Update
Hi all,
So I showed chapters 2 and 3 to the writers’ workshop. (Well, not three, some later chapter, but whatever.) Went over very well. People liked the family dynamic, the warmth, lots of things I hoped they would like.
In a very amusing couple minutes, some people thought some stuff that happened in a funeral scene was too over-the-top, like I was trying to be wacky and people wouldn’t act like that. Of course, the things they were talking about were things that literally happened at my grandfather’s funeral two summers ago. That’s not to say the critique wasn’t important. A reader’s got to buy into what’s happening, and they won’t have you there to explain that it really COULD happen like that. I just laughed a little bit.
I got a lot out of the workshop, but I can’t really be in it anymore, because my clinic sort of blew up this semester, and after all the New Bedford post-raid stuff, it turns out both of my asylum clients have their interviews in the next three or four weeks.
This semester has been terrible for writing pages. Just terrible. It didn’t work out like I thought at all, and things usually do. But what can you do? On the other hand, I got all the first-person insight into the asylum process that I hoped I would, and was a witness to the aftermath of an immigration tragedy here in the state. I’m still trying to figure out how I want to write about that, because there’s so much to tell. But I know I will be writing about it, and soon.
I won’t forget Mike and Mili and the Garzas. I’m not going to let their hundred-plus pages just linger around. I just now have people’s families and safety to worry about in an immediate way, and then? Finals. I hope they understand.