It's the little things that help

[seabird78]

Had some lunch with a couple colleagues today. The topic of writing came up, and K spoke about how she's been feeling the need to find a genre that gives her personal satisfaction, so that the stuff she crafts for work is not the only way she wields her pen.

She referenced me as an example. To paraphrase, she said something like, "Yeah you write here during the day to pay the bills but really, you're a novelist. You have a higher purpose."

It's funny how I'm much more inclined to believe such a statement when it comes from someone other than myself. As if it becomes that much more true by virtue of someone else being able to see that in me and recognize and acknowledge it.

I wish I knew why that's the case. Why I'm so hungry for external validation. I guess it's because I've ingrained the wrong-headed idea that creative writing aspirations are frivolous and impractical, and because I've endured more than my fair share of eye rolls when I've tried to explain them to people in the past.

After so much of that you start to assume everyone is going to feel that way. You expect that everyone is going to laugh off your impossible dreams. Or if they don't, then they're gonna address them in a patronizing tone and make you feel like a silly little girl for having them.

With this in mind, I guess it's no wonder that it's such a wondrous thing when that doesn't happen, when people like K or D or D or even M acknowledge and accept and encourage novel writing as a viable goal. When they see it as a foregone conclusion, and refer to me as an author before I feel I've fully earned the right to use that label.

Any time that happens, I get that much closer to believing it myself, or if not, then at least closer to wanting to prove them right, so as not to disappoint. I've always felt my people-pleasing tendencies were to my detriment, but in this case I suppose I can use them to work in my favor.

Sorry for all this rambling. It seems that the only writing I'm capable of lately is messy stream-of-consciousness.

Comments

[lynnbo-momo.livejournal.com]

I totally relate. And stream-of-consciousness writing is better than my lame-ass facebook notes about TV shows, so don't feel bad!

I am also a people-pleaser and love feedback. But I have to strain and tell myself that feedback is often a sort of blockage, a way to stopping the momentum, of giving into fear. I'm a big believer in Carol Bly's views on creative process. I have to remind myself not to share with everyone, and remind myself that I'm in charge, no one else is, and when I let others' ideas or perceived views of my work - or god forbid, what might SELL - come into my head, it contaminates my true motivation.

Lately, I'm on one research bender after another, following the things that fascinate me until I'm saturated and sick of them. This seems to give me endless things to teach about and also write about. But I can't seem to write when I'm teaching. Or when the weather is nice. It's a good thing I live in Minnesota.

[seabird78.livejournal.com]

Thanks for relating. And thanks for offering your wise perspective on feedback. I need that same reminder you give yourself.

I can get completely lost in research myself, so I know exactly what you're talking about.

[lynnbo-momo.livejournal.com]

I'm back on the MFA: Should I or Shouldn't I? track. I hate this inner debate. I kind of hate the whole idea of the MFA. But then I like the idea of having space to write. But I don't like the idea of workshopping. And I don't like the idea of spending money on that.

Where do you stand on that score?

[seabird78.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, I could go on for hours on this topic. For me, the MFA was a mixed bag, because although it provided me with a built in writing community that I continue to call upon to this day, I didn't get to experience it in an ideal way. My program did not offer full funding like a lot of other programs do, and so in addition to needing to take student loans for tuition, I also had to hold down a full-time job and take classes on a part-time basis in order to keep a roof over my head and keep myself fed and clothed. Consequently, I wasn't able to get as much time and space to write able to focus on school and nothing else, and I'm sitting on a mountain of loan debt that will probably not be paid off in my lifetime.

That said, I didn't make a lot of the connections that started getting me valuable freelance gigs until I was a grad, and without those gigs I would never have amassed certain clips which I then parlayed into full-time work doing the non-creative writing that currently pays my bills. So in that respect it was a great resource, and probably allowed me to advance in my career a lot more quickly than if I'd had to do it on my own.

All in all I don't regret it, but I wish I would have been more efficient about getting it done (I'm still doing a final revision on the thesis that will make my MFA official, after having completed the coursework back in 04).

Does that help shed any light for you? I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have.

[lynnbo-momo.livejournal.com]

well, I could do it financially - I don't make that much money now and we survive. But do I want to carry that much debt? I dunno. I tell myself people were writers before they invented MFA's, a common gripe I know.

But then someone got a job I really wanted and she has an MFA and I think, fuck, just do it, have the dumb paper to put on the wall and the resume.

Of course, that job was a low-paying part-time gig. I have been endearing myself to various parties for years and could probably score a similar gig on charm alone. So why put myself through the debt and work?

Because I would love to roll around in my work and little else for two years, perhaps? It sounds indulgent. Then I think, no, I'll probably have to read the work of my peers and ugh, I can't get behind that, how that's done, workshopping in general. What was that experience like?

My husband, who knows nothing about writing, thinks I should do it. He tells me I should have done it years ago. That doesn't help, either.

[seabird78.livejournal.com]

My workshopping experience was a lot different than the standard, because I was in a program that was founded on the belief that photocopying fifteen copies of your story and passing it around to be torn to shreds by a bunch of amateurs (not sure if that's exactly how the standard workshop is run, but that's what I've heard second-hand) is counterproductive. So instead, we were encouraged to look for the strengths in our classmate's work (which was read aloud in class and not handed out as part of our homework) and focus on those during the portions of the workshop designated for sharing comments. Any kind of critique had to be presented in the form of a question, so as to make it feel less threatening, for example, "Is there a reason why character A does blah blah blah? Can you show us that action in more detail?"

This was great for soft, sensitive types such as myself, at least in the beginning before I developed my thick skin. I started to take issue with it as I got to a more advanced level in the program though, because I felt like it filled lesser writers (not saying I was the best, but boy were there some people who should have had their pens confiscated) with false hope about their abilities, and I also felt like I could have used a more honest, less sugar-coated assessment of my work once my confidence was high enough to handle it.

On a more positive note, though, one thing I really liked about my workshops is that they were generative, meaning we did word games and exercises meant to spark story ideas and specific scenes right there in our sessions. And even though the actual writing time we had was minimal, I was able to get down a good many starts to larger pieces that I then later went home and expanded upon. I don't know if all workshops have this component, but I found it really helpful to be able to tell my story aloud to an audience, and then transcribe what I'd just told and read it back because it allowed for an immediate sense of audience that you don't get when you're sitting home alone at your desk working.

Sounds like you're leaning towards trying an MFA. If you feel that's what you need, I say go for it. The world at large could definitely benefit from hearing your work IMHO, and if school will help you develop a larger body of material I think we'll all be better off!

[mdatl.livejournal.com]

CC's way sounds like a great way. You're somewhat right about the "amateurs," but this can be hard to suss out immediately. Finding good workshops and valuable feedback takes time. On that note, I'm starting one in a couple of weeks; the participants have worked with one another before. I think I trust about half of them, the others I'm not sure yet.

On the subject of people-pleasing, those desires decrease as you get older--take it from me. :)

Happy LD weekend...

[seabird78.livejournal.com]

Cool that you're starting a new workshop! You'll have to keep me in the loop on how that goes!

Hope you had a great LD weekend.