Now That The Summer Fiction Series Is Over: Reflecting On Myself As A Writer

Participating in these writing challenges for Vocal has been the most enveloped I’ve been in the writing world in a long time. I wrote a small handful of short stories throughout the past 10 years that I would consider complete. Whenever I had the opportunity to be in the zone, I loved it. But there were a lot of long stretches of time in which I didn’t even think about writing.

Ten years ago I took a summer creative writing class followed by a fiction writing class, a sum total of 8-weeks of writing “training”. That’s it. And all that was ten years ago. And that is the thing that makes me feel like I’m not good enough-- lack of training. It’s a lingering thought in the back of my mind. I try to keep it quiet though.

Sometimes I’ll read a story that I submitted for the second, third, fourth, fifth time, and each time I’ll read it with a different review. Sometimes I’ll read it and say yes girl this one is a winner and other times I’ll read it and think it sucks, and yet some other times I’ll feel like it’s on its way but something is missing. I know as writers and as humans in general we are our own worst critics. These writing contests have been difficult for me in the best way. Each entry has taught me something about myself as a writer and helped me become a better one.

The Old Barn

Things I Should Regret, But I Don’t- This story is back in my drafts because it is the one story that's incomplete. I do, however quite like that title. The gist: A young girl gets sent away to her aunt and uncle’s farm and ends up meeting an attractive young doctor. She lies about her age in order to pursue him. (She’s of legal age but still far younger than he realizes).

They say write what you know and for me, that’s New York. This first story made me realize that I definitely prefer to keep my setting within familiar territory. I’m from New York and so I tend to keep all my stories somewhere in New York, whether it’s Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, or Long Island. These are all places I’m 100% familiar with and can write about with ease. My travel experience is extremely limited and so I don't have memories of trips anywhere to intertwine into my stories, hence why I stick to good ol New York.

For this reason, I struggled with the setting of this story. I’ve never been on a real farm, outside of maybe a school trip that I can no longer remember. So I did a little research, asked a friend some questions, but when it came down to it I was making up something that I was completely unsure if it even sounded realistic. That story needed more time and more research. I don’t necessarily like the idea of having to do research for my stories, but it's something I know I'll have to get over because sometimes it’ll be necessary.

EL James did it and did it well. A few months ago I got completely obsessed with her second series, Fifty Shades of Grey as told by Christian Grey. EL James is from England but the series is set mostly in Seattle, a place she had never been. I don’t know why she chose Seattle, but as I read it I would have never guessed she had never been there.

Death By Chocolate

Things Left Unsaid: This one came from a short one-act play I wrote as an assignment some 10 years ago. I based the characters on myself and a guy that had recently hurt me and wrote a what if scenario. This one was easier to write because I already knew these characters, the story, and the situation intimately and so the story flowed out easily.

I guess the lesson from this story was about editing. While I did struggle to get the word count down, the process forced me to really analyze what was important in the story and what wasn’t. I removed 300 extra words and while it was a struggle getting it down from 2,300 to 1,997, I also feel cutting it down made the story better. Well except those last 80 words, that was just tedious, but I did it and thankfully without compromising the storyline.

Brown Paper Box

Once And For All: This story was sparked by a bit of jealousy and yet another what if scenario.

One of the things that didn’t really come naturally to me is writing descriptions. I noticed that my previous story lacked description, other than what the characters looked like and what the cake tasted like (which I added because I thought it would give me points towards winning), there wasn't much. I focused more so on the plot. Knowing that this can be a weak spot for me, I made it a point to engage the senses as much as possible in my description. I also played around with tense and went back and forth between past and present tense. It still reads a little awkward to me and is far from my favorite but in trying to be intentional with the way I included descriptive details, I came up with a few lines that I really love.

"Upon arriving to the three-floor walk-up in which my four walls are now designated, I was greeted by the scent of fresh urine. A frail homeless man sat on the bottom step, shaking his plastic cup to the beat of “got any change,” appearing almost half asleep."

"I pulled open the heavy metal door forcing an exaggerated creaking sound and made my way inside. The walls were painted with a fresh coat of eggshell a few weeks ago as an attempt at upgrading the facility. Yet the floors, tiled with what I believed was a white and brown checkered pattern, remained dirty and dingy, so I can’t be entirely sure of the original color."

"I trudged up the stairs to my apartment, loud music, cursing, and yelling were pouring through the walls, coming from one door or another."

Deep Dive Contest

Mirielle: For some reason, the movie Losing Isaiah with Halle Berry came to mind and this story was born.

I bring this story up because it was the turning point for me. I don’t know if it was something I already knew or realized after reading some of the challenge winners, but I realized I wasn’t writing winning pieces. They were okay, decent stories, but I didn’t want to write okay decent stories, I wanted to write good stories. I want to write great stories, amazing, wonderful… all those super positive adjectives. I want them to describe my stories.

For a while, I considered myself a romance writer and I had planned to stick to my genre throughout the SFS. But at some point, I realized romance was not going to get me the win I was looking for. I felt that the judges were looking for stories with more depth and so I challenged myself to write something different and came up with Mirielle. This is my favorite story and it sets a new standard for my writing. I think writing a really good piece that was outside of the romance genre really opened my eyes to my potential as a writer. I absolutely love romantic fiction (and will continue to write it) but I also love great stories period. This is the story that changed my writing and took me a step up from where I was.

