And I think what Tarwater is complaining about–hell with that, I’M complaining about workshops in which that is the standard of craftsmanship. If everyone is bringing little baggies of dogshit into the workshop, and everyone else is saying kind and gentle appreciations of how cute that baggie of dogshit is tied up, then the rare person who’s working hard and presenting only carefully revised stuff is the one whose time and effort is being wasted. Sadly, all too common, especially among beginning writers.
My wife wonders why I won’t share what I’m writing with her. And as I’ve politely explained, “You don’t like the genre I’m writing in, and you don’t understand it.”
You may know what you’re trying to say, but it takes other people to figure out if you’re really saying it.
What you’re writing in this thread, again, strikes me as the sort of thing people say when they want writing to be something mystical and precious rather than the product of hard work and the process of elimination.
I’m not getting the same thing from your posts and Tarwater’s.
That’s a problem of the workshop, not the problem of the writer who is bringing in “dogshit.” Beginning writers–well, a lot of writers–have absolutely zero sense of their own work. They are incapable of being objective. If you tell a new author to never bring in anything less than perfection, they’re going to freeze with terror and probably never show their work to anybody for any reason. That doesn’t help anybody. To me, it reads as absolutely meaningless advice that won’t do anything except make people afraid to show their work.
What you’re talking about is something that is systematic of too many workshops, and has nothing to do with how revised your work is before you bring it in. Too many people who sign up for workshops and creative writing classes want validation. But more importantly, people are afraid to hurt other people’s feelings. There’s this bizarre belief that everybody who churns out any sort of crap should be handled with kidgloves, and this belief goes under the heading of respect, though it’s really not. I would suggest finding a workshop that’s something more than a weekly circlejerk, rather than hiding your work away and refusing to get feedback until you have a “finished” piece–whatever that means.
I’m spending way too much time talking about this. But okay. Let’s try this.
When David Foster Wallace was in college, his creative work was almost universally deplored by his teachers and fellow students. He would turn in a story, and after he got it back, attached to it would be a note written by his instructor that said, basically: “We hope this isn’t the type of writing you’re going to produce. We’d hate to fail you, but if this is what you’re giving us I really don’t see how we have a choice.”
And then he published his first novel while he was still in school. It was hailed as being one of the most inventive novels of its time, and it received significant attention from the literary community, almost all of it good. His professors were now praising him. They were sending him their manuscripts, asking for feedback.
The problem was this. His teachers wanted work of a certain dimension; they wanted it to deal with themes and characters they themselves would write about. It didn’t fit their definition of good writing. It didn’t jibe with their groupthink mentality.
Receiving constructive feedback is one thing; allowing other people to write your novel for you is something entirely different, and it’s often difficult or impossible to tell the difference between the two. I’ve been to graduate workshops all over the country, and I can tell you with no uncertainty that writers are among the most narrow-minded people in the world. They’ll attempt to impose themselves on your work, and if you’re showing it prematurely or without a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish with the piece, they will succeed.
This Ira Glass Video might be interesting for you.
These are people who have no business in any productive workshop. They need writing classes, lots of them, where they will get sharp practical vital criticism from any semi-competent writig instructor. Only after getting their manuscripts severely critque do they generally begin to assimilate the raw essentials of presenting a manuscript for criticism, and only then are they going to get anything at all out of a workshop other than wasting people’s time.
But they see “Writing Workshop” and they go “Hey! I’m a writer! That’s what I need!” and they think that’s where you go to learn the basics. Too often, because there are so many of them, it turns out to to be true.
I can’t agree less. For every author — or poet, or playwright — who is the brilliant revolutionary to whom rules apply not, who can leap intuitively into the great artistic beyond without discipline or training, there are five hundred of them who only believe they can do so and would, in fact, seriously injure themselves on a pair of parentheses.
I am a firm believer in the axiom that one should know the rules before one sets out to break them.
Well my advice is - write like you did in the OP. I found it perfectly readable and your voice engaging enough the read the post.
Their are hundreds of books on how to write. I know two people who claim that reading Elizabeth George’s Write Away got them over the hump. And Stephen King’s On Writing is just a great read.
You can’t ever stop the little voice in your head, sort of radio free Stauderhorse, but you can learn to just acknowledge the negative messages and get on with what you intended doing.
There are a million different ways and one will work. Maybe NaNoWriMo next year will free you up. Have a look and start planning.