Category Archives: Learning to write

October 13, 2014 · 12:26 pm

Okay, So What Did I Learn about NOT Writing a Failed Novel?

I’ve already written about some of the things I learned: Listen to your characters. Assume that you’ll be the one bailing when the ship starts to sink. Be in a position to pull out (e.g., have a day job) if there’s no hope: you gain nothing by having a bad book to your name. Use the resources available to you if you’re lucky enough to have some: for example, if dangerous channels need to be navigated, let your agents steer; that’s what you’re paying them for. Give editors the benefit of the doubt (just as you should your writing teachers: writing—and figuring out what to tell people about their writing—is HARD).

But here are Nos. 1, 2, and 3:

  1. Get feedback
  2. Get feedback
  3. Get feedback

Of course, that lesson learned begs several questions.

  • Where can you get this magical feedback?
  • Can feedback really make your book work?
  • What is good feedback? How can you recognize it?
  • Should you be a slave to feedback (after all, it is your book)?

One thing at a time.

How to get feedback? I’m offering my experiences, interested in hearing from others. Maybe you’ve been where I have, maybe you’ve been somewhere better. I haven’t yet participated in online groups; when I do (soon), I’ll report on that.

In the meantime, I’ve previously written about face-to-face writing groups, their virtues and limitations—especially for a novelist. It helps to speculate as well that a writing group can get too large. Yesterday ten people instead of the usual six or seven showed up for our regular three-hour session. People voluntarily cut their submissions in half, but we barely had time to nibble around the edges of what we wanted to say. But most cities have multiple writing groups, each with a different culture. I’ll never be without one again.

You can ask your colleagues to read for you: people whose expertise you recognize and whose views you respect—and who like the kind of writing you do and actually read in that genre. Beware: it’s terrifying. Continue reading →

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September 28, 2014 · 12:10 pm

Quick Digression: On Thinking about Criticism of Our Work

I came across an article in today’s New York Times, “Learning to Love Criticism” by a writer named Tara Mohr. She is meditating on a study that found that in performance reviews on the job, women receive many more (and more personal) criticisms than do men. The column discusses strategies for defusing the debilitating pain of such challenges to a person’s sense of self-worth and to the value of her work. It occurred to me as I read that some of her points might apply to writers of all genders, in particular this passage.

Women [and others faced with negative reactions from critics of their work] can also benefit from interpreting feedback as providing information about the preferences and point of view of the person giving the feedback, rather than information about themselves. In other words, a negative reaction from five investors doesn’t tell a woman anything about the quality of her business idea or her aptitude for entrepreneurship; it just tells her something about what those investors are looking for.

And if those five investors love her pitch? That also doesn’t tell her about her merit as an entrepreneur; it tells her about what they are looking for in an investment. In other words, feedback is useful because it provides insight about the people we want to reach, influence and engage. With that reframing, women can filter which feedback they need to incorporate to achieve their aims, without the taxing emotional highs and lows.

I like here the idea that criticism allows us to classify the different audiences we’re reaching, to determine whether there is an audience for what we’re doing, and to make practical decisions based on those assessments. For example, if I dare open a chapter with a line of reflection by a character, one member of my group, trained in an action-action-only-action school, always crosses it out. The advice above allows me to recognize that I’m not writing the kind of book he’s ever likely to read. When others don’t attack the offending sentence, I can assume there are other audiences with other philosophies of effective prose.

Yet there are dangers. Continue reading →

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September 18, 2014 · 5:49 pm

What Not To Do: Don’t Write Alone II

In the 1980s and ’90s, there were no Internet forums for people to share their work.

There were writers’ groups. I just didn’t realize how much I needed one.

Having joined one during grad school and having now been a regular participant in a very good writers’ group in the city of my university employment for some years, I can compile lists of what to expect and what not to expect from a writers’ group. Since this is (at present, anyway) about what not to do, here is a do not:

Do not expect a writers’ group to tell you how good your work really is. Some people’s experiences may lead them to conclude that this advice is incorrect because someone in their group definitely DID tell them how wonderful or how lousy their work is. But in a good group, by my definition, you won’t find out the answer to that question.

Because in a good group, a) members support each other, which will lead them to say many nice things; and b) in a good group, members support each other, which will prevent them from saying many potentially painful but possibly true things. I believe that you can get enough uniform enthusiasm to persuade you that your group really does like what you’re doing, but with all due respect to the best of groups, like mine, group members are not agents or publishers and use very different criteria to click “Like.”

Do not number 2: Do not expect global feedback on your novel, especially if it is a mystery. Check back to see whether you agree with my reasons for this claim.

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September 15, 2014 · 10:36 am

No Writer Writes Alone. . . .

