Wait. What? You can DO that?

On Friday, my students in my creative writing elective finished their eight-week poetry segment of the course. For fun, the day before spring break, when motivation and attention spans wane, I thought it wise to give them something different to try, so we took a 70-minute baby step into fiction.

We read “Crossing Spider Creek,” by Dan O’Brien, now something of a flash fiction classic. The open-ended story was a hit with my seniors, who for one fleeting class, let impending college decisions go and dove head-long into O’Brien’s story, left wondering at the end, as we all do, whether “the seriously injured man on a horse,” makes it across the creek.

For me, inexplicably, the move from poetry to fiction was just as invigorating. Fiction is never far from me –– writing and reading it daily –– but reviewing a 600-word +/- story with kids who were saying things like, “Wait. What? You can DO that? Is that allowed?” I told them, “It’s fiction. Anything’s allowed.” And we wrote opening lines that posed questions that we as writers wanted answers to (presuming that our readers would too).

That was all. A pretty straightforward lesson plan. Nothing any teacher hasn’t done.

Yet the day was a reminder of sorts for me, after months spent revising a manuscript, getting feedback, and waiting for more, all in preparation to send a book to my agent, which will require more waiting and wondering if she’ll validate my hard work, and later waiting to see if a publisher will. Writing for publication often amounts to writing and waiting for the validation of others.

Which isn’t what it’s about.

It’s about that question: “Wait. What? You can DO that?” And it’s about finding the answer, which is all the validation any of us should need.