Science Fiction & Fantasy author
Well, Christmas is here, so enjoy your time with family and friends. Soak it all in. Bits of it will foster your writing, and all of it will grow your relationship with family. So I hope you haven’t been hanging out on the internet reading this blog and my prompt yesterday (for if you had then you would have noticed I was late in posting my writing prompt, too busy soaking in the family).
Recently some of my students have been following the “scene” mode of styling their hair. I don’t fully understand the term, but it appears to be a kinder, gentler version of emo, not dark or requiring heavy makeup or dyed hair. But it does create a look that tends to ride the edge of the norm. So I was thinking how one day a student can look like the average girl next door, reliable, kind, quiet. The next day she walks in and a statement is made that marks her as not one of the group, not the girl next door but the one across the street that people make up rumors about. The girl that is not “bad” but is not greeted by everyone.
That is what characterization is. Small shifts from the norm that make the character stand out with a certain image immediately created by a part in the hair made so far to the left that the bangs must lay low across the forehead. The long hair is all brought forward to the front, so a split occurs in the back at the neck line, as though the person only has a front she shows to everyone, the back similar to the facade of a building put up for a movie set. The front looks real enough, but the back lacks all the depth of a real building. This can be used to create character. Certainly the real live girl, has depth, but in the novel or short story, such a “front” can act as a thin veneer hiding the reality within. It builds mystery, which one might believe is the purpose of the “scene” image for these teenage girls I teach.
I have only been writing to publish for about a year and a half. But in that time, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: My internal critic is after everybody. In the past, when I was just thinking about writing but not really giving it much of my time, I could just sit back and enjoy reading a book. Sure some books disappointed me, but they were few and far between, and the writer really had to falter in some way. But now that I am writing my books and putting them out there for others to read, it seems I have become a lot more alert to slipping plots, weak dialogue or dropped details that seemed important but never grew into anything. I wonder if those same books would have been a fun reading experience if I wasn’t so often editing my own work and developing my internal critic to pick up my own slipping plots, weak dialogue, dropped details or undeveloped characters and scenes.
Have I grown an eye that cannot discern between my own work and others? It is an interesting dilemma because I don’t want to be less alert in my own work, yet I do want to enjoy what I read. I imagine being an English teacher isn’t giving this attentive critic any rest either or training it to take a temporary vacation. I am reviewing some form of writing pretty much daily. My colleagues are known to come up to me and ask if I would look over their aunt’s autobiography that she has been working on for years. Truly, I say, “No, thank you. I have more than enough on my plate to go through.” And I am talking about student work and have not said a single word about my own efforts to publish. I really haven’t put out any signs saying, “Feed my obsession for editing.” Is this a common ailment of writers? Am I doomed to examine the bones of every book I read?
It’s one thing when I am reading A Tale of Two Cities; that one demands a deep read, but I read books just as often for entertainment at the skin deep level. In fact, I know my books are not for x-ray examination, just a sit back and take a break from reality read is what I am going for.
Writers out there, have you run into this same issue? Is there a cure that won’t wipe out that needed critic when my own work is before me?
What would you add?
Every writer knows that the only way to get that book, story, poem, etc., done is to write. We also know that the only way to improve is to get feedback, honest, no holds barred feedback. I teach creative writing, and I tell my new students every year that I will be considerate but honest. They will know what the strengths were in the piece as much as where growth is occurring and where it is needed. Every writer needs this and for some, like myself, it is hard to come by.
I am a teacher, and since I want my students focusing on what I am teaching them and not on me, I don’t advertise that I am a indie writer. I have told only a couple people in my family and just one friend. I know they’ll keep my writing activities secret. But where does that leave me for feedback: well in a very limited space. I have become friends with several writers, and those connections has been helpful because they know what I mean when I say tell me everything so I can get better. They want honest feedback from me, and I want the same from them. And it has been worth any uncomfortable feeling I might get from seeing the flaws pointed out in what I thought was a pretty thorough job (repeated numerous times)at line and context editing. I grow as a writer each time they supply feedback and each time I give feedback. It would have taken me years of personal distance to be able to give that kind of critique myself. I don’t want to imagine waiting five years to be able to look at my own work with the necessary distance and increased knowledge in editing, drafting, plotting, etc. needed to actually see what needs to be improved. That’s five years of embarrassment of having my work out there that I would get all in one fell swoop that could have been avoided by getting straight feedback from another writer or a professional editor when the work was “finished.”
So sure a writer writes, but a WRITER GETS FEEDBACK is even more important. I published my first book with minimal feedback (those two family members). It wasn’t long before I had a nagging feeling that perhaps I had overlooked aspects of the story or not edited as well as I thought (even an English teacher needs an editor, nobody can look at their own work without bias, certainly not after reading it one hundred times). So I took it off publication, sent it to a writer friend (she sent me hers as well) and we traded feedback. I am still working on it and hope by Christmas to have it back published again.
All this post really is saying is writers need feedback.
I recently started rereading Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Even though I know where Holden Caulfield is in his journey of self-deception and punishment, I still get caught up with the slow reveal of his anger. Salinger in the first three sentences tells the reader exactly where Caulfield is and how he has yet to find balance. Still, I find myself walking along beside this struggling character, listening to what he hates in his effort to avoid what he loves. That ongoing chatter the first person narrative provides that begins so truly as teenage angst before it begins its slow, slick slide into, well read and see for yourself.
Every writer should read it for the lesson alone of how to create a character that tells all while he thinks he has hidden all his best secrets, the quintessential unreliable narrator. Every reader over the age of 15 should read this book. It’s makes one grin at first hearing him say all the things every polite individual wishes he could belt out so unconsciously and honestly. Somewhere along the line, the reader comes to a realization: Holden is not chatting at length for every teenager who wishes he could speak his mind so easily, but for his own salvation, his own need to divorce himself from his shortcomings, his desire for forgiveness, presumably from the reader, but in reality from himself. Reader or writer, read it, read it more than once.