{"id":345,"date":"2012-08-26T10:16:11","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T15:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/?p=345"},"modified":"2025-05-27T14:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:15:12","slug":"the-quiet-girl-at-the-back-of-the-writing-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/the-quiet-girl-at-the-back-of-the-writing-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"The quiet girl at the back of the writing workshop…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Do you remember the moment you discovered the love of writing story? Do you recall who supported you and encouraged you?\u00a0Perhaps because of that encouragement, and despite a bit of fear and shyness,\u00a0you\u00a0stepped into a community of writers.<\/p>\n

I witnessed such a metamorphosis yesterday when the Local Authors Day at the Racine, Wisconsin Barnes & Noble gave me the opportunity to conduct a mini-workshop on writing the short story.\u00a0\u00a0The group was comprised of\u00a0some store regulars who have published their stories on Publish America, a\u00a0women who told me she’s a natural-born storyteller, a\u00a0teacher from UW-Parkside who wants to tell her teaching aunt’s story as an engaging\u00a0way to talk about African-American history. There was a smiling young woman in the front, who sat right near me, and then there was a smiling and\u00a0obviously shy\u00a0teenager who sat with her mother at her side. I told the group that I’ve been reading Christina Baldwin’s Storycathers <\/em>and it’s made me realize that, as we pass from the age of industry, technology and information, we need story more than ever. It is the way we connect on social media, the way we work together, the way we can produce strong community. And I told the group that community comes from gratitude and forgiveness. I read my\u00a0story of the $5 Kiss,\u00a0a true story of how, in 8th grade, a group of girls paid a guy to kiss dorky me so they could make fun of me. The story\u00a0has become my own journey into awareness and art, a coming of age moment.\u00a0Then I talked about how\u00a0antagonists deserve both gratitude and forgiveness.\u00a0I had the group write for five minutes\u00a0about someone they would like to\u00a0thank and why.\u00a0Then I had them write for five minutes\u00a0about someone they\u00a0need to forgive and why. The stories were amazing\u00a0— the girl in the front wrote about how\u00a0her friends walked away from her in\u00a0high school, one writer wrote about a death that he blames himself for. The storyteller wrote about standing to read an essay and how she overcame her fear of standing up\u00a0in public\u00a0and the moment she realized she was a writer. But then I\u00a0asked the students to write from an antagonist’s point of view.\u00a0Now we had stories that resonated with emotional depth — a mother who was enraged, a teen who desparately sought control, a girl whose guilt over shunning a friend overwhelms her. The shy girl didn’t read. Even after I told others I’d read their material before I left if they came up afterwards, the shy girl sat with her mother.\u00a0While I started to pack up my things,\u00a0the shy girl and her mother shared a whispered conversation. The girl nodded, smiled. The mom came up to me with a typed paper and asked if I’d read it. The paper had blue handwritten comments along the edges, a teacher’s remarks commenting on strength of topic. In this shy girl’s words, I\u00a0saw an ominous scene before a fence and I experienced a character’s trepidation. It was\u00a0so visceral I wanted to warn the character, “Don’t go in that yard.” The mother asked, does she have\u00a0what\u00a0it takes to be a writer? I said, “Yes.”\u00a0I turned to the shy girl, “You have talent. Elizabeth George says\u00a0that\u00a0you need three things to become a publishing writer: talent, perseverence and self-discipline. It you have all three, you’ll publish, if you have any combination of two out of three, you’ll likely publish. She warns that if\u00a0you only have talent, you\u00a0probably won’t publish.\u00a0I see you have talent,\u00a0and you’re persevering today so I think you have what it takes.” She\u00a0smiled and filled me\u00a0in on college plans, her love of writing and her\u00a0desire to work hard.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0didn’t get the shy girl’s name and I wish I had because I’d like to\u00a0know how\u00a0she’s doing as she moves forward in her writing. And I\u00a0want to tell her how lucky she is that she has her\u00a0mom’s support and encouragement. That will help her persevere more than anything I could have said.<\/p>\n

Afterward,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you remember the moment you discovered the love of writing story? Do you recall who supported you and encouraged you?\u00a0Perhaps because of that encouragement, and despite a bit of fear and shyness,\u00a0you\u00a0stepped into a community of writers. I witnessed such a metamorphosis yesterday when the Local Authors Day at the Racine, Wisconsin Barnes & … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1346,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/1346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}