Reading:
- "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?", by William Gay
- The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
- "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 25%
- "The Revenant"
- "Cora and the Sea" - Third draft 50%
"I don't get it."
Those were the words spoken at least fifty times by the Janet (name changed), leader of a new writers' group I tried out tonight. You can't beat the location, at the local Borders just a few hundred yards from home. I spotted the advertisement on the door nearly two weeks ago, but circumstances (i.e., Miami) conspired to keep me away until tonight.
The Long Island Writers' Guild, which I have mentioned before, is a cozy little gathering. I'm not saying that there is no active criticism, but the comments tend to be general in tone and non-confrontational to a fault. Whenever I read a story, I walk away with a damn good ego-stroking.
This group was different from the start. The LIWG is not really leader-focused. It's more peer oriented, with the greatest part of the discussion generated by the comments of the other members. Tonight, Janet was very much in control. She began with a long monologue, addressed mainly to me, about why everything that I had been doing in my writing and my attempts to get published was entirely wrong.
I would have been more inclined to listen to her advice if I had had a chance to tell her about my writing and my attempts to get published.
Pretty much, it was the conversational equivalent of Plinko. You remember that game from The Price is Right, with that big board with all the pegs? You would drop a chip in the top, and it would bounce at random down along the pegs before finally settling into a slot at the bottom. The conversation just kind of bopped along, and the questions she asked (and my interrupted answers) seemed to have no real bearing on what happened next or what advice was given.
Although I had said that I wanted to write fiction, she suggested that I do freelance non-fiction. When I reaffirmed that I liked fiction, she warned me that people rarely wind up writing the kind of prose that they intend to. Oh, and the idea of writing stories that you want to write and find a magazine for them is "a rookie move," and that you stand a better chance of getting published if you pick a magazine and write the kind of story they want.
That's probably true, but it also defeats my purpose for writing. Dunno, maybe I'll change my mind when I'm not a rookie. But when she said "don't worry about writing what you enjoy," my mind just shut down.
After this barrage, the critique started, and it was unlike anything I had experienced before. It started out normal, though. I read my story aloud to the group. I had picked "Cora and the Sea," since it had recently been edited, and I had recently read it. It was fresh in my mind, not too long, and appropriate for almost any group.
"Hmmm... very creative." That was a good start. I looked around at the non-Janet faces. They were staring into the middle distance. They knew it wasn't their turn to speak. Janet spoke again. "But I don't get it."
"What don't you get?" I asked, and she answered.
The answer, it turned out, was everything. She seized on the most minute details. Sometimes the language was too archaic for her. Sometimes the vocabulary was too advanced. (Although really, who hasn't heard the word "wraith" before? Honestly!) Sometimes she just hadn't paid attention. How could she be so dense?
Over the next two hours, we went through the story paragraph by paragraph, word by word. The list of stuff she didn't get grew mountainous. The arrogance of her approach initially put me off, and I nearly laughed out loud when she accused me of arrogance about half an hour in. (In case you're wondering, I had told her that, although you should make at attempt to have a story accessible to a wide audience, I didn't think you should write for the lowest common denominator either.)
After an hour, though, I found more of her comments to agree with. I have readily acknowledged that there were aspects of that story that needed work. Among the detritus of unwarranted "I don't get it"s, there were some that were completely justified. Of those, some took just a word, and others will require entirely new paragraphs.
At some point Janet and I discovered common ground, and suddenly, things changed. She was no longer so antagonistic about her criticisms. And instead of taking offense, I began to benefit even from the most superficial "I don't get it." By the end of the evening, my story had been torn to shreds, but the pieces will make a much stronger whole, once I've had a chance to digest them.
And I learned something about myself, too. I can take the harshest criticism in the world in stride as long as I respect the critic. And I will take offense at the slightest comment when I have no respect for the critic.
Janet gave a bad first impression, or at the very least, that's how I took it. But for all her obtuseness, she knows her stuff as an editor, and I did come to respect her. I went from wishing the evening were over to anticipating the next meeting--on September 9th, so check out my blog post then for the sequel.
I think I also learned the value of such focused and directed obtuseness. In fact, that might even be the mark of a good editor.
Publication Status:
- Submitted: 5
- Accepted: 1
- Rejected: 1
- Pending: 3
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