But Call Me Betsy

Today in multimedia, we will talk about workshops. Most of the students have never been in a workshop environment, so I'm guessing the class can go in a couple of different directions: 1. They will be too polite to offer criticism to help the writers, opting instead to either stay silent or comment on easily changeable things like the title. 2. They could go the other way and say things like, I don't understand this at all . It's boring. I suspect that won't be the case, because these students are cautious and polite. 3. They could not talk much at all, and I will end up talking for most of the time. I guess that's okay if I go through the bulk of the critique, as long as I am able to skim their manuscripts ahead of time and have some general comments to offer. The other thing I need to communicate is that the writers don't speak, and don't defend.  That's the model I'm comfortable with, though I could take Molly G.'s approach and as...

In my fall fiction writing class, a common suggestion during critiques went something like: "I couldn't tell what kind of haircut she had...I wanted to know what color her eyes were. I just couldn't tell what she actually looked like!" Sometimes, another person might  try to help the writer along toward a more concrete description by suggesting that the central character give us this information by catching sight of her reflection in passing mirror or window, or in the bend of shiny spoon, or the wavery pool of a lake. Whenever someone asked wanting to writer to pause to describe the protagonist, I wanted so suggest that we refer back to any of the published stories we'd read for class. Very seldom does E. Annie Proulx have a character stop and ponder the amber sheen of her own eyeballs or the flowiness of her blond hair.  Raymond Carver, though he may describe the blind man in "Cathedral," doesn't pause to ponder his own bloodshot eyes in the b...

Am back from the week long writing workshop extravaganza and just now tried to take a short nap, but have grown so accustomed to the twin bed with the thin mattress I slept on at Rosemont, that I was unable to fall asleep without the accompanying sound of the crinkling mattress or the truncated space. What did we learn this week? We learned that writing is still hard, but that you have to go at it again and again, that you have to make it a habit, part of your daily life, or your work will escape you, go into hibernation, causing it to be that much harder to face a blank page (or screen) when you finally do sit yourself down. Met lots of great people; got to work with Elise Juska, who is an excellent writer and critic. She gave us writing and reading exercises every day, pieces that worked in tandem with one another and I realized that you can come at a story from different directions or in what might seem like artificial ways, such as free writing a scene from a story to see if you ca...