Yesterday, after observing a friend of mine teach her 1030 class (not being creepy, it's a required thing for my "learning how to teach good" class and she was more than happy to help a brother out), I checked my email while eating lunch and saw something in my inbox from "Jeopardy," America's favorite way to "out" as many nerds as possible via a clever set-up in which they are asked to respond to answers in the form of questions. As you may recall, I have a long history of taking the online tests whenever they roll around every year, and a couple of years ago I even got the chance to audition at an event in New Orleans, which was awesome. I hadn't taken the test this past January, however, and I figured my life of "Jeopardy" was over.
So when they said they wanted to know if I could make it to an audition in Savannah, Georgia this upcoming April...I immediately thought "didn't Sony get hacked by the North Koreans last year?"
Because Sony owns "Jeopardy," and one can only imagine what the devious Kim Jong Un could do with my email address handy. I anticipate being asked to rate him in terms of "a great leader, or the greatest" soon.
But supposing this isn't a scam, and supposing I really do hope it isn't ( and I do), this means I'll have that to look forward to amidst a very busy semester that only promises to get busier. I got the responsibility of making sure the Lit Fest goes off without (too much of) a hitch, and while I'm not alone in that (an entire dedicated student group helping to organize the event and make sure no authors wander off too far into the native wilds of neighboring counties, thus avoiding any international incidents) I do feel a lot of responsibility towards the event. I also have two conferences that I'm planning on appearing at over the course of the next few months (one for a paper I've already written, one for a paper that I haven't). And my buddy Will is getting married, thankfully in the first weekend of May (i.e., after the end of my current semester), which means I can attend but which also means that I'm not sure I can perform the duties of groomsman that he offered to me and which I accepted late last year, before I realized that this was going to be my "busy" semester.
Thankfully, classes are going good, and I hope they continue to do so. Just so long as that bastard Foucault doesn't turn up in any of my readings...
Side note: Last week a kid brought in a short story set in a relic of another time, a video store (and he set it during the Eighties, when I was a kid whose mom worked briefly at one or two video stores). The nostalgia this evoked in me has led me to wonder if my memory of riding around the mom-and-pop video store my mom worked at in Westminster on a Big Wheel was accurate or just a misremembering brought about by my later viewing of Kubrick's The Shining. If it's a real memory, then I guess I could say I was Danny Torrance in my youth, minus the homicidal father and the psychic visions. But I do remember the old boxes that the videotapes came in, stuffed with cardboard or other material so it wouldn't fold down but still stand out on the shelves. I also remember looking through the horror section, daring myself to turn the box around and see what mayhem awaited the poor cast members of whatever half-forgotten fright flick had caught my eye. It occurs to me now that a lot of the time, the idea of the movies that I got from the images on the back of those boxes was probably scarier than the actual movie itself. Hooray for late Eighties imagination!
Also, it's Valentine's Day today, I don't have anyone to buy romantic crap for and that's okay because I've never been good at it anyway. I did ride around a bit and end up buying a Clyde Edgerton book that had once belonged to some guy named "Roland" (I know this because he wrote "Roland" in capital letters on the pages-side of the book, not the spine. Your book should be in good hands, Roland). I recently read a short story of his and thought it was funny. Clyde Edgerton, not "Roland."
Anyway, that's all I got for now, peeps.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Friday, February 6, 2015
"What If Your Protagonist Wore a Fedora?"
Last semester, I enrolled in a fiction workshop for the first time in ages. I had taken two or three during my undergrad tenure, sure that I had something important and/or funny to say and that my classmates would recognize my brilliance, praise me to the skies for my creative mind and brave approach to the heart-rending stories of the day, and carry me out on their shoulders as the "champion writer of workshop."
The fact that it's been almost ten years since I even thought about writing fiction should tell you how well that went.
In truth, though, I was arrogant, and not confident (I think of "arrogance" as unfounded confidence masking a deep insecurity, something that I imagine a lot of writers or want-to-be writers have). I didn't want to do what came naturally to me (be funny), I wanted to be serious (or Be Serious). I was trying too hard to fit into what I thought I should be writing about. Towards the end of each workshop, I broke down a little and admitted more of my own particular style into each piece, and was rewarded for it with praise. But I still thought I had to be "serious."
