Give me my praise!

I'd been looking forward to Tuesday for some time. It was going to be my day. Praise was going to rain upon me and I was going to shine. I was ready.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Tuesday was the day I got to hear feedback from my fellow Advanced Fiction Writing classmates. I'd turned in a story last week and had patiently waited for Tuesday, my day.

The story I wrote wasn't the one I intended to write. I'd gotten sick and just didn't feel up to writing. The day before the story was due, I was like "damn, I have to turn in something tomorrow." So I wrote. It was a 13 page (short for me, my average tale is 20 pages) magical realsim story. It was wonderfully written. The writing itself was great, the backstory needed work, but the writing was great.

I knew this. Maybe I'm cocky/confident, but that's because I have the right to be. I just know that I am talented.

Anyway, I literally thought the room would errupt into cheers when I walked in.

"I'm so jealous of you!"
"Where do you come up with these things?"
"Can I be you?"
"You're great!"
"God's smiling on you!"
"Can I be you for a day?"
"Hooray Jess! Hooray Jess!"

That's just a sampeling of a few things I expected to hear. In one scenario I actually believed they'd throw me on their shoulders and exalt me.

What happened was this:

I get to class. No one says 'hello' to me. I was a bit disconcerted. The teacher comes in, we go over business, and then she decides we're going to critique Scott's story, he turned one in on the same day I did.

The class is 2.5 hours long. We spend 45 mins talking about his story. I wasn't a huge fan of it. We told him things he could change and how he could make it better- for the whole 45 mins. I was nice and told him some things I liked about it, though.

So after we're done with his, Marly, the teacher, says it's time to talk about my story. Yay! The time I've been dreaming about. It is finally here.

We spend a whopping 10 mins talking about it. They talked about how it needs more backstory. No one said good things about it. It was 10 mins of negative talk. I wasn't offended- I knew it needed more. But I wanted someone to say something positive about it. Tell me how great my style is.

When those measly 10 mins were up, I almost yelled and shrieked and told them it was my turn to shine! They needed to bestow me with praise! Instead I said nothing.

Later that day I went to the park and read their written critiques.

Everyone loved it. They said my style was great, it was funny and tragic, it flowed, blah blah blah. It was nice reading that, obviously, but it would've been better to hear it.

In case I haven't made it obvious enough, I know I'm a great fiction writer. I don't need people to tell me so to know it, but sometimes you just want to hear it. I wanted 45 minutes of praise and adulation and there's nothing wrong with that.

I guess, realistically, great writing speaks for itself, so you don't need to spend a lot of time dwelling on it.

My mom says I need to rewatch "A Christmas Story". She says there's a scene in a classroom I'd really relate to.

"Kudos, Jess, you're awesome!"