Introduction

Once upon a time there was a young artist who loved writing as much as she loved to draw. As a teenager, she took a creative writing class one summer. She started writing a story about a girl who was a lot like her. Then, unexpectedly, she found herself consumed by it. She spent the next 8 years of her life in service to the short story that grew into a novel, then transformed into a screenplay. She was a good host to her literary parasite. While all her friends were being normal high school kids, she worked on her story. And while all of them were being normal college students, she adapted it into a screenplay.

It was a peculiar sort of madness, an exquisitely painful obsession. All she had was her story, and her story had her. Her characters were her mind's constant companions. Art can be a cruel mistress. Then one day when the girl had grown into a young woman, she reached the end of the screenplay. She turned it in for her thesis project, and for her efforts, she received a Bachelor's Degree.

Now that she was all grown up, she had to find a job. Everyone told her that no one would hire her with only a Bachelor's degree in her field. They said she would be better off getting an additional degree.

And so this was how she came to enroll in a Master's in Fine Arts program in Fiction Writing. Unfortunately, when she arrived, she was all out of story ideas. The creative fires in her mind had completely burned out and she did not have another story in her. Which was quite unfortunate, as she was expected to write another novel in order to graduate. These stories, vignettes, and memoirs are all that remains of that ill-fated journey cut short by a debilitating bout of writer's block.

Hers is a land of forestalled hopes, a city of hijacked dreams, a place where best-laid plans get crushed by the weight of other people's expectations. Staring into this void and longing for the abyss, she feels nothing but nausea and despair. Her face registers nothing but ennui and regret. She is the Tragedienne.

©2008 Tiffany Gholar

featured in the December 12, 2008 Just Write Blog Carnival