Golden Summer/ Raging Bull

In Memory Of (renamed Remembering To Breathe): This one started as my entry for the Marigold contest, but I submitted it for the Bull contest. I have since edited it was missing something, especially around the ending. This one might be my second favorite. This story started out as a visual. I was seeing this field of green with pops of color/flowers and I just started with that description.

"It started on an ariel view of a large never-ending field of lush green grass, dotted by patches of oranges, yellows, pinks, purples, and reds. A bright rainbow of colors seeping through the pores of the Earth. A fine mix of, dandelions, marigolds, tulips, hydrangeas, and daffodils, sprouting through various parts of the greenness."

I wrote two paragraphs of really beautiful imagery, which I was really proud of and then I was stuck. I had some ideas but it was feeling so forced. I had to make peace with not being able to finish it in time to submit it to the marigold contest. I figured let me give it time and chance to breathe and the story will come. Later I figured out how to include a bull into the same story and while I liked how it was coming together, it still felt forced. I had no idea where the story was going or what the ending would be. I was determined to submit it because I saw no possible way to submit the story into a different challenge. At the last minute, I came up with a decent ending, which I've since added to and am much happier with.

Green Light & Long Thaw

Two more challenges I didn’t enter. August was a tough month for me. I was depressed and struggling with personal stuff in my life so while I had an idea for the green light challenge, I just couldn’t focus on it. I also had no ideas for the long thaw. My plan was to skip those two challenges and focus on writing a brilliant pear tree story.

Pear Tree

The Community Center: I recently visited a community garden in the Bronx that my friend is a part of. The Bronx is known for being rough, I had no idea there was so much beauty there. That garden actually has a pear tree and so I knew that garden space was going to influence my pear tree story. This one is perhaps tied for 2nd place as one of my favorites. I touch on a few important topics, such as the need for well-developed community centers in black communities, while also including a hint of romance.

Things didn’t work out as planned with this story. I had intentions of starting it early and giving myself two weeks to work on it and edit it to my hearts content. That didn’t happen. I procrastinated and waited until the last minute to start it. I had written down notes, which helped the story come together pretty quickly for me, even though I still had to edit a ton.

I submitted this story so last minute (literally two minutes remaining to the deadline), that I couldn’t upload the picture of the actual pear tree into the story (not as the feature picture, the quality isn't good enough for that). I really wanted to include it but didn’t want to risk not getting it in on time.

I really need to stop procrastinating. This is not necessarily something I learned through the Vocal challenges, but rather a very huge reminder. Procrastination has always been a huge issue in my life. If Vocal ever does a challenge about procrastination, I might win that one (if I make the deadline). I am the queen of waiting until the last minute. I submitted all my entries into the challenges on the final day, most of them submitted within that last hour of the deadline. My bull story and pear tree story were both submitted within the last 2-3 minutes. This is a habit that has probably hindered me the most. I know it’s an issue but I’ll say this new path that I’m on has motivated me to seriously work on it.

Process & Goals

I’m not a fast writer. I start and stop a lot, re-read, edit, pause, think, write. I also overthink a lot (in general), which spills over into my writing. I'm also a perfectionist (mostly when it comes to things I care about), and so that too does slow down the process. I’m still figuring out my process but what I’ve come to realize is that if I want to be great I need to give myself the time it takes to be great.

In trying to write and submit a good story in 24-48 hours, I don’t have time to get to know my characters. I know a little bit about them but not nearly enough. My characters are important to me. They make the story and each one of them stems from a piece of me but they’re not me and so I’ve come to realize that I really do need and want to get to know them. Even my secondary characters stem from people I've interacted with in some form, even the cat mentioned in Once and For All, is my friend's cat. I want to know, what is their backstory, personality, important life events, crazy beliefs? This is information that I don’t always know, but I think it’s important. If an idea springs up a lot of time I just sit down and write and see what comes out. When I know the characters the story flows out so much easier. In my story, Remember To Breathe (raging bull contest), I decided to make her a photographer later in the story. I wonder what the story would've been like if I knew this about her from the beginning.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to participate in the summer fiction series. They made me fall in love with writing all over again. They made me a better writer. I may not have taken a bunch of classes or have an MFA, but Vocal has been my "training". The momentum is there, I just need to keep going. I've been looking back at some of my unfinished stories. There's quite a few of them and I can see the potential there. Not all of them will be worth saving, but some of them will. My goal is to get more organized, set goals, make time to write daily no matter what, and keep believing in myself.

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An example of an old story that I came back to ten years later, after gaining more experience writing, and made it better.

Thanks for reading! I really appreciate your support. If you enjoyed it please feel free to hit the heart. If you want to know more about me and my current journey, you can read my bio here.

If you'd like to follow my adventures:

• I'm also a writer on Medium @Nathalie_Clair. I tend to write mostly fiction/poetry here on Vocal but for right now all my personal essays/non-fiction stuff is on Medium. If you want more details on my teacher to writer/entrepreneur journey you can find a few articles about it over there.
• Positively Healthy Vibes is both my YouTube & Instagram in which I promote positivity and document my weight loss journey.
• On Twitter I am Nathalie_Clair1 (can y'all believe someone else has that so I had to add the 1) and that's where I promote myself as a writer.