Day 1 of 412, the area code

Blog brings out the worst in me. Whenever I go to type my first instinct is to complain. Odd. I'll try to switch things up.

I got paid for a book review today. It's fun to have professional writing moments. Woohoo.

Hmmm. This internet thing is weird. I don't trust it. I was about to write a story about some crazy editors and writers I've been working with, but then I had visions of one of the crazy editors reading this blog and suing me for something. She would do it too. Sorry, that's all that I can offer because I live in fear.

Today was Day 1 of the 2nd Annual 412: Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival. It took me about 6 months to figure out what the 412 meant. 412 is the area code of Pittsburgh. I am a fool.

Last year at this time writing was making me miserable. Man. I was thisclose. No, closer, to not completing my senior year manuscript. Not completing it, failing my Senior Nonfiction Seminar (final class as a writing major) and not getting my English Major. I was so willing to get the F, kill my GPA and have only my psychology major.

I was trying to write this paper that just wasn't happening. I had this big idea to write about a town outside of Pittsburgh that was supposedly haunted because an orphanage had burned down there, a priest had killed himself, and so on. I'd recently read In Cold Blood, about a murder in a small town, and I thought it would be fabulous to do a similar story.

Looking back, I learned some interesting things about this town, Coulter, PA and it was neat to explore and hope for scary things to happen. But it just wasn't a good idea to plan a story around a town 45 minutes away from where I lived. The piece sucked. There was no narrative. No story. Nothing. I just transcribed conversations I had with my friends while we went there looking for ghosts. When the class read my first draft they said things like "Well, I kind of like this sentence here" and "this part isn't 100% awful."

But then I was saved! I went to the 1st Annual 412 Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival and listened to a panelist talk about how people have so many of their own interesting stories that they should tell before trying to tell the story of another person. After the festival I went home and wrote about writing my Senior Seminar paper, how much trouble it--and the writing life in general--gave me. I gave it my own story. The writing wasn't much better but at least the story was. Still, even after handing in the last copy I wasn't sure if I had failed or not. The last day of class, we had to read 10 minutes of our paper. I did and waited for my professor to speak. I think I was trying to figure out if running out of the classroom was at all possible. It wasn't.

ENOUGH. I just reread the last paragraph and I bored myself to almost death. I got an A, my professor thought how I saved the piece was great, I now work for him. What was the point of this? Oh, the 2nd Annual Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival, Day 1. Readings by local authors at Barnes and Noble. It was a delight. Nice turnout. Splendid writers who read well. Pictures tomorrow.