Excruciating

It’s Friday, and the weekend looms ahead of me, filled with that most excruciating of experiences:  the getting of feedback.  I’ve submitted a couple of my more recent short stories to a writers’ group, and I will be hearing their unabridged opinions at our next meeting.

Feedback isn’t always pretty.  Writers’ groups contain people with a variety of experiences, opinions, and differing levels of writing and critiquing skills.  While some people like to try to understand what the writer was trying to do, and attempt to pitch their feedback accordingly, others come from the hold-nothing-back camp.  Of course, we’re all there to learn and to understand our own writing better so that we can improve it, so the forthright opinion of our peers is valuable.  But it needs to be constructive, not destructive.  It is possible to be honest without gouging out the tender roots of a beginner writer’s confidence.  

What do I mean by this?  Studies have shown that it's usually the more experienced learners who want to hear negative (but specific) feedback.  People who are just starting out welcome more positive comments, because they need the encouragement.  In a group with a variety of experience and, more importantly, confidence levels, it can be quite tricky to know which end of the continuum to pitch your comments to, so inevitably there will be some misfires.  It pays to put on your psychological flak-jacket before seeking feedback from a group, in case you’re on the receiving end of an enthusiastically well-intentioned mortar attack.

So, armed with my bullet-proof silk & mohair fingerless gloves, I have submitted two short stories for the consideration of the group. I wrote the first of them several months ago. I loved the process of writing it, and felt very pleased with the result.  Since then, the satisfied glow of completion has ebbed a little, leaving me wondering how successful it really is.  Re-reading it, I’m not sure it is as smooth as I’d first thought.  It’s short, very short, maybe painfully so.  But I think it might still contain enough cleverness and charm (and “punch”) to satisfy the reader.  

The second story is brand new, and much rawer as a result.  It started, as many of my stories do, with a single burning scene in mind, and the rest of the narrative has grown around it in misshapen concentric rings.  I’m still much too close to that interior place of creation to have any ability to judge either the story or the quality of its delivery.  In my inner eye, the salt marsh locale is beautiful, desolate, and gloomy, but I’ve described it sparingly, and maybe some readers will want more physical detail.  I do know it’s still quite rough in places, the pacing is a little clumpy, and I really need to learn a whole lot of new words that mean “grey”. 

On the other hand, some aspects of this story are quite nuanced, requiring the reader to make a leap.  I know from experience that not all readers are able or willing to do that.  Some people expect to have every last, excruciating plot point fed to them, with a disposable plastic spoon, no less.  And after a beta-reading by a family member who expressed denouement disappointment, I suspect there will be quite mixed feedback on this one.  And that is a good thing, if it helps me to understand how it is received variously in the mind of the readers.

Well, are you?

A few weeks ago, I went along to one of my writers' groups, the first I had attended in several months.  One of the writers (whose ferocious dedication to fiction and wealth of knowledge I admire enormously, and who has been a fabulous source of encouragement to me) asked me, “Are you writing at the moment?”

Am I writing?

“I’m coming off a hiatus…” I mumbled. And it’s true, sort of.  I’ve got a few half-done rough drafts stashed about the place, and plenty of ideas scribbled down here and there.  But if I’m honest, my focus has been elsewhere for much of the year.

Not that it’s a bad thing.  For starters, I’ve been on an Organising Drive.  This means spring-cleaning pretty much every facet of the domestic sphere – from containerising my storage to routinifying my family members.  OK, so it’s taken me away from my desk, but it will be a good thing in the long run.  I imagine it’s much easier to write a best-selling novel when your children can find their school socks, when your husband can find the children, and when you can find the time to write. (Hint: it’s either stuffed down the back of the lounge or jumbled up in the washing basket with the missing sock).

So, yeah.  I’m coming off a hiatus. The morning pages beckon again.   

Criticism or compliment?

Why would she ask that?  What did she mean?

So, it was Thursday, and writer’s group day again (my favourite day of the week). Our group is thriving – so much that we’ve now had to close off the membership list.  Once a month we read our themed pieces to the group, originally for feedback, but with all our keen writers, it is an increasingly cursory process.

