Writer’s Workshop
By Sue Verrochi
Published by Sue Verrochi at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Sue Verrochi
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Writer’s Workshop
On a chilly Thursday evening in March, Nancy Ridzik perched tensely in her chair between Audrey and Lois. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that James was already finished reading. To avoid his eyes, she concentrated her gaze on the poster of the Periodic Table, surprised to learn that Krypton (Kr) existed outside the realm of Superman. Risking a glance, she noticed that across the table, Fran was on the last page, her lips moving ever so slightly as she read the final words of The Cat’s Pajamas. Audrey, to her right, was done reading and was busy making notes on the bottom of the manuscript. The teacher, whose name was Lois, in keeping with the Superman theme, scribbled furiously on her copy in pencil, and then broke the silence by saying,
“Is everyone waiting for me? Audrey, why don’t you start? What did you think?”
As soon as she’d walked in the door, Nancy had gotten a good vibe from Audrey, an aging hippie with flowing white hair and a peasant skirt. Her piece, the first they’d read that evening, had been a nonfiction article about baking bread.
“I really loved it!” Audrey exclaimed. Nancy realized she had been holding her breath for some time and let it out now, in a rush. “Your choice of words is excellent and I especially liked the part on page six where Simon describes the two cats together in the dumpster. Hilarious! The only part I might change is the ending. It seemed kind of abrupt.”
That’s because I was frantically trying to finish the damn thing before class started, Nancy thought to herself.
“OK, great,” said Lois, “I also had some thoughts about the ending we can talk about in a second. Fran, what did you think?”
Nancy couldn’t get a handle on Fran. She was quiet and well-dressed; her Armani suit suggested she had come to class directly from some high-powered corporate office. Her piece had been a free-form poem, rather explicitly sexual, in Nancy’s opinion.
“I thought it was good. A little bit mainstream, but I liked it. I think you need to use contractions more, though, for realism. And the second paragraph near the top of page three where he compares Juliet’s apartment to a monk’s cell is great. There were a couple of spelling things I marked, but otherwise, really good.” Fran handed her copy of The Cat’s Pajamas across the table to Nancy.
“I thought about the contractions too, but I’m not sure you want to use them everywhere,” Lois said, with authority. “When you read it out loud to yourself, and you have to do that! you’ll be able to tell whether you need them or not. James, your thoughts?”
This was the moment Nancy had been dreading since class started an hour and forty-five minutes ago. James Philip VanHorne (and she knew his full name because it appeared in bold face on the footer of each page of his lengthy manuscript) was a harsh critic. He had not found a single kind word to say to either Audrey or Fran after reading their pieces. He’d informed Audrey that nobody baked bread anymore. Why would they when they could buy it for practically nothing? To Fran, he’d muttered things like, “I don’t buy it, no one would actually do that,” or “I’m not sure you can use the word thrust as a noun.”
James’s own story had been a long, rambling tale about Arthur and Guinevere, but for some reason James referred to them as Artor and Gwindovere. How much more could (or should) possibly be written about those two at this point, Nancy wondered It had gone on for seventeen pages, though the class description in the Continuing Ed flyer clearly indicated that writer’s pieces should be no longer than eight pages. The first hour of class, following introductions and housekeeping, had, in fact been dedicated to James and his story. He was clearly the teacher’s pet, and admitted he had taken Lois’s class a couple of times already.
“For what it was, it wasn’t bad,” high praise coming from James. “Of course, you use way too many ‘ing’ verbs and your characterization is a little weak. It flows pretty well, though, again, for what it is.”
For what it is? It’s a short story, for Chrissake, that’s what it’s supposed to be. Not a treatise on medieval history. He handed his copy over to her, the margins filled with scribbles of red ink, James’s pearls of wisdom, no doubt.
Finally, it was Lois’s turn to comment. This was what Nancy was really paying $200 to hear. Lois was an actual published writer. Her pieces had appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, The New Yorker, and GlimmerTrain. She’d also, apparently, written a book on how to get published. When the Chelsea Continuing Ed flyer had come out advertising the eight-week-long Writer’s Workshop, taught by Lois Withnail, Nancy knew she had to give it a try. Though she’d written nothing since her college days, twenty years ago, she felt that the voice within her needed to be heard. Her two children were in college now, out of the house, and Nancy had more free time on her hands. Why not come back to writing, which she’d always enjoyed and had been, truth be known, rather good at.
