Author: wcp-justinmorris
Foreword — Little Paper Boats
I entered college as a computer science major, but was quickly — and fortunately — dissuaded from that path after an awful first semester. By my next semester, I had declared journalism as my new major. The switch, for the most part, was arbitrary. In fact, I didn’t even completely choose it myself. Instead, I polled my friends for my new major. I gave them a list of majors which I was considering— psychology, english, or journalism — and asked which I should go with. Journalism was the answer by a comfortable margin.
To me, computer science was purely a mode of making money. Retiring as soon as possible to focus on my writing was always the plan. When computer science fell through, I took it as a sign that, whatever major I was to go into next, it had to involve writing in some capacity. So, journalism seemed like the best next step. I knew, though, that journalism wouldn’t scratch the writing itch I had by its own merit. I enjoy all kinds of writing, but the kind I really wanted to do was creative writing. But there isn’t much money in that (not that there is in journalism, either) so I settled on taking an introductory course on creative writing my sophmore year.
I hadn’t done much in the way of creative writing, at least in terms of putting a pencil to a page. I had started maybe one or two short stories, but they would run out of steam quickly. It felt as though I were trying to swim the English Channel, but could only make it a tenth of the way out form shore before drowning the uncertainty of effective storytelling. Taking a creative writing class seemed like a great place to start, but there was another issue: I was terrified. As I said, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and that desire, ironically, is what kept me from doing any actual writing. I could go on imagining myself as a great writer, so long as I never wrote anything to find out whether I was or not.
Signing up for a creative writing class was my way of facing what was, at the time, a very existential fear of mine. If I were to discover myself to be a lousy creative, then I would lose what had theretofore been a guiding light in my life. When it came time to submit our final short stories — the culminatory piece of all that we had learned — I knew it absoultey had to be good.
I sitll felt rather lost when it came to story — particularly when it came from getting from a story’s introduction to its conclusion — so, I decided that the safest play was to not bother coming up with an orginal story, but pull one from real life. At the time, I was enthralled with this experimental album called “An Empty Bliss Beyond This World.” The album is essentially meant to be an auditory representation of the experience of dementia patients as their memories wither away. I wanted to do something in a similar vein, so I decided to write about my great grandmother, her life, and her experience with dementia.
I even decided to incorporate a dash of journalism into the writing process. I sat down with my grandmother for around three hours and recorded her as she recounted my great grandmother’s life and personality. I then took what I had, pared down the anecdotes until I had a handful which I felt captured who my great grandmother was, and began to write. Every morning for two weeks, I’d wake up at 6:30 a.m. to walk from my fraternity house to the UGA Main Library. I’d get breakfast from Einstein Bagels — a cappucinno and a plain bagel with cream cheese — and I’d go to the same exact spot on the 5th floor where I’d write until noon.
The following is what I ended up with…
Green Vein
Foreword — Green Vein
“Little Paper Boats” was a big hit with my classmates. Leaving class after having my piece reviewed by my peers, I was beaming with optimism and the most satisfaction I’ve ever felt from any assignment or project I had done up to that point. I had some of my classmates emailing me after, asking where I learned to write how I do. My family loved it as well, especially my grandmother. My dad is a painter and he sometimes paints pictures as gifts for my grandma. I’d always wished that I could someday do the same with my writing, and I finally could. It was a nice feeling. I felt as though I had the undeniable proof of my skill that I had been looking for. I felt validated.
Then came the inevitable question, “What next?”
I didn’t know. I no longer had a deadline stalking me as I wrote, propelling me forward. I tried time and again to get something, anything, going. But I never could make it past the first paragraph with everything I tried. I’d go and sit in my writing corner of the Main Library, hoping that there was something left of whatever cloud of creativity that I had been pulling from for my last piece, but still nothing.
Eventually, this bout of writer’s block turned into ennui, and the ennui turned to insecurity. Somehow I had managed to refute all the evidence that I had gained as to my writing ability, and found myself in want of more proof. A year after my taking my first, I enrolled for a second round of creative writing. This time it was “advanced” creative writing, which was intimidated me. Maybe I was good enough to get through an intro class, but I just knew the advanced course would swallow me whole.
This time around, I wanted to try my hand at fiction again. I still wasn’t all that confident in my ability to think up a compelling narrative, so I decided that imitation might assuage my insecurities. I had just read John Gardener’s “Grendel,” so I elected it as my story template. I sat with the “Grendel” arc for a bit, tweaking it and personalizing it until I had come up with something that I felt was original enough to call my own.
