Experienced an amazing reading/critique for one my short stories with a group of writers via ZOOM. Some highlights of the many things said were as follows... almost everyone who commented felt immediately a need to tell me how honest the piece was. One woman stated that although the material was not something she usually would choose to read, she felt safe reading the story, remained engaged and mid-way into reading my work she felt a need to 'Google' me, which moved me and blew me away, too. In general the style of what I do was discussed regarding stream of consciousness and the truncated use of prose (like poems) in addition to the incoherence of a conventional structure of narrative storytelling technique. My use of 'submersion' by physically integrating myself into the material was compared to Method Acting, and the use of an actual typewriter to write the story (with all of the unintended typos) was explained and the group felt like the story could easily be presented as a hanging fine art piece in a museum gallery setting. The story's 'unreliable narrator' also came into discussion and I never was able (or desired) to reveal to narrator's true identity making the story's end, like poetry, open to multiple interpretations.
typing on my Smith-Corona
