Bonus Features

Hello again. I come to you today with some other examples of my writing. I am a story writer -- mostly fiction, but also some non-fiction. But I'm not just going to give you my stories. No, that would be too easy. I'm also going to give you the "director's commentary." Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm the kind of person who watches a movie, and then watches that same movie with the director's commentary over it, and then watches hours upon hours of bonus materials, and then goes online and reads interviews with the actors...and so on. Sometimes I think that I like the stories-behind-stories than the actual stories themselves.

So here you go. Some stories written for my fiction workshop last semester (taught by the fabulous Chelsey Johnson, whose class I am TA-ing for this semester) and some stories-behind-the-stories.

NUMBER ONE: FREIGHT

Boy, this was a weird story to write. I have always been fascinated with trains, and for ten years, I have gone to and worked at a strange little summer camp in Western Massachusetts where one was woken the roar of a train running past your bunk only 20 feet away. When I first met my boyfriend four years ago (yes, we've been dating since) he took me deep into the woods of that camp and showed me where the trains sit when they aren't running. And we climbed on top of one rusty silver train and ate sandwiches. So I have been thinking about trains for a while. I love writing stories about young women who love trains and trucks and giant pieces of machinery, and so I knew I wanted my protagonist to drive the train. Of course, I have never driven a train, so I spent a lot of time in Mudd looking at diagrams and learning the train lingo. Some very obvious things surprised me, like the fact that trains don't have steering mechanisms. Duh. They're on a track.

STORY TWO: FUNNY TEETH, or INSTRUCTIONS ON LEAVING

This story came out of a suggestion. I couldn't think of something to write, and so I asked my boyfriend, and he said, "Write about an etrog farm." This is what came out of that. I grew up in a very observant Jewish household, but in a neighborhood where there were few Jews. I like writing about Jews who live in very un-Jewish places, a la Max Apple's story "The Jew of Home Depot" in the book of the same name. I also love writing stories from multiple perspectives. The project I'm working on now uses that a lot, and it's been so much fun.

STORY THREE: VALLEY CATERING

Oh, I liked writing this one. What's more fun than writing about food? I love using food as a symbolic device in writing, although I do it without thinking about it. For example, a character who feels safe would eat something comforting, like an egg-salad sandwich or mashed potatoes. A character who is upset might crunch pretzels nervously and get crumbs on his shirt, or anxiously peel strings off a stalk of celery. This story also makes me think about my parents. When my mother read this story she said that she was the one who taught me that making people food is a way of caring about them, and my dad is an avid reader of obituaries, which feature in the end of the story.

I hope you enjoyed these bonus features. Now, I have to go some Comparative Literature reading -- I shouldn't keep Foucault waiting.