Sam Edmonds brought up something in his last post that I’ve been struggling with, too:  Aboutness.  When does a piece of writing cease to be a narrative and become an essay?  I’m not saying I’ve learned when that happens, because everyone who’s ever workshopped me knows I’m still getting to that part.  What I have learned, just to show I’m not a complete non-erudite, is how to craft sentences, to make them sound just as good out loud as they do in my head.  I think I have an affinity for rhythm, repetition, punctuation, and diction.  So I can tell a story really prettily, no problem.  But if you ask me what it’s really a-BOUT, I might say something cheesy like “it’s a coming of age story,” or “I was trying to create a feeling.” 

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