the one about fiction versus nonfiction

At approximately 7:30 this evening, I will submit my last and largest paper of the semester (a project referenced in this post) and thereby have completed all my work for the semester. This will also mean I only need to write a thesis to get my MA.

"Only" write a thesis. Ha.

Writing and revising this paper got me to thinking about how I write, especially with reference to the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction.

When I write fiction, I give entirely too much information up front. I've been writing a novel on and off since high school (aka: a long time ago), and when I workshopped the beginning of it last summer, my instructor informed me that I don't need to put every single fact in the opening chapter / paragraph /sentence / word. I am familiar with the concepts of allusion and foreshadowing, but apparently I don't use them in my writing. I basically say, "Hey! This is important! She is sad because of THIS. Think about that? Remember how she's sad? That's going to affect EVERYTHING. Pay attention!"

This is compared to my nonfiction, critical writing. In which I catch my speed and the paper goes ka-pow about two pages before it ends. And professors think perhaps it should start where it ends. And are kind of right. 

I can revise fiction until the end of time. In fact, sometimes I revise more than I write because writing fiction is hard. Plotting doesn't come easily, and narration sometimes drivels off into inanity. Not unlike my critical work. I'd rather do all manner of unpleasant things instead of revising critical work. But Husband is a no-holds-barred editor these days--since I have recently become able to handle his constructive, useful criticism without yelling at him that he has no idea what I'm trying to say so he should stop trying to tell me how to say it--and informed me that my most recent paper, although working better towards getting to the point earlier, still lagged in the beginning. 

You see, I finish a paper and I say, "WHEEE! I'm done! Where's the wine?" I revise for typos, things spell-check misses, and to clarify word choice. I am excellent at the sentence level. I have great difficulty distancing myself from the text and understanding that time spent getting to the point needs to, well, get to the point. This does not mean starting the paper from scratch. It means tightening language in earlier paragraphs and adding sentences that directly point to the thesis (and later, the conclusion). And generally realizing that not everything I think made it onto the page, even though I can read it between the lines.

For example, I wrote about disabled siblings in disability films serving as foils for their non-disabled siblings. And spent a good page defining the disability, which the film didn't name, without referencing how the unnaming related to the foiling. You follow? Without that referent, the entire section is rendered useless, however interesting it might sound.

Whereas if I were writing fiction, I'd have said a million times how important that was to the point the story intended to make. I'd beat you over the head with it. 

Thus, I need to switch my head-beating techniques between my fictional and non-fictional writing. I've got the skills, I'm just using them incorrectly, as per usual.

the one about holiday decorations

I must be getting old. Or turning into my mother. 

I don't mean this in a bad way. I simply mean that the period from college and a few years afterward--often called "my twenties"--is drawing to a close. And at the same time, so is my rebellion against Christmas decorations.

My dear mother is an amazing craftswoman. She quilts, she cross-stitches, and she has absolutely spoiled me with her ability to make curtains, throw pillows, and pillow shams. There was even an interlude during which we make a duvet cover without a pattern. Putting the duvet inside the cover involved me crawling inside it. Obviously.

And she loves the holidays. It starts in the fall when she gets out all her leaf-pattered paraphernalia and her 99 stuffed pumpkins. There are table runners, table toppers (note the different), place mats, wall hangings, and it's all very thematic. Autumn is her favorite.

And then there's Christmas. She's toned it down over the years--she says this and I believe her due to the lack of bows on the curtain rods when I get home--but my adolescent home is still where the holidays begin for me. I have never decorated as thoroughly as my mother, so I don't really feel it until I get there.  And I love it.  

This year, as it is my second and final year in graduate school, the lead-up to the holidays coincides with finals. Also, Husband and I don't live in the same apartment. For these reasons, buying and purchasing a Christmas tree seems idiotic. (We are also those people who have to throw away their tree on, say, December 17th because we leave town for the holidays and don't want the tree to turn into a pile of match sticks and burn.)

This year, my brain is thousands of miles away from grad school, and I have rebelled from writing papers, doing research, or otherwise being productive by decorating the apartment at very spontaneous intervals.

Examples:

• Last weekend, after getting back from Husband's parents' house for Thanksgiving, I came home and almost immediately hung up the needlepoint mitten garland my mom made for me in college. (Yep, I had decorations in college.) This was inspired by the overnight transformation from Thanksgiving to Christmas decorations in my in-laws' house. I was suitably impressed.
• Later last weekend, when Husband and I were dutifully writing papers across from each other at the kitchen table, I got out the Christmas place mats my mother made me (gingerbread-people fabric, of course), the gingerbread man salt-and-pepper shakers that have been sitting on the window sill all year, and put them on the table. I also insisted we plug in the multicolored lights that hang over the window all year long. We worked hard, but we were festive.
• Last Monday, I came home from a harrowing trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a comforter (another adventure in putting a duvet in a cover--this time with 100% less of my body inside it), which involved people on stilts dressed as nutcrackers singing in Lincoln Center, and a general inability to walk on the sidewalk. Also featured: a distaste for holiday consumerism in New York. And when I got home, Husband had cracked and bought a wreath from a Christmas tree vendor, desperate for the smell of pine. As we have no over-the-door hanger for such an item, it sat on the floor for a week, but it did smell nice. Saturday night after a late dinner, I came home and said, "I am hanging that up." I looped the attached wire over the door and it proceeded to slide down the door. I said, "We need leverage. Give me my umbrella!" Yep, on the outside of our door, we have a pine wreath. On the inside, we have an umbrella. It's like decorating with Rhianna.  (Cue a chorus of "under my umbrella-ella-ella, ay-ay-ay-ay...")
• Sunday afternoon, I cracked. I wanted a tree. Lots of friends had posted pictures of their trees on Facebook, and I was sitting watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape for the second time in as many days (for research purposes). I popped open the hope-chest-of-holiday-decor and unwrapped my ceramic tree. Husband moved the bed to plug it in. We picked a few choice ornaments to lay around it like presents. And we counted down when we lit it.

This led me to realize one important thing: Although, when starting our collection of Christmas ornaments, I had a theme in mind, another theme has cropped up unintentionally. I intended gingerbread men. Food has supplanted this. Both my own mother and my mother-in-law gave me cupcake ornaments. Gingerbread men are food. There the traditional German glass pickle. A pop-up toaster, complete with bread.

So, as our other newlywed friends post pictures of their blended decorations, we realize our greatest compromise in decorating has been the same compromise we have in cooking: sweet versus savory. Husband and I love food, and gosh darn it our holiday decor should reflect this. Someday we'll have a tree covered in cupcakes. And it will be delectable.

Happy holidays, everyone!  Once finals are over, we'll be jetting* up to my parents' house and making edible holiday items. Aka: cookies. Mountains of cookies.

*By jetting, I mean, "train-ing"  A slow, decrepit, train that is only on time 44% of the time.  Or is late 44% of the time.  Either way, I'm glad husband and our headphone jack splitter will be there.