These questions are in reference to my twitterive. Responses to them would be lovely! :)

1) Is my "place" too impersonal? I noticed a lot of my peers are using very personal places, and I'm not sure if my "place" has too much of a disconnect.
2) Is my main character--Aria--too unsympathetic? I wanted to make the reader feel "on the fence" about his or her feelings/sympathy for Aria. Did I accomplish this?
3) Should I include letters in my twitterive? I'm not sure if this would detract or add to the reader's sympathy for Aria. 
4) Does the ending leave you angry, or do you like having to form your own opinion about what Aria was going to say?
5) Is my flashback in the "right" place? I struggled with where I should place it in the story. 
6) Are there too many words in my twitterive? Is there a different genre that I should include that will help to convey my place more clearly?

Thanks for any input in advance, and I hope you enjoyed my story!
  

These questions are ones asked in reference to a twitterive assignment for Professor Mangini's WR&T course.

1. Who is/are the characters in your twitterive?
--The characters are Aria, Dr. Sang, Aria's mother, and the receptionist.

2. What connection/disconnection do you feel to your place?
--I guess I can feel a connection to Aria's mental state; all women are forced to make difficult decisions and are judged for them. Even though I've never gotten an abortion or been pregnant, the indecisiveness that she feels is familiar.

3. When does the story take place?
--The story takes place in the present: 2011.

4. Where does the story take place?
--The story takes place on a train, in a doctor's office in Philadelphia, and in Aria's mind.

5. Why does the story take place?
--I think this is a story worth telling/exploring. I think it will be interesting to get to know this girl and understand her situation.

6. How are you "delivering"/presenting the story?
--The story will use prose fiction, an article, pictures, and letters.

Questions from classmates:
1. Did you consider having the doctor write letters to Aria?
--I think this is an option worth thinking about. This actually gave me an idea to have Aria write a final letter to the doctor spilling her thoughts and emotions.


Response:
Question #2 about the connection/disconnection to the place was a tough one to answer. Even though I have never been in Aria's situation, I feel empathy for her as well as a connection. It may be because I have had friends who have had to choose between keeping their babies and aborting them.

I got a couple of good ideas from my interviewers; they helped me to expand my thinking and take on more than one perspective.

(I am the TV commentator for a multi-genre piece due for Writing, Research, and Technology.)

We're here in room 2108 of Education Hall to witness our match for the Championship title of Heavy Weight Champion.


In this corner we have our current heavyweight champion, standing at 5' 7" tall and weighing in at 145 pounds, 'Liv to Kill'! Liv to Kill's current injury includes a broken jaw that she received during a bartender brawl. Her most critical injury is her recent broken nail. She is a dirty fighter and is still hungover from last nights Tequila binge.


And in this corner stands our contender, standing at 5'0" inches tall and weighing in at 110 pounds, 'Stephanie the Slammer'! Stephanie the Slammer dislocated her elbow 6 months ago, and this is her first fight back; she has 19 knockouts under her belt. She's going for the title. She is known for her knockouts and she fights clean.

The odds are 5:1 in favor of Liv to Kill.

Reflecting on my tweets, microfictions, haiku, and found poem.

It was difficult for me to see any type of story in my tweets. My tweets have been accounts of everyday life--nothing descriptive or interesting at first glance. Since I had so many tweets, I didn't know which ones to choose. So, I ended up choosing random tweets.

Yet, when I picked out my first word, gravel, I began to have an idea about a girl who doesn't follow societal expectations and norms. Then, at the end--although subjective and up to the inferences of the reader--one may gather that she did change her style/personality to fit in. Or, perhaps, she thinks about changing in her unconscious, but never does. From looking at my tweets, I had no idea theme would emerge.

What I thought was funny about my tweets is that I didn't have enough articles. For example, "a" and the. So, my found poem is more fragmented.

For my haiku, I wasn't sure which direction I wanted to take. I.e., I didn't know if I wanted the haiku to be an extension of my microfiction or not. When I started writing it, though, the poem emerged as an extension, but from the point of view of the daughter at an older age.