Since then, I've done a lot of reading, very good writers that I'd already liked (Vonnegut, Pynchon), and also new discoveries that I never anticipated or expected (Graham Greene, Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders, and so on). One of the things that I don't think gets stressed enough in most college workshops is that you have to read before you can write. This doesn't mean that you should straight-up rip off the writers you read...well, I take that back: you should absolutely rip off the writers you read, the ones that inspire you or infuriate you, whatever the case may be, because if you see something in their work that sticks with you, that makes you think, makes you weep, laugh, cry, or want to smash a wall, then they've done something right, and you'd be a fool not to try and see whether you have that in you, or if not specifically the thing that, say, makes Salinger "Salinger" or Pynchon "Pynchon," then at least something in you that needs to be said, written, digested by those around you.
Good writing will out, every time, even if you're reading something that is in a genre you don't like or understand. I think back to a workshop many years ago where a girl wrote something very much in the "chick-lit" mold, she made apologies to the guys in our class about "having to" read something like that but I thought she did a good job. In that same class, I turned in an experimental thing which was back-and-forth dialogue between a married couple, telling their daughter how they'd met as a bedtime story (I hadn't started watching How I Met Your Mother yet). One of the girls in class said that I'd somehow known the story of she and her boyfriend (now husband), and I was flabbergasted. I hadn't anticipated that something I thought was "just a story" would actually hit like that. It's a good feeling, and better than unanimous praise from the entire class about any "genius" I might have as a writer.
So I think there are some good ground rules that I'd like to lay down for fiction workshops because, truth be told, I'd love to teach one someday. Creative writing is in my blood, even if sometimes my writing isn't all that creative (you have to do the work to get good, though, so while I dismiss a lot of that work I did in the past I acknowledge how important it is that it's out there). One rule that both of my current workshop teachers have stressed and that I would do so as well: try to find the positive before you find the negative in someone's work. Remember: a lot of the time, the people doing the workshop aren't professional writers, they're new to this or at least not published yet and so a lot of the time you will run into the "praise me, please" aspect of workshopping. Don't be afraid to point out mistakes in grammar or what you think doesn't work in a story, just don't be too harsh about it. A certain amount of sugarcoating is necessary in order for any advice you give to be taken seriously. I've been guilty of being too harsh sometimes, and I'm human, so I'm guessing if I really thought something was bad I'll say so in my comments or in a write-up to the author. But it's not personal, and should never be so.
A lot of younger writers do take it personally when you mark up their story, even when you're praising it. So I would say to refrain from discussing someone's work that you're workshopping outside of the workshop. If you've never had a moment where you were causally talking about someone's story and, even though you were saying nice things, the person accidentally overheard you or it got back to them and their feelings were hurt, I envy you. I think I've been guilty of it. After workshop, by all means, point out the flaws among your peer group if the author isn't within earshot. Because God knows when something is bad, it has to get out of your system one way or another, and it's a healthy release to have your feelings about something validated by others.
Steer clear of the personal stuff when you're writing a story. This doesn't mean "turn into a robot" when you write, but don't use something as a story if it's a part of your history, especially if it's painful for you to think about, at least not in a workshop setting. Unless it's something that you're comfortable with having discussed in class (albeit as a fictional construct), find inspiration a little further afield than your own life. Observation is an important part of being a writer, and empathy; you can't observe and report if you're focused on yourself. This is not a hard and fast rule, of course: sometimes you really will have something in your life that would make for a great fictional story, so go for it. But just be wary of doing it too often.
If you're going to do something, write it for yourself most of all, the workshop audience secondary. It's tempting to try and turn in something that everyone will indeed like and praise, but that's not learning how to write. As with all these arbitrary rules, I fear that I've been guilty of violating this one some times. It's human nature to seek acceptance, but it's more rewarding as a writer to try and push boundaries. Even if you fail, you take a risk, and risk is an important (essential) component to any workshop. This doesn't mean you should try and write a short version of Naked Lunch for your classmates, though I wouldn't discourage you from trying. Just don't be so comfortable that you forget to try. Great writing should make you uncomfortable, on some level.
