The Scribbling Novelist: First Workshop

Monday, September 22, 2008

First Workshop

Had my first story workshopped today--I'm still processing how it went overall.

Currently, I feel embarrassed, actually. Like I made elementary mistakes ALL OVER the place. Definitely room for improvement, for sure, but it's still embarrassing. Blah. Will probably post more when the emotion wears off and my rational brain can speak.

I still don't like John Gardner, see previous post.

3 comments:

margosita said...: You survived!

It may seem like you made a lot of elementary mistakes, but I think as you process things you will realize that having people point out those mistakes is ultimately more important than anything else. I think the "common" mistakes are the ones we are least likely to see, sometimes.

Have a treat! A beer or ice cream or an hour of trashy TV. I think you'll feel better. :); September 23, 2008 at 6:31 AM
Unknown said...: We did our first night of workshopping last night, and we were fairly nice to the two guys who went up. However the second story confused the shit out of us and we let him know it. I almost felt bad for him even though he had certain students "in his corner." Then another girl told me that we were dissapointingly nice. She was hoping for blood and brutality because that's how she thinks she gets better.

The bad news is that in a grad level workshop you have to treat the piece as if it's finished and that everything you read is how the author intended it ... but the good news is that we all know that this is only a draft for you, and while we may "talk down" to the story in workshop, we know that the writer is just a person trying things out just like ourselves.

hey, I'm curious as to what the story was that you workshoped -- is it online at all? Would you consider putting it up someplace and just sending a couple of us the link who are UBER curious and nosy like myself? I think you have my email somewhere

what about the attituded at UNH? What am I missing out on by choosing WMU? Do tell!; September 23, 2008 at 2:15 PM
margosita said...: I think Eileen makes a good point, about having to treat every story as if it were finished.

I'd love to hear more of your impressions about workshop. So interesting!

(P.S. I'm going to read your story, soon! I keep meaning to but have been distracted. I think you're brave for putting it up, I want you to know.); September 24, 2008 at 12:54 AM

Writing Quotes

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. ~Lord Byron

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money. ~Moliere

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. ~Lord Byron

I write to discover what I think. ~Joan Didion

What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse. ~Ray Bradbury

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~James Michener

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public. ~Winston Churchill

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it. ~Octavia Butler

Writers aren't exactly people.... they're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. ~Kahlil Gibran

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. ~Ernest Hemingway

From "Byron" a BBC movie: Shelley to Byron:
"What makes you write?" Byron to Shelley: "My inability to prevent it."

Real writers can't sleep because there are stories batting around inside their heads. Real writers create characters they weep over, because they are so real. Real writers can't NOT write. I think you can make a person a better writer technically by having him/her attend workshops and creative writing programs… but I think that at the basal level, writers are born, not made. ~ Jodi Picoult

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~Jack Smith

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~Arthur Polotnik

Pen names are masks that allow us to unmask ourselves. ~C. Astrid Weber

Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too. ~Graycie Harmon

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~Goethe

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. ~Junot Diaz

Monday, September 22, 2008

First Workshop

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