When I was 19 and starting my second semester of my sophomore year in college I submitted a manuscript and got accepted into Iowa’s Undergraduate Fiction Writer’s Workshop. My manuscript was one out of twenty accepted. During the semester we wrote 3 fiction stories and when we weren’t presenting and getting our stories critiqued, we were critiquing others. The spring semester was soon to be over and the university was about to explode over the increased volatility of the growing anti-Vietnam- war movement. Most people in the class were seniors trying to make the next step to getting accepted to Iowa’s prestigious Graduate Fiction Writing Workshop. I was just trying to make it thru the semester.
It was near the end of the second semester and I still had one last story to write. There were 2 guys in the class whose writing I really liked, and their critiques were usually spot on. They were both older students that had fulfilled their service in Vietnam and were now students. On the day of my last story the first gentleman critiqued it by saying he thought it was the best thing written all semester and that I ought to try and get it published. Naturally, young and naïve, I felt pretty good after his comments. Then it came to the second person. I was anxiously waiting to hear his comments and he said “this is the biggest piece of crap I ever read and it ought to be burned! It’s disgusting.” I’m not sure those were his exact words but you get the gist. Being young, and a little sensitive, I decided maybe I needed to grow mentally and get some more life experiences under my belt..
A week later our EPB Building (English Philosophy Building) was burned to the ground. The riots got out of control and we were all told to GO HOME, to just get the hell out of Dodge (Iowa City). Everything was Pass or Fail. I was probably lucky because I was not doing so well in one class. They forced everyone out and I went home and put writing on hold.
A couple years back I thought of those times and decided that I had waited long enough, 5 decades, and decided to play with my writing again, something I enjoy. I hope you enjoy some of my stories, or perhaps my feeble attempt at the artwork used for them.