Be civil. I know from past experience that, for every person who has a genuine desire to grow and learn the craft, there's someone who's just in there for the praise (and usually, it's me). This doesn't mean that, when you find a story so bad, so poorly-written, or whatever, that you should rake that person over the coals. Even professional writers who get paid to do this shit have feelings (something we like to forget in our snarky internet culture). But on the most basic level, a lot of these classmates of yours aren't looking for "How Trevor Seigler would totally re-write this story to fit his particular tastes," they're looking for ways to improve their story, as they see it. I'll be honest, some stories I've read in past workshops have made me laugh without intending to, some have made me cringe, and I would hope that I've been civil in my responses. But again, I'm sure that's not always the case. I remember one guy, years ago, whose crutch was having the protagonist suddenly remember that he had a sword strapped to his back, just in time for the zombies or vampires or zombie-vampires busting down the door to whatever room he was in. Terrible, awful writing...though the fact that I remember it all these years later might cause me to reverse my judgment (how many of my peers' stories, indeed my own, do I remember after all this time?). You're going to have that, and sometimes it's going to be you that gets to be "the person whose work is not looked forward to." Me, I kinda thrive on it (I'm a little stinker), but I would hope that if I find something I can't quite get behind, I can at least not stand up in class and say "this story is terrible and the author should never, ever write again." Because that's not cool.
At any rate, any kind of workshop scenario in which you judge other people's work should be a fun experience, even if it leaves your soul shattered and your confidence as a writer in the trashcan. For a long time, I thought I had no business writing fiction, not because of the comments from classmates but because of my own view of my work. Now I'm a lot more generous with myself, and humble(r) about my abilities. You should feel free in a workshop to try new things, and you'll even fail a time or two. But you'll be a better writer for it. Or maybe you won't want to write at all. But it should still be fun.
The fact that it's been almost ten years since I even thought about writing fiction should tell you how well that went.
In truth, though, I was arrogant, and not confident (I think of "arrogance" as unfounded confidence masking a deep insecurity, something that I imagine a lot of writers or want-to-be writers have). I didn't want to do what came naturally to me (be funny), I wanted to be serious (or Be Serious). I was trying too hard to fit into what I thought I should be writing about. Towards the end of each workshop, I broke down a little and admitted more of my own particular style into each piece, and was rewarded for it with praise. But I still thought I had to be "serious."
Since then, I've done a lot of reading, very good writers that I'd already liked (Vonnegut, Pynchon), and also new discoveries that I never anticipated or expected (Graham Greene, Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders, and so on). One of the things that I don't think gets stressed enough in most college workshops is that you have to read before you can write. This doesn't mean that you should straight-up rip off the writers you read...well, I take that back: you should absolutely rip off the writers you read, the ones that inspire you or infuriate you, whatever the case may be, because if you see something in their work that sticks with you, that makes you think, makes you weep, laugh, cry, or want to smash a wall, then they've done something right, and you'd be a fool not to try and see whether you have that in you, or if not specifically the thing that, say, makes Salinger "Salinger" or Pynchon "Pynchon," then at least something in you that needs to be said, written, digested by those around you.
Good writing will out, every time, even if you're reading something that is in a genre you don't like or understand. I think back to a workshop many years ago where a girl wrote something very much in the "chick-lit" mold, she made apologies to the guys in our class about "having to" read something like that but I thought she did a good job. In that same class, I turned in an experimental thing which was back-and-forth dialogue between a married couple, telling their daughter how they'd met as a bedtime story (I hadn't started watching How I Met Your Mother yet). One of the girls in class said that I'd somehow known the story of she and her boyfriend (now husband), and I was flabbergasted. I hadn't anticipated that something I thought was "just a story" would actually hit like that. It's a good feeling, and better than unanimous praise from the entire class about any "genius" I might have as a writer.
