Swine Meets Pearl

In another moment of self reflexivity, Sally savoured the notion of what readers might be wondering about the man. She loved to see herself as an external person, a kind of inner and outer simultaneous state of being. Part of it was vanity, but also nerves. She was aware of doing it now for both reasons.

Sally was pleased that the two obvious answers as to who this man might be were not the case: he was not her father or a former lover. Perhaps readers might be disappointed in who he was. Perhaps Sally had best make up a greater scandal.

The course leader was speaking to him, taking the typed script he waved off him and passing copies round for all to read. Sally wondered if he cared that he had to share his work in front of her. She hoped he did. She didn’t intend to be kind.

Sally was afraid to let the words come before her eyes, What if he was brilliant? Sally would never allow herself to admit that.

She was happy to see that he wrote in the present tense, and in the first person.

She skimmed the work quickly with her fierce glasses and filled the silence with:

“It’s passé to write in the present tense – just what they expected of you in creative writing MAs in the 1990s. And the first person is what immature new writers do when they’re still on their autobiographical stage…. a bit like being stuck in your anal stage…”

Sally hoped for agreement but the group rumbled to his defence. There were plenty of literary novels written in the first person, they said. She shut out their reply about present tense.

They were put into small groups – mercifully Sally was not in his. They had to silently read another’s work and then discuss it. When it came to the group critiquing Sally’s work, they said that her work all sounds the same.

“It’s my mature style,” says Sally. “Why do I need to have more than one? I’ve found my voice, it’s only people that are still seeking who need to jot about in these workshops, trying this way and that, like a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit yet.”

“You don’t have any dialogue,” objects a fat little man that looked like a character out of a Mr Man book.

“My characters have no need to speak,” Sally implies that the people in the room would do well to take from them. “It’s unnecessary to have pages of speech going back and forth. I craft my writing as a film – you say no more than you need to. They show the rest in pictures, while I do in words. I’m a writer’s writer.”

It’s a good thing that Sally’s oblivious to the snotty cow looks going round the room. Sally’s not looking at his group. Did she heard someone say her style’s too formal? “Years of academia,” Sally puts in  - then realises that’s the wrong subject to bring up in front of this Professor. It was his fault that he is one and Sally at present, isn’t.