Tonight was class 3 of the UNM Continuing Education course, “Writing Short Stories”, with Robert Gish.

As usual, as soon as Dr. Gish entered the classroom, his anecdotes began, followed by a barrage of review questions about the last two sessions. Naturally, his questions were meant to dredge up in my elastic brain correct short answers immediately. When I was the target of his specific questions, I just shrugged my shoulders and sat mute. I felt like I had not heard him talk about 90% of those answers before, but then again, when I have tried to take notes in this class in the first two sessions, I always ended up behind, lost, and missing chunks of important data.

I survived the questioning, and we went on to review the distinction of short stories read in the last two weeks, and to discuss the meaning of tonight’s story, Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, which, naturally, I forgot to read before class, and then I was sweating again. I scanned it as he offered a preamble to the discussion, but I avoided direct questions this round and survived the story review in tact.

I talk about Gish’s questioning approach to teaching as an “on the spot” challenge, but in reality, because the class is not for credit, it is a great technique for pushing his students to remember and to digest past lessons. I began to try and take notes again on this old information, but I gave up. Tonight I felt like a body surfer standing on a beach underneath the falling first wave of a tsunami.

Our main assignment for the class, though, was to bring a rough draft of our short story assignment for the course. After about an hour of class time, the class was split into two groups of five, and each group circled up and each person had a chance to read a section of their draft to their classmates. everything I heard was pretty good in my group. One man, a lawyer by day, writes a strongly descriptive transcript of events at the site of an accident in downtown Houston one summer day. Another writes about the impact of a character having his brain transferred to a body made of machinery, transforming the nature of his consciousness. A third writes about a protagonist computer guy who works in a corporation for a horrendous boss, and how he exacts his revenge. A gal writes a story about a husband and wife who, at one time star employees in a big bank in Chicago, end up living out of their cars.

On my turn, asked by Gish to share a little of my story, and after my own preface stating I am at war with story crafting because I cannot find or develop good ideas, I give then the first two paragraphs of “Mr. March”, which does not get them at all into the meat or import of the story. He asks me how the story ends. Instead of reading it to him, I summarize it. He likes the voices of my characters. He asks me if I have read Carver, because my style has a tone like his, and inside I take that as a compliment, because Carver is writes simple, ordinary, economically, with subtle reveals along the way.

But that’s the extent of my in class review.

Gish sees we’re done with a half-hour left in class time according to the schedule. “Is it okay if I let you out early? Is everyone okay with that?”

I had a few good, honest laughs tonight at a few of his stories, and I had my head filled by him in the first 15 minutes of class. I truly enjoy hearing him talk about writing, authors, events, and experiences he’s had (each of which he knows plenty well), and wish I had a good hour just to sit and ask him questions about his writing career.

But yeah- I am okay at calling it a night early tonight.