Soon We Will Just Get to READ...

..a whole story, start to finish, as slowly or quickly as we like.

Soon I’ll be sending the text of a short story, “An Incident,” by the great Chinese writer, Lu Hsun, along with a recording of me reading it.

This will be the first story we’re working on together outside of the “page at a time” model. So let’s think of this as an exploration, as we try to figure out the best way to work on stories within this Substack format…

“Just reading at my own pace, nobody sending me bits of text at a time. Although these rocks are sort of a drag.”

Here’s how I propose we approach it:

1. Read it in its entirety, just for fun. (It’s very short).

2. Then write about it, loosely and intuitively, in your notebook. Just react to it - no need to try and explain or analyze — in whatever way feels best for you. If you find yourself at a loss, maybe consider: what did you feel, and where? (No need to worry about why, particularly, just yet).

3. Then let the story sit there in your mind for awhile as you go about your life. Give it a little time (a few hours, a full day?)

4. Then read it a second time, more slowly, making notes as you go. Maybe trying to see, lightly, what caused you to feel whatever you described in 1), above. (What you felt and where you felt it.) You might outline it, listing its main events, as a starter. The point is just to approach it with real curiosity, in your way. I’ve had students who did this by doing cartoons or maps or org-chart-like schematics. We might think of this phase as “keeping the hands busy as the mind does its work.”

5. Then summarize that process, if you like, in the Comments. The main idea here is to put a little time between the initial reading and the Comments phase. The overriding question is something like, “How did this story do whatever work it did on me?” And our aspiration is to be as specific, exact, and technical as we can be.

6. In a subsequent post, I’ll pick out a few things that might be worth mentioning about the story.

On another (happy) topic - many of you have generously donated scholarships to Story Club. There were over a hundred (100!) of these donated, which is wonderful. Last week I had a chance to get into it a little and handed out about fifty of these. I was able to honor every request received. I wish I could share with you some of these notes - they were really touching and awarding the scholarships felt like, to paraphrase Raymond Carver, a “small, good thing.”

One procedural note: to award the scholarship, I have to have the recipient’s email address, and there are a few of you of whom I requested this information but haven’t yet received it. (The awkwardness of that sentence right there, and the fact that it took me three attempts to get it even to that level of awkward) is why I fled tech writing.)

Also, given that we still have around fifty of these left to award, my thought is that, for now, we might hold off on making any further donations, generous as you all have been. Let’s figure out the best way to distribute these that we already have in hand before we start seeking more…

So, I’d like to request a second round of recommendations. The main thing is, the person you recommend should be 1) interested, and 2) genuinely need the help. I love the idea of drawing in people who read and writes but might not normally find his or her way to something like this. Also, if any of you have a genuine need, feel free to recommend yourselves. My dream would be that nobody who is really interested in what we’re doing here will get left behind when the paywall goes up.

Recommendations can be emailed to me at storyclubwithgeorge@substack.com.

Please include your thoughts on the person’s interest and need, and his or her email address. It would also be interesting and labor-saving to get ourselves in connection with organizations that, for example, are involved with young people and writing. We have a feeler out to 826, for example. Ideally, we would systematize this so that, as new donations come in, they get assigned right away to a pre-screened and worthy person.

And thank you all so much.