Last night I went into the city and attended a writers' workshop. Initially, there were three women (two Carols and one Gloria) and one man (Carmen), and another person (Jim) who identified himself as the "facilitator" at the meeting. Later, another woman (Lois) and another man (Billy Ray) joined our little group. After some preliminary identifications and introductions, the women began to read the things they had written since the last meeting.
Gloria, an affable and pleasant person who wrote murder mysteries, read part of a story that she had written. She had arranged sections of the story by dating them sequentially. As her story unfolded, we were treated to a long list of events that almost seem disconnected one from the other. I wondered why anyone would write fiction in that manner. Carmen read his story, and if you closed your eyes and settled back into your chair, you might have thought he was reading an extended grocery list. The Pink Carol (who wore a pink blouse) read her piece about the renter-from-hell. Like Carmen, she presented an almost endless list of overflowing toilets and dripping faucets and various rental property headaches that one might encounter with mischievous renters. The Cat Carol (who had perched a large and mangy cat on her book bag on the table in front of her, along with a token sprig of catnip) read her Civil War-era story. It, too, was difficult to follow and to understand because of its staccato cascade of data. Lois read a poem that she had written when she was nineteen-years old. The facilitator thought it read more like an essay in the poem. When Billy Ray read his poem, everyone seemed to think that his poem more poetic than Lois's poem. At least he had some identifiable, poetic elements in his piece. The facilitator shared a writing proposal with us that he had intended to send to publishers. Without actually saying so, most of the people in the group seemed to find his proposal somewhat bizarre. An extended - and almost irrelevant - discussion followed that had viewpoints diametrically opposed the viewpoint in the facilitator's proposal. He sat there and looked on helplessly as the group pawed over his proposal.
All in all, I found the writing workshop experience to be a strange thing. Everyone had put in some amount of time in preparing the writing that they brought to the meeting. And when they "put it on the table," they received those whiny and picky criticisms that more than likely made them wonder why they even bothered to come to the meeting in the first place. It was actually a sad thing to see: honest and forthright effort was seen by others, not as something bad in itself, but rather, as something that seemed to fit a different criteria in everyone's mind. It was almost as if they said, "I do not object to your renter's nightmare story because it's a story about renters. I object to it because it does not meet my requirements for stories with smooth and flowing language." In other words, the objections came down to a single, simple axiom: I do not like what you have written because you did not write it the way I would have written it. Essentially, your writing is bad because it is not my writing. Whew!
Pink Carol beamed when she told us that a piece of hers had been accepted by regional newspaper for publication. No one moved to congratulate her or applaud her accomplishment. They just sat there and looked at her. What everyone seemed to have forgotten at that meeting was the fact that people came there, not to learn how to become better writers, but to be loved for their writing efforts. They came seeking applause, not correction. I am quite sure that not a single person in that room would have admitted that fact. And I say that because not one of them asked that his piece be criticized brutally so that he could learn something. Rather, they groped helplessly for small bits of praise.
They reminded me of the youngster who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. He had talked endlessly about his great ambition in life to become a disc jockey. He told us how he was going to be famous and that he would be on every radio station in the whole world. Most of us just sat there and shook our heads when he talked that way. "My sisto sez I'm way-wee good at talking," he said to us. Unfortunately, he could not hear the severe speech impediment that would keep him away from the microphone for the rest of his life. Some unkind person had deluded him by telling him the story of Demosthenes running up and down the beaches of the Aegean Sea with his mouth full of pebbles in his attempt to become world's greatest orator. Hey, if it had worked for old Demo, he thought, surely it could work for him as well.
Perhaps that's the same problem that many of us have with wanting to be writers: we are blind to our own impediments and inabilities. We come seeking applause instead of instruction. We want to grow daisies in the desert.
Gloria, an affable and pleasant person who wrote murder mysteries, read part of a story that she had written. She had arranged sections of the story by dating them sequentially. As her story unfolded, we were treated to a long list of events that almost seem disconnected one from the other. I wondered why anyone would write fiction in that manner. Carmen read his story, and if you closed your eyes and settled back into your chair, you might have thought he was reading an extended grocery list. The Pink Carol (who wore a pink blouse) read her piece about the renter-from-hell. Like Carmen, she presented an almost endless list of overflowing toilets and dripping faucets and various rental property headaches that one might encounter with mischievous renters. The Cat Carol (who had perched a large and mangy cat on her book bag on the table in front of her, along with a token sprig of catnip) read her Civil War-era story. It, too, was difficult to follow and to understand because of its staccato cascade of data. Lois read a poem that she had written when she was nineteen-years old. The facilitator thought it read more like an essay in the poem. When Billy Ray read his poem, everyone seemed to think that his poem more poetic than Lois's poem. At least he had some identifiable, poetic elements in his piece. The facilitator shared a writing proposal with us that he had intended to send to publishers. Without actually saying so, most of the people in the group seemed to find his proposal somewhat bizarre. An extended - and almost irrelevant - discussion followed that had viewpoints diametrically opposed the viewpoint in the facilitator's proposal. He sat there and looked on helplessly as the group pawed over his proposal.
All in all, I found the writing workshop experience to be a strange thing. Everyone had put in some amount of time in preparing the writing that they brought to the meeting. And when they "put it on the table," they received those whiny and picky criticisms that more than likely made them wonder why they even bothered to come to the meeting in the first place. It was actually a sad thing to see: honest and forthright effort was seen by others, not as something bad in itself, but rather, as something that seemed to fit a different criteria in everyone's mind. It was almost as if they said, "I do not object to your renter's nightmare story because it's a story about renters. I object to it because it does not meet my requirements for stories with smooth and flowing language." In other words, the objections came down to a single, simple axiom: I do not like what you have written because you did not write it the way I would have written it. Essentially, your writing is bad because it is not my writing. Whew!
Pink Carol beamed when she told us that a piece of hers had been accepted by regional newspaper for publication. No one moved to congratulate her or applaud her accomplishment. They just sat there and looked at her. What everyone seemed to have forgotten at that meeting was the fact that people came there, not to learn how to become better writers, but to be loved for their writing efforts. They came seeking applause, not correction. I am quite sure that not a single person in that room would have admitted that fact. And I say that because not one of them asked that his piece be criticized brutally so that he could learn something. Rather, they groped helplessly for small bits of praise.
They reminded me of the youngster who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. He had talked endlessly about his great ambition in life to become a disc jockey. He told us how he was going to be famous and that he would be on every radio station in the whole world. Most of us just sat there and shook our heads when he talked that way. "My sisto sez I'm way-wee good at talking," he said to us. Unfortunately, he could not hear the severe speech impediment that would keep him away from the microphone for the rest of his life. Some unkind person had deluded him by telling him the story of Demosthenes running up and down the beaches of the Aegean Sea with his mouth full of pebbles in his attempt to become world's greatest orator. Hey, if it had worked for old Demo, he thought, surely it could work for him as well.
Perhaps that's the same problem that many of us have with wanting to be writers: we are blind to our own impediments and inabilities. We come seeking applause instead of instruction. We want to grow daisies in the desert.
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