're perceived as been "reeled off." I go for long periods (ten days is a long time between pieces for dedicated OLJers) without posting anything because I have a terror of the blank screen equal to my terror of the blank page. Someone on one of the OLJ-related lists held forth about his disappointment with several journals he had been reading because they either don't post regularly or the "voice" in them gets tiring. I have every reason to believe that he wasn't talking about me because I don't think he reads me, but it hit close to home just the same. Then, a couple of unsubscriptions from my notify list left me feeling even less confident that what I do here has any value, for me or for readers.

I said I came to the brink of stopping. So far I haven't gone over. I wrote here yesterday, and now today. I've had an eye-opener, an opportunity to see my work through somebody else's perceptions. I respect that person's judgments. For the moment, anyway, I'll keep on keepin' on.