So I think there are some good ground rules that I'd like to lay down for fiction workshops because, truth be told, I'd love to teach one someday. Creative writing is in my blood, even if sometimes my writing isn't all that creative (you have to do the work to get good, though, so while I dismiss a lot of that work I did in the past I acknowledge how important it is that it's out there). One rule that both of my current workshop teachers have stressed and that I would do so as well: try to find the positive before you find the negative in someone's work. Remember: a lot of the time, the people doing the workshop aren't professional writers, they're new to this or at least not published yet and so a lot of the time you will run into the "praise me, please" aspect of workshopping. Don't be afraid to point out mistakes in grammar or what you think doesn't work in a story, just don't be too harsh about it. A certain amount of sugarcoating is necessary in order for any advice you give to be taken seriously. I've been guilty of being too harsh sometimes, and I'm human, so I'm guessing if I really thought something was bad I'll say so in my comments or in a write-up to the author. But it's not personal, and should never be so.
A lot of younger writers do take it personally when you mark up their story, even when you're praising it. So I would say to refrain from discussing someone's work that you're workshopping outside of the workshop. If you've never had a moment where you were causally talking about someone's story and, even though you were saying nice things, the person accidentally overheard you or it got back to them and their feelings were hurt, I envy you. I think I've been guilty of it. After workshop, by all means, point out the flaws among your peer group if the author isn't within earshot. Because God knows when something is bad, it has to get out of your system one way or another, and it's a healthy release to have your feelings about something validated by others.
Steer clear of the personal stuff when you're writing a story. This doesn't mean "turn into a robot" when you write, but don't use something as a story if it's a part of your history, especially if it's painful for you to think about, at least not in a workshop setting. Unless it's something that you're comfortable with having discussed in class (albeit as a fictional construct), find inspiration a little further afield than your own life. Observation is an important part of being a writer, and empathy; you can't observe and report if you're focused on yourself. This is not a hard and fast rule, of course: sometimes you really will have something in your life that would make for a great fictional story, so go for it. But just be wary of doing it too often.
If you're going to do something, write it for yourself most of all, the workshop audience secondary. It's tempting to try and turn in something that everyone will indeed like and praise, but that's not learning how to write. As with all these arbitrary rules, I fear that I've been guilty of violating this one some times. It's human nature to seek acceptance, but it's more rewarding as a writer to try and push boundaries. Even if you fail, you take a risk, and risk is an important (essential) component to any workshop. This doesn't mean you should try and write a short version of Naked Lunch for your classmates, though I wouldn't discourage you from trying. Just don't be so comfortable that you forget to try. Great writing should make you uncomfortable, on some level.
Be civil. I know from past experience that, for every person who has a genuine desire to grow and learn the craft, there's someone who's just in there for the praise (and usually, it's me). This doesn't mean that, when you find a story so bad, so poorly-written, or whatever, that you should rake that person over the coals. Even professional writers who get paid to do this shit have feelings (something we like to forget in our snarky internet culture). But on the most basic level, a lot of these classmates of yours aren't looking for "How Trevor Seigler would totally re-write this story to fit his particular tastes," they're looking for ways to improve their story, as they see it. I'll be honest, some stories I've read in past workshops have made me laugh without intending to, some have made me cringe, and I would hope that I've been civil in my responses. But again, I'm sure that's not always the case. I remember one guy, years ago, whose crutch was having the protagonist suddenly remember that he had a sword strapped to his back, just in time for the zombies or vampires or zombie-vampires busting down the door to whatever room he was in. Terrible, awful writing...though the fact that I remember it all these years later might cause me to reverse my judgment (how many of my peers' stories, indeed my own, do I remember after all this time?). You're going to have that, and sometimes it's going to be you that gets to be "the person whose work is not looked forward to." Me, I kinda thrive on it (I'm a little stinker), but I would hope that if I find something I can't quite get behind, I can at least not stand up in class and say "this story is terrible and the author should never, ever write again." Because that's not cool.
At any rate, any kind of workshop scenario in which you judge other people's work should be a fun experience, even if it leaves your soul shattered and your confidence as a writer in the trashcan. For a long time, I thought I had no business writing fiction, not because of the comments from classmates but because of my own view of my work. Now I'm a lot more generous with myself, and humble(r) about my abilities. You should feel free in a workshop to try new things, and you'll even fail a time or two. But you'll be a better writer for it. Or maybe you won't want to write at all. But it should still be fun.
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