The week’s theme was Summer Menu.  I read a strange little piece I’d concocted, in which I red-herringed the reader merrily through a scene, then kicked them with a cunning reveal right at the end.  The protagonist, it turns out, is not who the reader thinks he is, and a chilly shadow falls over the previously sunny story line.  As reveals go, it was pretty smooth, and it got a spectacular response.

A wave of exclamations rippled around the table, a good sign that the ending had its desired effect.  A couple of people complimented me on deploying the creepiness factor so well.  And then one lady piped up, “Is this part of a novel you’re writing?”

This threw me, and before I could formulate a counter-question it was time to move on.  And I’ve been stewing it over ever since.  Why would she ask that?  What did she mean? 

Was it a compliment?  Like, “Wow, that scene was so well constructed with exactly the right amount of subtext about the world outside the room, that it could have been a novel excerpt.”  Or was it a veiled criticism?  Like, “I didn’t really get the point of it, and I haven’t read a short story that takes place within a single scene, and I couldn’t recognise a beginning, middle and an ending, so clearly it has to be a fragment of a larger work because it doesn’t hang together by itself. “  

Compliment or criticism?  This is one of those times when I wish for a more detailed feedback mechanism.

I made some very deliberate choices about the structure of the piece.  I placed it entirely within a single scene, because I wanted to flesh it out rather than just narrate through a string of events.  I habitually write characters within a very interior frame, without embedding them into their physical surrounds.  This is disaster-territory for novel writing, where it’s important to show, not tell.  So I’ve been consciously working on creating settings, and moving the plot along in concrete, external ways. 

Everything in the story is there for a reason (something that I’ve been learning since coming very late but passionately to JK Rowling), but there’s no hurry to get there.  I would rather you know that my protagonist wears a cream silk cravat and has long fingers, than tell you that he was impeccably dressed or tall.  If I write enough of these sorts of scenes, it should (in theory, anyway) build the kind of skills that I need to write a first novel that is worth reading.

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter whether the story was criticised as a short piece.  Regardless of why the question was asked, it was a good sign that I’m developing the kind of tone and pacing that is suitable for longer works. 

One step closer to denouement.

Rebel

It was writer’s group day (my favourite day in the month) and one of our ex-teacher members was running a short grammar workshop for the group.  In particular she was extolling the difference between BECAUSE and AS when used as conjunctions.  She claimed that the use of AS when there was causality between the two clauses was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I wanted to jump up and run to the Style Guide to check, as I wasn’t convinced that I’d just been taught an inviolable tenet of modern English grammar.  (See what I just did?)  Sadly, I don’t have my own copy of the Style Guide.  (I’m holding off on the purchase because I hear another edition is due out soon).  So the exactitude of the claim remains unproven.  And the lesson was not well spent on me.  

It did however fire up my inner rebel.  This is the part of me that eats cold pizza for breakfast and drives against the direction arrows in shopping centre car parks, because I can.  The part of me that talks back at the telly like it’s listening, and wears granny undies as a political statement that only I know about.  It’s the slice of me that lives on the wild side, but on the inside.  It’s the glimpse of me that that surprises or even shocks the other members of the group nearly every time I read something I’ve written.  It’s the part of me that is certain it has a story to tell that the world hasn’t heard yet.

I consider this fragment of rebellion to be a useful corner of my psyche, and something that a writer should fiercely guard and promote within her or himself.  It creates a frame to peer through that shapes the landscapes beyond it, like a frost-crazed window that bends the world’s light into something beautiful.  It gifts a writer their individuality, their tiny sliver of moonlit brilliance.  It’s the difference between serving up a predictable story in cheap glassware, rather than the sleight of hand that delivers something crystalline and unexpected.  It’s the good crazy.  The one you want to drag up into your writer’s garret and tickle mercilessly until it vomits up a piece of the sky.



Crystals and Light -
Cristaux et lumiere by monteregina @ flickr