Dahl Study: Genesis and Catastrophe

My author study of Roald Dahl started with a reading of his Collected Stories while watching the accompanying episode of Tales of the Unexpected. Each Friday I'll recap a story and show (with spoilers, just so you know), but I encourage you to read and watch them on your own if you're interested!

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"Genesis and Catastrophe" from Collected Stories (read 7/5/19)

This story is pretty excellent. There's a great twist... but it's not really a twist because it's a fictional interpretation of real life events, so if you know history and obscure facts about political leaders, you might already know the story based on context clues.

A woman is worried about her new baby, because she has lost her three other young children in the past 18 months. The doctor assures her that the baby is fine, healthy, a bit small, but will make it. The mother can't look, she keeps talking about her other children and how they died. (It's here that history buffs might make the connection - the mother is named, and names the other children that have died.) The doctor then calls the mother by her full name, which I won't say here because it's a pretty good twist. She then gives the baby his famous names, and prays for him to live, and it's so deliciously ironic!

"Genesis and Catastrophe" from Tales of the Unexpected (viewed 7/12/19)

This episode had a lot more to it than the story, but it didn't necessarily add to it. It made it more interesting for TV, I suppose, but that's about it. It starts with a young boy running to tell the father that his baby is being born, but the man won't go to his wife. He doesn't want another dead baby. Much of the episode is the same as the story, but with a lot more from the man's point of view. He wasn't much of a sympathetic character in the story, but he is in the show. I don't think the twist packed as much of a punch as in the written story, either, so definitely read the story first.

Ten Years After

Ten years ago I was winding down my life as a graphic designer, packing up my belongings, and moving just outside Washington, DC to study fiction writing as an MFA candidate. I can think back to that time and feel everything so clearly, honestly from January 2009 until August, to include the anticipation of the MFA acceptances or rejections. I applied to ten or eleven schools, and was accepted to two - one with no financial package, one with a full ride and TA position. I picked the school that offered me the most, of course, and was grateful for it.

I had wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, scribbling in marble notebooks and keeping them in a "real" leather briefcase. (Yes, I was that kid.) I never stopped writing stories, even though I never really finished one until my first creative writing workshop in undergrad. I ended up there after thinking I should major in journalism, because it was writing. I didn't know creative writing was a thing you could study, take classes in, get graded on. Once I discovered that, I was gone. I was so sure I was going to grow up and become an author. It seemed real to me, just by having a concentration in the college catalog.

I stuck with my MFA program for one year out of three. I didn't like how certain workshop professors pushed us to write in a specific style first, and once we mastered that, we would be allowed to experiment. I couldn't handle having to read three short story collections a week for one class. I loved my classmates. I loved the other tutors I worked with in the Writing Center, and I loved the Writing Center itself. I loved working with other students. I loved editing papers and helping them find their focus while writing.

I don't regret my year in the MFA program. I don't regret quitting after a year.

I have friends with MFAs who are writing and publishing and working as professors and love it. I have friends without MFAs who are writing as publishing and working as [fill in the blank] and love it. And I always felt like I was somewhere in between. That by being enrolled in a program and quitting meant I had failed. But I didn't fail - I made a choice. And I need to be kind and honest with myself and realize that I am one of those without an MFA who is writing and publishing and working... period. I am doing so many things I never thought I would be doing ten years ago.

When I started that chapter of my life, ten years ago, I couldn't really picture the future. I could see myself writing at all hours of the night, because I could hardly sleep if the sun wasn't out. I couldn't picture myself as a professor. I couldn't picture myself as a partner or a mother or anything beyond that hazy image of a person huddled over the table writing... something.

And here I am. I am a mother with a wonderful child. I read in all my spare time, and I share books with him every day. I completed a Masters degree in Library Science. I'm an elementary librarian sharing books with students and their parents. I wrote and published a book. I have been writing nearly daily for over six months. I have been completing stories even without a deadline in my face. I am gearing up to teach an elementary creative writing club in the fall. It might not be what I dreamily thought would come, but, ten years after, I think I'm in a good place - maybe just a logical evolution from what I thought I wanted back then.