Today was a day I've been dreading since my first day of Poetry & Fiction- the day that I had to compare a piece of my writing to an author that had influenced me. Though Libba Bray is my #1 favorite writer, I just couldn't compare my writing to hers, so I went to another of my favorite authors- Maureen Johnson.
Actually, MJ and I do have sort of similar styles, or at least the way we implement our comparable senses of humor into our work is similar. So even though I can only wish I was as good as her, I decided to do my project on that comparison.
When I got up in front of the class, I was shaking, I was so nervous. I always speed-talk, but when I get nervous, it's gets worse by about a thousand percent. So I sped through her history and why she ifluenced me and then read a short excerpt from Devilish, one of my favorites of her novels. And then I read my excerpt.
The snippet I read was one I showed you guys a long time ago, from Q when Eliza and Jonah first meet. But something you guys probably already know is that sharing your work over the internet, to live yet invisible people, is completly different from standing in front of a bunch of people and reading your own words to them. I was terrified and shook a lot and kept my eyes on the paper only like you're not supposed to do. Finally, I reached the end of the page, looked up at the class and was astonished.
Because guess what? They all looked interested, some even impressed. And during the question and answer session, one girl asked me if I was still working on the novel and how far I'd gotten, and the girl after her said she really wanted to read it when I was finished.
Now I know. This praise from my fellow college kids is not the road to publication, necessarily. But I was on such a high afterwards that it almost felt like it. People liked what I'd written. They liked my little WIP baby!
This makes me a little (though not completely) less scared for next week, when I have to turn in ten pages of my fiction for a class-wide critique.
Tonight, another writing class! I've been working on the assignment (a five-page script) and am stuck on page three due to my determination to choose a really hard style of writing for my first piece. Someone save me from myself :P
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