No Turning Back

I spent this week wracking my mind deciding what I was going to write my long, 3000-word story on. The deadline to get a pitch to our writing teacher was today. A parenthetical warning on the syllabus for today's class--"No turning back!"--haunted my mind as I tried to calmly and objectively think about the four stories that were all contenders, tugging at my writer's heart, vying to be the next three months of my life, winner of the Most Time Consuming and My New Love-Hate Relationship prizes. I kept thinking to myself "this one's important, Waldroupe. You wanna publish this, and this is going to be the last time you ever have three months to work on one feature-length story. You can't screw this one up."

As the week went on, I learn that getting access to Oxycontin addicts or English-speaking Iraqi women or women in prison getting ready to re-enter society is going to be a bit trickier than I thought (what are bureaucrats for, after all?). No subjects emerge, key sources don't call or email me back. In the end, I go with the story I have the most access to, and the one I have two interview transcripts for (another thing due in class today). It's also the story my friends tell me sound the most interesting, so that's something. I feel like I have been very dramatic about all this story picking stuff, and I'm not much for drama. The thing about drama is that it seems to always get smacked upside the head by cold, hard logic. Or, in this case, the existence of two interview transcripts.

By: Amanda, writing.