The gap between

            There's something about a classroom setting that makes me revert to a childlike enthusiasm that nothing else can generate. Especially, when it's the first day of class or, in this case, a one-day workshop. I can't help but shift in my seat with excitement, with a fresh new notebook turned to the first blank page and black ballpoint pen poised firmly in position above the page, just waiting for the teacher, standing before the class, to utter something so mind blowing I have to race to scribble it down before it slips my mind forever. Every word of information bouncing from the teacher's tongue is like music to the undereducated ear. I always enjoyed being in school, even if it didn't come easy for me when I was growing up. English slowly became my first language and reading wasn't necessarily instilled outside of school. I did try as hard as I could, mind you, it was just that things didn't seem to click then and I was, unintentionally, more fascinated with studying the other students in their social settings, as though they were monkeys in a zoo, than I cared for what was being taught by my teachers. Since then, I've seen more than my share of monkeys in a zoo, living in New York City, to last me a lifetime. It's the education I'm now trying to recapture and ingrain in my ever-ageing brain.

            Sunday evening I attended a character development workshop on the Lower East Side held by Gotham Writers. A private creative writing program I'm beginning to love more and more. Every now and then they hold a free writing workshop on a first come first serve basis in various locations around the city and Erin and I were all over this one. With our stomach's bulging from the enormous Chinese dinner we ate just moments before we arrived, we made our way down the stairs of the two level bookstore, I didn't know existed until today, and sat in the back row of the make shift classroom. From what I could tell, it seemed as though we were the youngest ones there. The couple next to us might have fit our age group, but that was about it. There was one particular woman who walked in late that looked as if she might have started collecting her social security two decades ago. But, she was not lost. She knew exactly where she was and why she was there, and I couldn't help but wonder what her story was. She could barely hold a pen in her hand, but apparently, she had something to tell the world and I wanted, so desperately, to pull up a chair and listen to her unfolding wisdom, drawn from the long life she has lived. It's very rare that I see elderly people in this city. It's either that they move away after retirement, or people just die young from the stress of city life. Could be that they live hidden in their children's basements somewhere in the Upper East Side too, practicing of some weird ritual, like senicide, that we're not aware of. Like the Eskimos, who were known to put their elderly on floating icebergs and pushed them out to sea when they got too old to be of any use. Maybe if I look hard enough I might see some poor old woman tied to a canoe floating down the Hudson River. Who knows? I just don't see them very often. It's times like these that I wish I had the ability to read minds though. I'll probably never see that woman again and she may never have the chance to tell all her stories, but they're in there somewhere, sitting in the deep side streets and alleyways of her mind, screaming to get out and be told to whoever wants to listen. I sure hope she has the chance to get them down someday soon. Everyone has a story and it should be told. How else are we to understand one another?

            The person leading the class was a burly man, with a presence about him that matched his frame perfectly. He had an air about him that seemed larger than life and he wasted no time jumping right to the point. I found myself scratching away on my nice clean notebook before my brain was able to process what he was saying. I had to look down at my messy scribbles between his breaks in thought a few times, just to wrap my head around the information he was splattering at us. It seems I've become a little rusty since college. The man had a great sense of humor, which seemed so effortless to him, but every now and then it looked as though even he was amazed by his own wit. In the seat in front of us sat a man who wasn't much younger than the elderly woman sitting at the front of the class. However, this man took the honor of being the class nerd. He was at least twice our age and had the advantage of time and experience on his side so he was always the first one to shoot his hand up in the air and quip an answer before he was even called on. I don't think he understood the point behind hand raising. To him, the gesture was more like a flagging to get everyone's attention while he blurted the evidence of his high IQ. Every answer he uttered sounded like he had just finished looking it up in Webster's Dictionary and was reading it to the class verbatim.

            Towards the end of the class the teacher had us spend about ten minutes taking a character he had us make up earlier and put them in a setting where there was a "gap" left in the story. A gap, in creative writing, is when the writer purposefully leaves out a tid bit of information that is touched upon in a story to spark the reader's interest, but also leaves the reader hanging. The point is so the reader is left to wonder about the missing information and want to continue reading on to fill in the blanks. It's a little Jedi mind trick we like to do. It keeps things interesting. However, when the metaphorical timer went off, I spent so much time writing all of the little details describing the setting and appearance of character I had created, that by the end of the ten minutes the only action I had written my character into was that she sat at a table in a cafe. I think I should have been a set designer instead. From what I could tell from looking around the class, Einstein in front of us, had his story ready and waiting to boast, but the guy sitting on Erin's right side beat him to the punch. In ten minutes he had his setting, protagonist, two supporting characters and dialogue brandishing an excellent gap to boot. I was so enthralled by his half page, two minute story that I had surly fallen into his gap and wanted to know what the missing information was so that I could understand why his protagonist reacted the way that he did. Fill in the gap dang it! Actually, the guy had me at "He walked into the diner and sat in a booth..."

            Instead of walking out of that workshop with the pride of having another wrinkle in my brain, I left feeling a little discouraged at the huge gaping hole I had with my story. I knew it was just a little exercise and I wasn't planning on writing a novella about this girl who sat in a cafe, but I was feeling a bit like maybe I didn't have it in me to write compelling fiction. It didn't help that after Erin told me her ten-minute story, which she was too shy to share with the rest of the class, I wanted to toss my notebook in the trash and just give up now. It was excellent. Later that evening, I went home, tail between my legs, and sat in front of my laptop a little resentful of the machine, as though it was my own personal nemesis laughing in my face. After ten minutes of self-loathing, I decided to turn it on and look through my virtual folder of half written stories. And there I saw...I have gaps! I was writing them into my stories long before I knew what they were. I've listened to and read enough stories in my lifetime to know, intrinsically, what the ingredients were to bake the cake. I haven't actually finished most of these stories, but at least I knew I was heading in the right direction with them. I suppose I can't be like Stephen King and just come up with a nine-hundred-page novel in two months, but I have the ability to write in me somewhere, it just takes me longer to set the mood. My mind was a little more at ease after that realization. However, my fiction writing is a bit rusty, so I think it's time I consider a proper refresher course. Let's see if I can get into longer workshop and keep the juices flowing. Maybe I can figure out what that silly girl was doing in the cafe to begin with or just have her fall into an abysmal gapping hole so I don't have to think about the stupid story any more.