Coincidentally, again about war.

Thursday 25th April, I attended a book reading event of the English house on 10th St. There, the book "Fire and Forget" was presented and three different stories was read by three of the writers. The book is a collection of short stories, each written by a different author. "Fire and Forget" is the product of a workshop held at the English house during which veterans expand their writings through workshops. In this one, they decided to come together to write different stories.

The firs story was set in Hawaii, with a soldier about to set off to war. The second, was about a soldier returning home to his wife. The third, was guard duty in Iraq. What I found interesting was that none of the three stories presented illustrated warfare directly, but rather, the relationships between people, such as a soldier and his wife and soldiers and the locals.

The styles were really interesting but I learned most of what I could utilise in my own work, through the Q&A session afterwards.

The writers felt better working together in a group, reading each other their stories as they were working on them. They liked this because it kept their stories grounded in reality. They were able to call each other out on the "bull shit" they may have inadvertently brought up in their story. That is, something that may never have in war.

Their writing was also something like a little therapy session for each of them as they used it to help themselves come to terms witht he war, an to help themselves with adjusting to life as a civilian once more. One of the stories brought up how human touch, just giving your wife a hug, can become something so foreign when all you've known is the feel of your gear, weapons and ammo against your body for weeks and months on end.

Finally, a question was asked about memories and how they affected the writing. This i found most intriguing because one of the answer given by the three presenting writers was that sometimes, when writing from your memory, you can blur your memory so that you're not sure which one happened. You can be convinced you story happened even though it never occurred yet pulled elements from the original event. However, using your memories and experiences have proved to be great writing material, though they cautioned that it should used carefully.

This was the reading event I attended. In a way, it was similar to other one I attended, Our Man In Iraq, where both books seemed to focus on the psychological effects of war, yet they came from very different perspectives. All in all, as great as I found the readings, I felt as if I learned more from the discussions that followed, especially when the writers talked about how the wrote their stories.