I began writing fiction seriously about seven years ago, after landing my first job in academia. I always wanted to be a writer, but that didn't seem very practical. I happened to be a good student, so I staid in grad school to earn a Ph.D. in literature (as if THAT were practical). While working on my dissertation, I realized I REALLY wanted to be a writer, so I began taking fiction-writing courses at Ohio State with the fee-waver granted to grad students. Just after getting my first academic job, I started writing fiction in earnest, and now that's all I want to do. As my interest and experience with writing have increased, my approach to teaching literature has changed. I find myself often slightly irritated with critical theory (one of my loves in graduate school), and I often focus student discussion on the mechanics of a story. Why does this story work? Why is there a flashback here? How does the writer get out of the flashback? Why this point of view? What is the complication, and what resolution is offered? How is this character captured and revealed? I think these very fundamental, practical questions often teach students how to be close readers of stories more than any critical theory we as scholars attempt to impose on a "text." In a sense, this approach is a type of practical "formalism," but I usually just call it, "seeing with the eyes of a writer."

The story "Norm Denton's Kid, 1972" began as a very autobiographical piece about my friendship with my best child-hood friend, whose nickname was "Dinken," (which was the working title of the story). The story originally focused on myself (re-named Matt in the story) and Dinken (re-named Chris Denton). However, as the story evolved in revision, the presence of Matt (myself) was reduced, until finally I cut myself out of the story entirely. With nobody to call Chris Denton his nickname, Dinken, the story's title had to change, as did the focus of the story. Eventually, all that was factual was cut out of the story, and the story is now pure fiction. Certainly, Chris Denton has similarities to my child-hood friend (both have alcoholic, blind fathers) , but I totally fictionalized the events that dramatize the internal and external conflicts. My child-hood friend was visiting me last year, and I read the story to him. He enjoyed the story, but saw little resemblance to himself. He denied that he ever had any desire to connect with his father in 1972, but in the story, this desire is central to the character; it is this desire that gives the story momentum, purpose and direction. So, in the process of writing the story--in order for the story to take shape--I had to give Chris Denton desires that my friend (the "real" Chris Denton) does not remember having. I find that this happens often in my stories. The laws of fiction simply do not allow for very much autobiography or "fact." There are certain requirements of story that cause a writer to make difficult choices about focus, purpose, direction, character. The revision process for me is often a process of writing myself out of the story. With "Norm Denton's Kid," this "writing out" was literal as I took out a character based on myself. But with almost every story, I find I have to write out and discard my own agenda to allow the "story" to take shape according to the laws of narrative.