Alvah Bessie is Spain, 1937

Alvah Bessie Testifying before HUAC, 1947.

I thought I would share what I’m learning from the online writing course. The first lesson is about story ideas. Where do we get them. Anita offers some very good suggestions like taking classic stories and tweaking them. Changing the sex of the main character or changing his or her age. Maybe change the locale and weave in local customs. Other ideas can come from from proverbs or sayings. Or, the most obvious one write what you know best.

For each suggestion, Anita gives good examples then she provides two exercise questions. The first one asks what do I do to generate story ideas? I basically get a lot of my ideas from a lot of the non-fiction I read, and from past travel or living experiences. Although Julius is not a short story, the plot was based on several personal experiences: living on the lower east side and my own fascination with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, my family’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and, of course, my admiration for Alvah Bessie.

The second question Anita asks is to choose a short story and analyze it.  This was a bit difficult because I rarely read short stories (I know, it’s ridiculous that I want to write one, but I don’t read them. It’s because they intimidate me, and that’s why I’m taking this course: to write one and overcome this feeling of intimidation.)  In any event, I finally settled on Alvah Bessie’s My Brother. My Son.

For this story, Bessie took what he knew best: His personal experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War and his relationship with his Company Commander Aaron Lopoff. Bessie was ten years senior to the Brooklyn-born Lopoff, and they became friends, but the friendship was short-lived. Lopoff was mortally wounded in Spain, and his death affected Bessie for most of his life.  ”My Brother, My Son” deals with grief, incomprehension, and anger over the death of a idealistic young man.

I may not have selected the best story to read or analyze, but it since it was written by one of my heroes and it deals with the Spanish Civil War I thought it was an appropriate choice for this first lesson.

Courtesy of Flickr and V. Evangelou

I’ve been lax with my self-imposed retreat in part because I got so busy with work. However, I think I’ve managed to carve out a nice schedule for myself that allows me to get everything done for the day and week.  Thanks to this schedule, it means that I can get back to work on the creative writing, and focus on writing a short story.

I did have an issue though with the book I was working with and I felt it was too elementary in some respects. What I really wanted was to have some exercises that would actually get me analyzing and writing.  The universe must have read my mind because last week, Anita Saran, from the Internet Writing Workshop, wrote to let members know that she was offering a free short-story online course. I jumped at the chance and found out today that I’m part of a small and select group of writers. So to further elaborate on the title of this post, I will be dipping my toes into the Short Story Pool (hopefully, I won’t get prematurely go into the deep-end and drown).

The course’s goal is to have each of us write two short stories by summer’s end. My plan is to submit them to a few online and print venues, and hope for the best. Ideally, I’d like have about five stories published when I start sending queries to agents.

Exercise one for this week has arrived and now it’s time to do some work! Oh, by the by, my feet and toes are just as pretty, I just don’t have swimming pool.