What to do if there is no take away, and the glass looks empty? Not a drop of water to be seen. My piece was not critiqued and I felt disappointed at the end of the workshop. At first, I thought it best to not say anything here in my newsletter. But then, I realized there is a very important lesson in this experience. In writing fiction, there will inevitably be moments where you do not learn anything useful, get no feedback (or get negative feedback), and feel like a boulder unable to make any progress. In one of my other writing groups, a member complained that they felt unfairly critiqued and wanted to quit. In fact, this probably happens no matter what subject you study. I remember classes from my university and graduate school days where I sat, wondering if I was the only one who felt completely unhappy and a failure. I’ve attended many talks, taken many classes and workshops, some from very well known authors. A few times, I felt I wasted several hundred dollars.
Rather than gripe about what happened or didn’t happen, I’d like to talk about a history class I remember. The subject was the explorers. Men like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. The professor stopped and had us imagine all the nameless men and women who vanished because they got lost in the jungles, froze in their search for the Northern Passage, or simply ran out of money and support. Imagine all the failures. It’s really quite extraordinary how much effort people were willing to put into the remote chance of making a name for oneself.
There was something particularly poignant to me about the men who were stranded in ice. I think there were frozen remains found, scarred bones clothed in ineffective fine clothing, and clutching useless dinnerware. At least with the frigid temperatures, there were objects left to tell us a story. There are many more people who failed and left no trace of their existence at all.
So in the grand scheme of things, my disappointment in one workshop is pretty minor. I plan to bring my story next week. In the meantime, I will work on other parts of the manuscript. The doomed teenage romance of the main character. Her encounter with the unlikeable man who saves her life. Her efforts to save his life. Then his suicide. And lots of other unpleasant scenes. Thankfully, I am motivated to write by ghosts rather than fame and fortune.
Have you ever heard of the mystery of the sailing stones in Death Valley? Some of them are boulders hundreds of pounds in weight. But these boulders leave trails across the desert floor proving they move hundreds of feet. No one could figure it out. I suggest you do not let Google spoil this mystery before you use your imagination. I think of my writing life as one of these boulders. Heavy. Stubborn. Ugly. But thanks to the ghosts, when no one is looking, my boulder inches across the desert floor leaving a beautiful trail.
In the end, such disappointments are to be tucked away in the library of my life’s experiences. We are all human. And as humans, we will fail. Sometimes there’s no point to seeing if a glass is half full or half empty. There’s no water. But still my boulder will move.
I think the stone just moved. Nice work!