Best of Week: Cathedral

It's hard to choose a specific "Best of Week" moment for this week because we had a couple days of very valuable discussion about Cathedral. My classmates came up with some great ideas about the last line of the story, and also about the transition from short, blunt sentences to more elaborate description and back to short sentences. It's a great learning experience to make note of these writing techniques. It gives me ideas about how to write my short story, though I'm not sure I'll be able to have quite the effect Raymond Carver had. Still, though, it's very helpful for me to have an idea of what I should be aiming for when I write my short story. I have learned that actions speak louder than words in short fiction; it's better to show an emotion than to just say it. I hope that as we talk about more short stories, I will be able to notice some of these writing techniques and I will get better at effectively applying them to my own writing. It's really amazing to read works of such amazing authors; I can't tell if they were born good writers or if it takes practice. Probably a little bit of both... though I hope for my sake it's more of the latter. I'm looking forward to more great discussion this week!