He thinks that I don’t know, but I do. I have always known—I’ve just been too weak to act on it. It started when we first started living together. I bought a cockatoo for some comfort in our large but cozy duplex in New York. As days went by, the bird grew more distant; she would flinch when I would try to let her out of the cage, and after two weeks she stopped whistling altogether. One morning, I awoke to find her lying on the side of the cage, her eye bleeding.

            “What happened?” I asked Al, darting to the phone book in search of the veterinarian’s number, fingers fumbling over the tissue thin pages.

            “How the hell should I know? I’ve been watching T.V. all morning. And besides, you were the one to let her out last.”

            Things got worse when he had our first child, Julianna. I was holding two-year old Julianna on my hip, phone attached to my ear, and working in front of the stove when it happened. Al was with me, helping me mix the baking soda into the red velvet cake and manning the stove. I turned around for a second, and Julianna let out a gut wrenching cry; I dropped the phone, and with it, the confidence in my mothering abilities.

            “Christ! How can you not be watching her around the stove?” Al yelled over the piercing scream of our child.

            But for days after that, Julianna wouldn’t go near her father. She ran to her room whenever I mentioned the name “Daddy” and cringed when he walked in the door.

    So, I’ve made up mind. It has to be done. Steeling myself, I take that walk to the big house.  

*The lines taken from Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands that were the inspiration for this piece are: "It has to be done./Steeling myself/I take that walk to the big house" (127).   

I felt that An Encounter, from James Joyce’s Dubliners, really started to get interesting when the man joined Mahony and the main character in the field. Looking at this piece from a “place” perspective, I’m not exactly sure what the open field represents. Perhaps it is meant to mean that the main character is now in the open and cannot hide from his sins?

In this piece and in Araby as well, I had difficulty distinguishing the age of the characters. At first, I pictured both the main characters from both of these pieces as younger boys, and then had to adjust my initial perceptions because of their objects of conversation and desires. For example, the man in the field in An Encounter talks about sweethearts, while the main character in Araby yearns for Araby.

Altogether, I liked Araby more than An Encounter. I especially liked the tension in the last line. It reads, “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derived by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (35). In the end, he realizes that he is at the bazaar alone, and he is upset with himself for pursuing childish impulses that yield no results. (This is my interpretation.) Two lines that stood out are:

“I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (30).

“Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds” (31).

This week I read An Anthology of Really Short Stories, edited by Jerome Stern. The micro fictions that I read include pages 30-31, 42-43, 182-183, and 118-119. Micro fiction is one of my favorite genres to read; however, I wasn’t totally impressed with the pieces in this anthology. Below is the list of micro fictions read and my thoughts on them.

·         Wrong Channel, by Roberto Fernandez: This story had a slapstick ending. You could hear the “bad-da-bum” drum in the final lines of the story. I will say, however, that the imagery in the first two paragraphs is well done. The first line, and in my opinion best line, reads, “Barbarita waited impatiently for her ride as beads of sweat dripped from her eyebrows into her third cup of cold syrupy espresso” (30).

·         Mockingbird, by Laurie Berry: I do like that the metaphor of mockingbirds “waiting for the fierce end of summer” was woven into the story. I can sense the conflict between the two characters. Still, this wasn’t my favorite story.

·         Land’s End, by Antonya Nelson: This was definitely my favorite. The imagery and juxtaposition of “bloody footprints” to “valentines” was disturbing, yet effective. I liked how the author was able to tell the story while interlacing scene, all without dialogue. The author also uses the colors red and green—blood, valentines, nets of bright green acrylic, the setting sun, and a trail of red hearts are all examples. I find it interesting that the author “draws” the main character colorless. For example, she is wearing “crusty no-color shorts,” and she runs on foot—the author is painting her gray. In the end, the only thing that is hers—the blood from her feet—is what (we assume) kills her.

·         Waiting, by Peggy McNally: The only thing I like about this story is its style. The entire story is one huge run on sentence, connected by commas. However, I feel that the main character is flat and that the content of the story is bland.