By: Nicole Diseker
Staff writer
In today’s busy society it’s easy to put things off. We put things off, telling ourselves we’ll do certain tasks tomorrow or someday. Sometimes people just have to make the time to try something new and put their full effort into it.
SE adjunct instructor Ray Gaskin decided to jump head first into the world of writing. After winning a flash fiction contest for his story, “Table for One,” he has decided to fully pursue his passion.
Gaskin’s story won first place out of 56 applicants from around the country in The Oklahoma Writers’ Federation annual writing contest.
The winners were announced in May at the annual OWF conference, held in Norman
To be eligible, writers had to be dues-paying members of the OWF. Writers were allowed one entry per category, which, in Gaskin’s case, was Flash Fiction.
Flash Fiction is generally limited a maximum of 500 words or less.
Gaskin began writing short stories two years ago.
“I’ve always been interested in writing. I’d just never really done a lot of it,” said Gaskin, “I think what really precipitated it was, for a number of years I had an idea for a screenplay. Two years ago, I finally budgeted the time and I wrote a screenplay.”
The screenplay took about four months to write, an additional month to revise and edit numerous times, and finally Gaskin felt he’d created something he could be proud of.
The next few steps would prove to be more complicated than he expected.
“I’d never really given much thought to just how difficult it is to get an agent, much less get a producer or a film maker to even look at it,” said Gaskin.
Having spent part of his career in advertising sales, Gaskin felt he had an idea of where to get started.
“I got on the Internet, searched around,” he said “I thought I’d be able to cut through the red tape and take care of these things myself.”
He was in for a rude awakening.
He couldn’t get phone calls returned. When he did, he said they were pretty gruff, not giving him the time of day.
“It was much more difficult than I thought it was going to be,” said Gaskin.
Through a friend, Gaskin was introduced to someone who had a connection in Hollywood with a talent agency that did work with producers in studios. They agreed to give it a look, exciting Gaskin greatly, but his excitement was short lived.
“When it came back to me, they had panned it pretty hard,” he said “except that the person who reviewed it did say that I had the nucleus of something there.”
Gaskin decided at that point to rip it all up and start from scratch. He stayed with the same theme, beginning his second screenplay.
“It is complete now. I have not started trying to get it read again, but I’m going to do that very soon. I have a lot more confidence than I did before,” said Gaskin with a smile.
The screenplay is currently entered in a couple of writing contests, leaving Gaskin anxious for some feedback.
“Once I find out what happened there I’m going to re-contact the people that read it before,” he said.
Very few screenplays written are made into movies, but Gaskin seems determined to have his considered.
He’d read in a publication called Writers Digest that aspiring writers must write every day, and a great place to start is with short stories.
This influenced him to take a step back and start smaller.
He began by writing several short stories and entering them in various competitions. Some of them provided critiques.
“The best stories are those that have some twists and turns and keep the reader in suspense until the end,” said Gaskin, “In this case, it’s short. There’s not much time for any guessing.”
The story ends abruptly, and that’s the point.
Gaskin said the characters have to literally come alive in one’s head, and that a writer must be a spokesperson for their characters.
“They have to have their own personalities and characteristics. And you have to describe those sufficiently to a reader, in order for them to begin to understand and empathize and relate to the characters,” he said, “It may look easy on the surface, but it’s really very difficult.”
Flash fiction can be complicated. With only 500 words to create an entire story, the writer has to keep the reader truly gripped until the end.
“If it’s the right idea, and it’s unique, and you’ve got a pretty good understanding of where you’re going, you can turn something out pretty quick,” said Gaskin.
The judge of the flash fiction contest gave him a critique saying that Gaskin had really grabbed him with this writing.
The prize for winning the OWF competition was a cash prize, enough money to take his wife out to dinner he said, a certificate for framing and the confidence to continue writing.
“I was kind of on cloud nine,” said Gaskin, “I don’t think there’s anything that’s any harder on the face of the earth than writing good fiction.”
Gaskin is currently writing a non-fiction book.
“It’s based on some personal experiences growing up in small-town America in what I would call the Elvis Generation,” he said. “I’m shooting for something that can be targeted at a particular demographic with a particular background,” said Gaskin specifically, “The stories I will tell, many of them can relate to.”
The book is about coming of age in the small town of Heavener.
“It’s full of episodes of things that happen. Some of them are funny, some of them aren’t,” he said, “Late nights, cars, hangin’ out, sneakin’ out. I’m aiming for something that will be entertaining.”
His goal is to have the story finished by the end of the year.