Odyssey

I got my critique in class today of my story, formerly titled You Are What You Eat (people were pretty unanimous that the title was bad), and I was happy with the feedback I got, especially since this was an experiment for me and I didn't have much of an idea about how successful it would be.The general consensus seemed to be that the concept was good, with varying ideas on what parts people liked and didn't like. Really, in typical me fashion, I was still trying to tell two different stories.My first impulse was the magical realist one, but since that is pretty different from what I typically write, it evolved (or devolved) into what my short fiction usually does - family relationships. Jeanne caught onto the magical realism elements and Rob Sawyer picked up more on the family dynamics, and I think the choice for me is to decide which story I really want to write.Rob Sawyer has been a pretty tough critic of our drafts, so I was fully prepared for him to say this story just doesn't work, interesting experiment but not marketable, move on to other things. That is not quite what he said. He made a special point to praise my writing skills and comment on how easy this was to read - he wrote that he was "impressed" with my "clarity" and that I have "lots of talent." That is not nearly as nice as saying it was brilliant or something, but readable is a good start I suppose. :) The main problem he had was some of the family dynamics stuff which is imminently fixable, especially if I decide to go that route rather than more into the weird territory of magical realism. I had a great meeting with him later where I got to pick his brain a little more about ideas for my novel and further stuff on the short story.Mostly, I am glad I the consensus seems to be that I have made improvements since I have been here (thank goodness!) and I'm sure I can turn around and apply these to my novel.Rob Sawyer is a great guest and I'm really enjoying his lectures and feedback. I've only read Hominids so far, but I like the fact that his work is literature of ideas, not necessarily action, because that is what I like to read and write.The trick is now to take all this home with me, not forget it, and make my novel the best it can be! I'm hoping for my next submission to do another novel chunk, but write it from scratch instead of trying to revise what I already have, because that way I will hopefully be less likely to fall into some old bad habits.