Signups had been back in February. The first class, held at PS 135, was tonight, March 16th, and of course she’d left the writing of her story to the last minute. She’d begun it yesterday and was frantically finishing it and still printing out four copies at 7pm, when the class was due to begin. Nancy had raced four blocks to the school, managed to find room 17, a science classroom, and fling herself breathlessly into the pointedly empty chair around the black lab table at 7:15. Audrey, Fran, James and Lois were already in place, discussing the format of the class, when she arrived.
“I found the piece to be very interesting,” Lois was saying, jerking her back to the present moment. “How long have you been working on it?”
Nancy wasn’t sure she wanted to admit she’d spent only two days on it, so she padded her estimate with “thinking time.”
“About a week,” she exaggerated. Not sure if this was in the acceptable ballpark or not.
“Wow, you’re fast! One thing I liked was your dialogue. And the pace is very even. My only tweaks would be, on page four, where Simon is thinking about quitting his job, I think you need to add something along the lines of…” and she continued with several suggestions that Nancy thought were excellent; things she wished she’d thought of herself.
The weeks went by and, to her surprise, the “voice within” Nancy managed to come up with something new to say in time for each Thursday night class. Finally, it was the second-to-last class. At work this week, they’d been organizing the annual sales conference so she’d not had much time to write. Her offering was a short piece of “flash fiction,” called Stardust.
Neither their chosen seats nor the rhythm of the class had changed since that first day back in March, only the order in which the pieces were read. Tonight they began with Nancy. Even her classmate’s reactions remained fairly consistent. Audrey loved everything Nancy (and everyone else) wrote. Fran liked things here and there, but didn’t love anything, and she found lots of grammar mistakes. James continued to dismiss everything written by anyone other than himself. Lois, as always, offered excellent critical suggestions and had a real gift when it came to moving sentences and paragraphs around in a way that helped the flow of the work.
After they were finished discussing Stardust, Audrey produced a heartwarming story about growing up on a commune in upstate New York, which Nancy guessed was, at least in part, autobiographical. Her writing had definitely improved as the course progressed. Fran shared an excerpt from a script she had written, a sexual farce which seemed based, somewhat loosely, on Candide. Then it was James’s turn. To Nancy’s delight, tonight’s manuscript, entitled The Cat’s Out of the Bag, was only eight pages long. Maybe she’d get home in time to see the beginning of CSI: Miami this evening.
When she was finished reading page one, her eyes went wide. After page two, her mouth dropped open. She actually gasped in the middle of page four. By the time she came to the end of page six, Nancy couldn’t read anymore. She dropped the manuscript in front of her and stared across the table at James in utter disbelief. He seemed to have no problem meeting her eyes. She continued to gape at him until everyone had finished reading.
“Let’s start with you, Nancy, what did you think of James’s story?” Lois asked.
“James’s story?” Nancy heard herself saying. “James’s story? That was not James’s story. That was my story. I brought it to the first class. It was called The Cat’s Pajamas, remember?” In most situations, she was shy and reserved. But now she was pissed.
“What are you talking about?” James asked scornfully. “I’ve been working on this story for months. I brought this to the first class, not you. These are my re-writes.”
Nancy looked from person to person. Audrey and Fran looked embarrassed and with good reason, she thought. James had blatantly stolen her work. Lois’s expression was inscrutable. Probably she was trying to distance herself from an uncomfortable situation.
“Are you crazy? My characters were named Simon and Juliet, and you’ve called yours Seth and Julia, but other than that, it’s the SAME EXACT STORY. How could you do that? It’s… well, it’s crazy!” she was outraged, and felt the pitch of her voice creeping upward into hysteria.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t you remember the first week when I brought in The Cat’s Out of the Bag? It was a little rougher then, but I believe I’ve edited it down nicely, don’t you agree, Lois?” James asked.
Well, this will settle it, Nancy thought. She was glad he’d appealed to Lois, who would surely find some graceful way to set him straight.
Lois looked right into Nancy’s eyes and said, “Nancy, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, here. I absolutely remember James sharing that story in the first class. I remember I was impressed by his dialogue and pacing.”
“HIS dialogue and pacing? It was MY dialogue and pacing! Audrey, you remember, don’t you?” Nancy turned to the gentle older woman on her right, who looked like she wanted to crawl out of the room.
“Ummm, I remember the story,” Audrey said quietly, her normally pale face bright red.
“And you remember that I wrote it, right? You said you liked the part about the dumpster!”
