Yes, it’s only been several hours since “Snowflake” dropped me off at 1am, after driving 3 hours from Chuck Palahniuk’s writing workshop in Portland. My brain is still ragged with sleep but this is actually my best time to write. Before it gets clogged up with all the day’s chores, KUOW, and noise. I know people want to know what happened in the writing workshop. Did I get anything useful out of it?
I’ve been in about a zillion workshops where people share their writing and critique each other’s work. A lot of the time, there is disappointment and frustration. Writers run out of energy. Most groups fall apart without a good teacher at the helm. But I do think workshops are the best way for me to improve my writing. So when I saw an opportunity to get a ride with Snowflake from Seattle, I grabbed it. I had just written a chapter for my historical fiction novel so I printed it off right away. Sharing the ride with Snowflake (and Dan) was an extra cherry on the top. I got the chance to get to know a divorced 44 year old gamer who does cosplay. Worlds I know nothing about. Hopefully, Snowflake also got to know someone he would normally not meet. (Sorry, I wasn’t the Cat Lady you expected.)
Chuck’s group promises to be a good one for me. I’m at the stage where I crave honest, useful feedback but don’t have time for hand holding. I know many writers need encouragement and “cheerleading”. I get that. Writing is such a lonely, nerve wracking task. And it exposes a lot of raw emotion. Like rolling a boulder covered with glass, up the hill, over and over. I was glad Chuck didn’t waste any time with pep talks.
Knowing there are a lot of people who wished they could have attended the workshop tells me those who did attend were all motivated, serious writers. Of course, praise helps but specific critique and comments about what works or doesn’t work is much more useful.
So I decided to write this post to kill two birds: for those who couldn’t attend the workshop, and for me to collect my thoughts before I revise the piece I brought. I know there was some discussion about streaming or zooming the workshop but I understand why it wasn’t. People write for a lot of reasons. A few are ready to share their work with the world and brave all the eggs that might be thrown their way. But at the workshop stage, most are still feeling very wobbly and unsure. Any exposure to a bigger audience is very scary.
Anyway, writing is very subjective. In my humble opinion, some writing shines and sparkles while others fade into forgetfulness in the workshop. But at my age, I know that something shiny in a workshop isn’t necessarily what will prove to be most valuable. No matter how wonderful/sexy/edgy someone’s writing my appear at the reading, if the writer can’t improve and keep producing work, it doesn’t mean much.
But in general, I thought everyone brought work they had carefully crafted. This was my first time with this group so I don’t know what pieces were brought to the first (of ten) workshop last week. The key is going to be - what will everyone bring in the following weeks? My pet peeve is when people bring the same piece back after the group has already commented on it. Chuck didn’t say anything about repeating a piece but I think there’s a huge difference to feedback on a repeat submission. Even when it’s rough, I like reading/hearing someone’s piece for the first time. But reading/hearing it for the second time does not sit well with me. It’s hard work writing but it’s also hard work reading/commenting. So this is where persistence rather than talent is going to become evident.
I liked hearing the other students’ comments first, then hearing Chuck’s comments. For the most part, people gave concise, useful comments. The negative comments in many ways is more useful for me. For example, someone said they were disappointed my piece didn’t have more Japanese cultural elements in it. That told me readers expect my work to have such cultural info. That was precisely my point in this work. Nisei (American born/raised children of Japanese immigrants) are pretty much the same as any other children of immigrants. That comment tells me I am headed in the right direction. Of course, I hope readers will initially be hooked by this novel about a Japanese American family - a Pachinko type novel. But by the middle of the book (the chapter I presented is from the middle), I hope readers will realize these characters are really no different than other second generation Americans.
I tend to write flat without a lot of emotion, so it’s good to be reminded I need to kick up the emotion. As hoped, the dog got everyone’s attention. I was aiming for a tear jerker ending and I think I got close. There was good debate about how much gory detail I need to add at that critical end. Gory details is an area I am struggling with. Chuck’s piece about Tableau Horror is very interesting for my project. I hope to learn more about that. WWII is a big part of my novel but I don’t want to go into detail describing the battlefield which a lot of other writers can do much better than I can. Instead I want to write a chapter about the ‘after the Hiroshima bomb’. Everyone already knows or can imagine how horrible the first atomic bomb was. So I don’t want to inundate the reader with gory details. In the same vein, I wanted readers/listeners to squirm when I got close to the dog dying without too much gory detail. But how much detail is too much?
I loved Chuck’s suggestion about using the newspaper in multiple ways. I opened the chapter with a newspaper headline. By using Chuck’s suggestion, I could link the headline directly to the dog and keep the reader in the moment. His suggestions/comments for everyone else’s work were also useful. One story written in email form could be transformed by Chuck’s comment (reframe the story so the emails are actually written by the complainer’s wife) from a story about a petty complainer of milk, into a much darker murder story about a wife who wants to kill her husband. But this is where I’m really going to have to work. I’ll have to revise that chapter word by word to add the newspaper details throughout.
But after I revise this chapter, I’m going to resist the temptation to submit it again. At least to this group. Maybe I’ll show it to my other writing group or if I’m happy with it, submit it somewhere. For next week (thank you Snowflake for the ride!) I will bring another different piece with problems I’m struggling with. But before I make copies of that piece, I’m going to see if I can apply Chuck’s suggestion about making an object (such as the newspaper) do double duty in the story. I think I already have an idea about the baseball bat. This all takes a lot of time and effort. That’s where persistence comes into play. Bit by bit, I hope to use the workshop to improve my writing.
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I'm happy for you that you were able to go and experience that. What an amazing opportunity on so many levels 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
That was a very good summation and I was grateful to be a part of it. Please continue to bring in chapters of your novel, so that we can all improve our writing together.