Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
My Story
If you're interested in reading the story that won the St. Louis Writer's Guild contest, it's now up on their web site. I am blogging from my new laptop that I bought with the prize money (even though I haven't technically received the check yet).
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I believe that artistic work should stand on its own, and that it's often self-indulgent for people to comment on their own work; however, it's my blog, so I'm hoping readers will forgive a little self-indulgence. I wanted to share a few thoughts about my story (and yes, there are spoilers).
This story grew out of my teaching experience. The character of Jim is loosely based on various students who were intelligent but uncommitted to school. The stymied trip to Canada actually happened, but if my memory serves me correctly it was more than one student; even though there are bits of real life in the story, Jim and his life are products of my imagination. Writing from a teenage perspective helped me deal with my ambivalence about being an authority figure and try to get inside the head of the kind of student that sometimes frustrated me.
Some things I like about this story: The structure works better than in many of my others. The question "What would Jesus do?" ties it together throughout. As I revised, I realized the Scarlett Letter allusions--which I originally included only because I taught that book--were important to the story, because it's a novel about disobedience and punishment.
I don't think of it as an anti-religious story, because I believe Jim's antagonism towards organized Christianity shows a search for honest answers--answers that the adults around him haven't been able to provide. (I think when I was writing I had in mind Tom's stories about his youth group experience.) The metaphor of fatherhood is important to Christianity, and it's natural that Jim, who has been abandoned by his own father, might see religion through the lens of loss. I don't think the ending is entirely depressing, though, because Jim has come to a realization about his situation, which is necessary before he can change the way he's been acting.
*
I believe that artistic work should stand on its own, and that it's often self-indulgent for people to comment on their own work; however, it's my blog, so I'm hoping readers will forgive a little self-indulgence. I wanted to share a few thoughts about my story (and yes, there are spoilers).
This story grew out of my teaching experience. The character of Jim is loosely based on various students who were intelligent but uncommitted to school. The stymied trip to Canada actually happened, but if my memory serves me correctly it was more than one student; even though there are bits of real life in the story, Jim and his life are products of my imagination. Writing from a teenage perspective helped me deal with my ambivalence about being an authority figure and try to get inside the head of the kind of student that sometimes frustrated me.
Some things I like about this story: The structure works better than in many of my others. The question "What would Jesus do?" ties it together throughout. As I revised, I realized the Scarlett Letter allusions--which I originally included only because I taught that book--were important to the story, because it's a novel about disobedience and punishment.
I don't think of it as an anti-religious story, because I believe Jim's antagonism towards organized Christianity shows a search for honest answers--answers that the adults around him haven't been able to provide. (I think when I was writing I had in mind Tom's stories about his youth group experience.) The metaphor of fatherhood is important to Christianity, and it's natural that Jim, who has been abandoned by his own father, might see religion through the lens of loss. I don't think the ending is entirely depressing, though, because Jim has come to a realization about his situation, which is necessary before he can change the way he's been acting.
posted by Tess | 11:08 AM
1 Comments:
Great story. I initially was just going to click on it to see how long it is, but then I started reading and got hooked. I could definitely see that you were drawing on your teaching experiences. (I didn't closely read your commentary until afterwards.) For what it's worth, it didn't seem anti-religious to me either; it's about a thoughtful and skeptical (if rebellious) adolescent trying to work through confusion and doubt. So now you join the ranks of Tennessee Williams, as the website says.
Sometime maybe I'll read the other stories on the website. I rarely choose to spend time reading fiction, but maybe the short story is a good genre for me.
This story reminded me of Bruce Springsteen lyrics (something between "Born to Run" and the Nebraska album...) If it had a soundtrack, that's what it would be--except, of course, that MySpace wasn't available when those earlier albums were released.
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