As for the style, I decided to channel Faulkner. I had read “Absalom, Absalom” over the previous summer and the writing contained within it had stuck with me long after I had finished the book. I had already flirted with stream of conciousness — namely, the final section of “Little Paper Boats” — but I had not fully embraced it, so I decided to continue building what I had previously started.
While the writing of “Green Vein” was a rocky, stop-and-go process and was the source of many mini panic attacks, I eventually ended up on the other end with what I still consider my best piece of writing. The story is not all there as of now. I had only planned for this piece to be a short story, but after finishing the short version and reading back over it, I decided it needed much more room to breathe. I am planning on expanding this into a full novel, and a lot of the details from the short version have already been cut, so I’ve decided to pare down the original 30-page version as to emphasize the style and minimize the story.
Foreword — Book Review
Now for the most recently created addition to my portfolio: the book review. Regrettably, there isn’t much in the way of a backstory for this one. I wrote this for an assignment in a critical writing class my senior year. We were all assigned to read this book, “All the Broken Girls,” which was unreleased at the time, and write a review for it. Three of these reviews were eventually published in Grady Newsource, and mine was one of them, which makes this the first piece I’ve ever had published.
But I think there is more to this review than it simply being my first published piece of writing. As I mentioned before, I started college unsure of how to create an effective narrative. By this point in my writing career, I felt as though I had a much better grasp on story as a craft, and I believe that my growth in this area is shown here in my analysis and critique of another writer’s story. Thus I felt justified in having this be the final piece of my portfolio…
Book Review
Steeped in blood and Santería, “All the Broken Girls,” the fourth novel of writer Linda Hurtado Bond, presents itself as compelling, rife with mystery and intrigue. However, as the book goes on, readers will find themselves playing a game of poker where every card is dealt face-up.
The story follows Mari Álvarez — a TV reporter, like the protagonists of Hurtado Bond’s previous two books — as she hunts for a serial killer through Tampa, Florida. Mari is a strong character, however the novel hinges too much of itself upon her – making her the only character with any real dimension or development.
This is woefully apparent when, a little over halfway through the book, Mari’s beloved Abuela Bonita suffers a heart attack and eventually passes away. When Mari visited her dying grandmother in her ER room, I got the sense that I was supposed to feel something — but, I didn’t. As Abuela Bonita’s heart monitor lets out one final beep, it feels less like a death scene and more like Hurtado Bond is taking an eraser and rubbing Abuela Bonita’s name off the page.
This is largely because Abuela Bonita never feels directly involved in the story. There’s only one scene in which Mari interacts with her grandmother – outside of that, all we know of her is told to us by Mari or a handful of other characters. It’s like being told stories about a relative that passed long before you were born – you may know a lot about that person, but you don’t feel a real emotional connection to them.
The suspects range from characters who appear in name only, like Sebastián Figeuroa, to something as impalpable as an entire gang, the West Tampa Kings. The problem is that each suspect seems to ebb in and out of culpability. We never zero in on most of these suspects for longer than a few chapters, resulting in each feeling like little more than red herrings.
If many of these suspects were sequestered to the beginning of the story as early guesses, perhaps then the book would find a better antagonistic anchor in Edward Jones, or “Hoodie Hannibal.” Edward is by far the most interesting of all the potential suspects; his presence looms heavy over the whole book as he is the only suspect that seems to pose a tangible threat to the protagonist. This, however, makes his off-page death as horribly anti-climactic as the novel’s twist.
The twist villain had the potential to be good, but there are two things that kill the revelation. The first being all the red herrings, which come back to bite Hurtado Bond once again. By obscuring the killer’s true identity behind a cast of suspects, Hurtado Bond creates an effect that is more smoke and mirrors than sleight of hand. It’s like Hurtado Bond threw a whole deck of cards in the reader’s face to distract him while she slid another card up her sleeve.
But what proves fatal to the twist is how Hurtado Bond preemptively places suspicion upon cold-case detective John Hanks. This serves only to weaken the impact of the ending. If Hanks is not the killer, then he is just another red herring which weakens the ending for reasons already mentioned; if he is the killer — which, indeed, he is — then the coming revelation is made extremely obvious. Why else would a suspect be introduced so late? In fact, Hurtado Bond all but confirms that Hanks is the killer by having him say the nod-and-wink line, “Does it matter, as long as justice is served?” at the end of chapter 34, only a few chapters before the big reveal.
Ultimately, these two things will have the reader walking away from the novel with a bland taste that no amount of blood and Santería can begin to season.