By Rebecca Wickstrom
Gary Carrison decided that she was destined to go through life as an exposed nerve-she”s sensitive and everything makes her cry.
She went to college in New York, but after the spring term of her sophomore year, she decided her academic career was over.
“It isn”t a good idea for me to be out there cutting classes to sit around my room having feelings,” she told her mother.
She enjoyed her classes, but all they inspired in her were feelings that she didn”t want to deal with.
So begins the short story “Gary Carrison”s Wedding Vows” by Ron Carlson, professor of English at Arizona State University, who spoke at the weekly English Department Reading Series on Tuesday, Oct. 28 in the Harold B. Lee library auditorium.
Carlson, a Utah native and University of Utah graduate, is an award-winning writer who has been published in prestigious journals and anthologies, including “The Norton Anthology of Short Stories.”
He read an original story and shed some light on writing fiction to students and faculty during the reading series.
Bruce Jorgensen, associate professor of creative writing at BYU, praised Ron Carlson during his introduction.
“Ron is one of the living short story writers who constantly gives me pleasure; pleasure in the shapes of his sentences, the way they sound, the way they feel; pleasure in his characters; pleasure in his stories,” Jorgensen said. “He”s one of the few living writers that can make me laugh out loud.”
But Carlson admits that he loves teaching first and foremost.
“I am a teacher who writes stories,” he said.
He explained some of the methods he uses to write stories.
“At any point when you are halfway through a story you look back at page one, at your inventory,” he said. “Somewhere in there is a facet of your ending. An ending doesn”t come along as a surprise-that is to say unbidden-it comes along as a surprise from the things you created.”
Carlson used his story about Gary Carrison to illustrate the point.
“I wanted to write a very sensitive girl,” he said. “I have friends and we”ve all had moments like this when the world is too much and I thought I”d put it all in one person.”
He also explained the method behind the setting of his story.
“I wanted to create a very powerful place-a sense of water, a sense of the mountains,” he said. “I wanted a real place. Place is terribly important as a writer. I use it to find out where I”m going. I don”t use it to decorate where I already know I am going.”
Carlson encouraged students to give every character in their story an agenda.
“Characters are not in the story for me,” he said. “A person is in the story because I”m trying to find something out from them, and I don”t mean this in any magical way. The characters aren”t going to write your story, but by paying attention to them and using empathy, you”ll find some things out.”
Carlson also explained that the keys to good writing are attention and focus.
“Writing requires attention-you can”t do it with your left hand on your way to class,” he said. “Every day I want to leave the room [I”m writing in]. I think to myself that maybe I”ll be smarter in the kitchen. Then I say to myself, ”Why don”t you stay there 20 more minutes?””