Maybe I got an unusual implicit education: that some writers are just geniuses, that if you’re one of these geniuses, your genius will show in the brilliance of your words. Or maybe I wasn’t the only one implicitly nudged to think this. I actually had a student write something like this to me at one point, in a creative writing class at my university: something along the lines of “writing is about showing your genius to the world.”

So, what if the world doesn’t acknowledge your genius? Is the world wrong? Or are you just meant not to write?

Here’s something I wasn’t trained to think in those days, a favorite quotation that I found in a wonderful book by the neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. It’s from Alberto Manguel, The History of Reading, and appears as an epigraph to chapter 1:

The existence of the text is a silent existence, silent until the moment in which a reader reads it. Only when the able eye makes contact with the markings on the tablet does the text come to active life. All writing depends on the generosity of the reader.

“All writing depend on the generosity of the reader”! Who woulda thunk it?

I suppose it does occur to most of us, in that we want that reader to lend–no, gift–us his or her attention. And what a precious gift. I told my students over and over, “When someone takes the time to read what you’ve written, they’re giving you something you can never give back: their time. Be thankful to anyone who takes the time to read your work with care and make serious comments, for better or worse.”

(Be thankful even to teachers who write comments on your text or about it. Sure, they get paid, but not nearly enough. Especially when you meet with a student in conference to discuss her writing and ask, “Did my comments make sense?” and the answer is “I didn’t read those.” In a way, that’s another blog. In a way.)

My point here, which I relearn every day, is that writing of any kind is something that happens between a writer and a reader. The trick is finding ways to make that between happen. And in the 1970s and 1980s, it was quite a trick. At which I failed.

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September 12, 2014 · 12:59 pm

Since This is about What Not to Do. . . .

Here’s a basic truth I learned about fiction writing itself (and about how not to write a failed novel): When your characters tell you they don’t want to do something, listen. Don’t make them do something when they’re screaming No!

In my failed novel (at least the one I’ve written most about here), my plot, to which I was inextricably wedded, required my two main characters to have passionate, illicit sex about three quarters of the way through the book. I spent many lives trying to get them to the point where that moment felt right. It never did, but I stomped my foot and made them do it anyway.

At the time, I thought I was writing about how the drives of sex in combination with desperate emotional need could cause people to act irrationally, to get in all kinds of trouble when they knew better. Since I consider this tendency a basic human truth, you’d think my characters would have said, “Sure, we get what you want people to think. Stand back.” But the book’s critics–and the important reviewers were definitely critics–called the actions of my male protagonist “stupid.” Actually, he thought so, too.

My editor told me, “The chemistry feels wrong.” I  knew she was giving me good advice: it was wrong. But I was lost in a project beyond my then-powers (possibly beyond any powers I’ll ever have), and I was working in total isolation.

Working in total isolation: that’s Thing Not To Do #2.

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July 20, 2013 · 5:29 pm

How I Got Here, Next Step: The Plot Develops Lumps as It Thickens

I’ve tried to recall the problems that kept my 700-page ms. from getting snapped up for a hefty advance. I suspect it had to do with “700-page ms.” It was clear that the book was going to take work to get in shape. It takes a special editor to want to put in that kind of work. Out of the blue one day, that special editor called me.

L and J had sent him my 700 pages. He couldn’t wait to get going on them. His first instructions: change the ending. No argument, just do it. His second: cut 200 pages.

I use this account in my classes, even expository writing classes. He was going to publish my book. I said, “Yes, sir.”

So how do you know when to say “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am” and when to argue? Lord help me, I don’t know. I do know that in that case, I had no choice. First novel, major publisher, erudite editor who said he “pulled all-nighters” with my book and who wrote me 30-page letters exploring its strengths and pushing me to think about its weaknesses: in fact, he was a teacher of the art of writing commercially viable fiction, and I wish I had known enough to practice everything I learned from him.

He said something along the lines of (I have the actual letter with the exact quote in my university office) “There’s enough wonderfulness here for four books. We need to decide which of the four is the best and save all the rest for some other time.” He said, “I’m going to show you how to tighten by doing the first 40 pages for you. Then I want you to follow my example on the rest.” I show those pages, with those big slash marks across whole pages, to my students. I show them my own slash marks, following his example. He said, “If a scene’s just repeating the work you’ve already done somewhere else and telling readers what they already know, get rid of it.” He showed me how to give scenes and dialogue their own internal life, what screenwriters call “beats.” I learned how to find the lines that carried the weight and slice out the shaky bridges between them.

I can’t tell you how much better that book became.

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December 2, 2012 · 7:14 pm

Quick point

J and L made so little money off me that I am truly glad they even took the time to do what they did. They made 15%. I assure you they did not retire on that. I owe them much. I just wish I had called on them more and perhaps more insistently. I think I could have learned a great deal that I did not. I think they could have saved me some heartache if I had just asked.

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