“I remember saying that, yes.” she hesitated. “But I don’t remember who I said it to…”
“Oh, my God!” Nancy said. “I can’t believe this is happening. Fran, don’t you remember it?”
“I’m staying out of this,” was all Fran would say.
“Look,” Lois said. “It’s late. We have one more class left. Let’s call it a night and meet back here next week for our final session. Nancy, I know you’ve had a crazy week. You must be tired, and maybe you’re not thinking clearly.”
“I am totally thinking clearly, and what I’m thinking is that you people are nuts! I’ll prove to you that I wrote that story. I’ll bring it in next week, and you’ll see that I wrote it first!” and she stormed out of the classroom, out of PS 135 and into the warm May evening. She stalked homeward, muttering to herself the entire way.
Arriving at her apartment, she powered on her computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she dug through her writing folder, looking for the four copies of The Cat’s Pajamas she’d brought to the first class.
“Crap!” she exclaimed aloud to her empty apartment as she realized she had torn up and thrown away the copies after she’d made the suggested edits to her manuscript. Once Windows was started up she clicked on the desktop icon for Word. The Cat’s Pajamas was no longer listed in the Recently Viewed documents, which made sense since she hadn’t opened it for weeks. Once the final edits had been made, there was no need to.
She navigated through My Documents and located the file, checking the Modified Date.
“Crap!” Nancy said again. The Modified Date was, of course, from four weeks ago, when she’d made her edits. That would prove nothing. She right-clicked on the filename and selected Properties, which she knew would contain the Created Date.
“Crap, Crap, Crap!” She remembered with horror that the week after that fateful first class, she’d zipped up and emailed herself everything from her My Documents folder, including the Word document containing The Cat’s Pajamas. She had then reformatted her hard drive to rid herself of a nasty virus. The Create Date on the file appeared as March 21, a week AFTER the first class. It would prove nothing.
Nancy desperately wanted someone with whom she could share this incredible story. She and her husband Mitch had divorced a year ago, right after their youngest son Travis had left for UVM. They’d managed to hold the marriage together while the kids were still at home, but was they were gone, there didn’t seem to be any point. He was now living in Croton Falls with his new, or possibly not so new, girlfriend.
She tried to reach Travis and Marlee, but calls to both children went to voicemail. No doubt they’d think the whole thing was silly anyway. Nancy poured herself a generous glass of Chardonnay and sat down with her remote control in front of CSI, making a concerted effort to calm down.
The following Thursday, she printed out and brought to class four copies of The Cat’s Pajamas.
When Audrey and Fran had finished reading, Nancy noticed that they looked everywhere in the room except at her. No one had written anything on their copy of the manuscript. The room seemed quieter than usual. James had excused himself and gone to the restroom.
“Well,” Lois said, looking up. “It appears that Nancy is still having a problem with James’s story from last week.”
“Yeah, I’m having a problem,” she admitted. “I’m having a problem because James stole my story!” Nancy wondered if she was slurring her words just a little. She’d had one or two glasses of wine before class started, to keep her courage up.
“This is clearly a thinly masked copy of James’s story,” Lois began.
Nancy jumped to her feet and protested, “No, it ISN’T!” slamming her fist on the table.
“Now, Nancy, my goodness! If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”
“You don’t have to ask me to leave,” she said, “because I’m not going to stay here another minute and listen to this. I don’t know what your racket is, but that was my story, and he ripped it off, and for some reason you’re backing him up. That’s the truth!” Nancy grabbed her umbrella and her purse and slammed out the door, leaving behind her copies of the manuscript.
She met James in the hall outside the classroom and poked him in the chest with her finger.
“You. Rotten. Thief.” was all she said.
Nancy wrote nothing for a few months. She started dating Frank, a nice guy from the Finance department at her office who claimed he’d had his eye on her for a while.
Eventually, she got back to writing. She wrote one story, called In a Nutshell, that Frank insisted was so good she should send it to a writing competition. Fiction Digest was accepting entries for their Fall contest. First prize was $1,000 and the entry fee was only $15.
“What the heck?” Nancy said to Frank. “What have I got to lose?”
“Only $15!” he said. “But you won’t lose!”
Frank was right, she didn’t lose. But she didn’t win either. She came in third. The winning story was entitled, The Cat’s Out of the Bag, by James Philip VanHorne. In his brief bio, the author had given special thanks to Lois Withnail, his editor and his inspiration.
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