Pre-Workshop Reflection

     Having just completed my first draft of "Logan's Flight," the aspect that I'm most excited about is the distinct voice of my main character. Logan is funny and sarcastic but underneath that is a lot of pain and struggle. I think this makes her realistic. Usually I find it challenging to create a voice or to recognize if my writing has a distinct voice or not. I think it's working better in this story because the source of Logan's tension is based on someone I've met a handful of times. I wanted to try writing this from the perspective of someone close to her, so I thought what better way to create tension than to make it her mother? I like my writing to challenge me as well and this story definitely does that. It's hard to write about a mother/daughter relationship like this one, especially because the mother is so selfish and cold but has no self-awareness, has no idea how she affects other people.

     I do want to make improvements in terms of internal conflict for Logan. I worry there may be too much focus on her mother, which is external and not on Logan herself. I hope it comes across that showing her irritation with her mother is reflective of problems Logan needs to work on. Especially because she is, like her mother, not incredibly self-aware in the beginning. She doesn't see the contradictions in her logic and behavior. For example, she is so aggravated by her mother that she tries to avoid her but yet she is also co-dependent and still turns to her when something goes wrong.

     For this reason, I would say her internal conflict is that she has low self-esteem and needs to value herself more. She wants to be strong and independent but she keeps repeating the same patterns, allowing unhealthy relationships to remain in her life when creating some distance from those toxic people would be in her best interest.

     For the workshop, I'd like to address how to put more focus on Logan's internal conflict and less on how she is affected by her mother. Also I'd like to know if the ending is too quick of a turn-around for Logan or if it seems natural and shows that she is taking a risk and trying to better her life. 
 

Letter from Cynthia to Anna

Diary entry from protagonist to the source of her tension. . .

Anna,

   Your poor husband. He probably wants to kill himself. This was my first thought when I saw you today.  I watched you walking back with the doctor and all I could think was, I’m so glad she is not scheduled for therapy with me today. I cannot take the energy that emanates from your very being. You exist in a bubble of obsessive and pushy self-pity, the kind that will not be ignored. You insist upon telling me (and everyone else you see) the same sob-story over and over again. Don’t get me wrong; I have compassion for you. But the problem with you is that you do not want to get better. You say you do, but if your shoulder pain were to go away, what would you have left? You would have to come up with some other problem to make the main focus of your life. 

   You get really excited when Dr. Stein gives you any kind of bad news. You want to have bragging rights, want to be able to tell people your awful story but you make sure to do it with a smile and a “look how strong and positive I am!” attitude. It’s so phony. Most people would hear the diagnosis and say, “OK what can I do to make it better?” and then do it. But you wear it like a badge of honor. It’s your identity. You come into the office every week for treatment with the same woeful, martyr, self-pitying, worse for the wear but “I’m here and I’m pushing through!” smile. I imagine a swell of euphoria rises from your toes and flows up to your head like a fast rushing river when someone tells you, “oh you poor thing. But you have such a great attitude. You’re an inspiration to me.” I can see it in your eyes. They light up at this. They go dim when someone suggests a treatment that might make it better, an exercise you can try, a new therapy. Ugh. You don’t want to hear that.

  

   Your voice is soft and delicate, your s’s so sibilant and pronounced in your speech, clearly a social construct you learned in your sorority or maybe earlier as a junior high cheerleader. Beneath this gentle façade is anger, and this is what unnerves me. You are a phony. You are a passive-aggressive broken record. As you prattle on and on about health problems you have experienced throughout your life, re-telling the same story every single week, there is someone in the next room with terminal cancer. You know this, hell, she is an acquaintance of yours, but you pay no mind. Her problems seem so insignificant in comparison to yours! You poor thing. But, oh, how strong you are! You make sure to walk into the office with a face perfectly balanced in an expression of pain but also of weary hope, for you are a fighter. Maybe that cancer victim can learn something from you. You are a shining example of dogged-determination and optimism. 

   This is why you must ear-rape me during each of our sessions, talking non-stop in a monologue that threatens to never end. It is a monologue I’ve heard so many times I could recite it by memory. 

You’re a bored housewife. Your husband ignores you. He gives you plenty of money so you can stay home and wallow in your insurmountable problems, carefully plan how else you will procure your necessary attention from all who will listen. You bathe in your pain, your self-pity and your narcissism. You are self-absorbed to the furthest extent. This has been going on for years. The doctors cannot even come up with a diagnosis that satisfies you, except mild tendinitis. But I’d bet about a third of your husband’s income goes towards your doctor visits, your prescription medications, your endless X-rays and MRIs.

  

   This is why I averted my eyes today when you walked in. Your aura, this powerful self-created energy swirls around your being consuming the entire office, so that when the assistants and interns walk by, they want to steer quickly away, averting eye contact, but they don’t know why. Something is just too much. There is a pushiness to you and your illness-identity. Your eyes, large and blue, staring into mine, searching, desperate, commanding me to “recognize this, acknowledge this! I am suffering greatly but I’m a trooper! I’m tough!” It’s exhausting and it depletes me. I feel a strong urge to leave the room if I am unfortunate enough to be booked with you. After ten minutes, maybe forty minutes, I will be tired and cranky but wired and irritated, my nerves frayed. You are an energy vampire. 

   But you’re also my mother which is why this gets under my skin. I need you to be there for me, the way you were when I was young. You weren’t always like this, not even fifteen years ago when you married Rob, my long-suffering and patient step-father. I need to break away and not allow you to affect me this way. I need to accept you as you are and find some distance, some separateness. I just don’t know where to begin. I suppose I will pray about it like you told me to do when I was a child. 

All of My Love (and soul, and bleeding ears, and abused nerves),

Cynthia

...

Author's Reflection

   I realized most of the focus was on the mother, not the main character, so I had to figure out why her mother affected her in this way. I will be working to explore and go further into her inner conflict as the story develops.