Writing Group

[sraun]

My darling wife, iraunink, is asking for input on writing groups in a post here. This is her second writing group - her first experience with one was, to put it frankly, awful.

I think part of the problem was that the first group could not distinguish between 'I like this', 'this works', and 'this is done well'.

Comments

Re: Usually I don't respond this much to anyone's friends list,but can't resist this one. . .

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Happens all the time. People tend to write about what they know, and, for example(s), guys tend to know a lot more about being guys than about being women; black folks tend to know a lot more about being 21st century black folks, etc.

That said, one of my own favorite characters was a teenaged black girl, and at least one reviewer said that she was the most interesting character in the book. (About which I, of course, don't get an opinion.)

Re:Interesting example. . .and I had similar experience

[newblksusan.livejournal.com]

My Master's Thesis at Hopkins is titled "After The Flight" which was an incomplete novel where I had alternating chapters in the voice of white man and a black woman. Madison Smartt Bell, a white male author, was my Thesis Advisor.

Every workshop my white classmate trashed my white male character as not having an authentic white male voice. Madison always maintained that was absolute b.s. and insisted that Brian, my white male character, sounded like a white dude to HIM and thus Madison was adamant about the following: he firmly believed my white classmates did not want to admit that a black woman could write persuasively in the voice of a white male character and that I should be restricted to just being an authority for a black female voice only.

Now do you see why I totally detested the graduate creative workshop experience? Luckily, while as a part of the UH Creative writing Program, i was better able to adapt thanks to some advice from author Rosellen Brown who recruited me to UH's creative writing program after I graduated from Hopkins. I really didn't want to come here and I really didn't want to pursue another graduate program in CW. But here's what Rosellen said that made my future experiences with workshops bearable:

"No one has been accepted into the creative writing program based on their ability to critique your work."

That is almost an exact quote. Also, much of the advice I offered in my first response to the original question is, really, a paraphrase of much needed and useful advice from Rosellen. If she had not had that talk with me I know I would have never accepted the offer to come to the UH Creative Writing Program.

And thus, again: there are only a FEW opinions that I truly value as it relates to my creative work. I do have "a few good readers" that I trust and they are not, by and large, fiction writers from the UH Creative Writing program. There's only classmate in the entire program that I currently trust with reading my work. As for everyone else, my attitude is "Thanks for sharing" and then I pretty much just ignore much of what they say when their critique is more related to their desire for me to write in a way that only caters to their personal tastes, desires, needs, etc. to which I say:

"Well, why don't you do all THAT (of what you're proposing to me) in YOUR OWN BOOK?"

That shuts them up pretty quickly.