Lost For Words

A yellow / gold koi fish.

Andrea Kon finds herself tongue-tied after reading a fishy tale in class.

January 31st

Only nine of us in class today out of the original 16 which is quite good because it's a far more intimate group.

The idea of the Advanced Creative writing course is to learn by listening to, and appreciating, and offering constructive criticism of other people's work. This includes dissecting a set passage by a professional writer and today's passage was 'Yellow Fish', a short story from The Inner Courtyard: Stories by Indian Women.

'Yellow Fish' is apparently connected to turmeric, one of the most powerful and most deeply respected of all Indian herbs, and the story was certainly powerful, with tremendous emphasis on the mouth and the similies of the mouth of the fish to the mouth of a sick, premature infant and then the mouth of the urn in which it is buried. Deep stuff!

We go round the class in turn, commenting. Why can I never think of anything remotely intelligent to say when it's my turn to comment, yet afterwards all the things I should have said come flooding in.

The talent and range of imagination in this class is quite amazing as demonstrated by today's interpretations of 'signs' as a working title. How am I going to conjure anything original with a working title of 'Bricks'?

Andrea Kon is writing a weekly blog about her experience of going back to school. Check next week for her next installment.

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