How to cope with major critiques/edits

I'm drawing today's blog inspiration from the list of 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers. Let me know if you do the same!

Today's topic: How to cope with major critques or edits of your story

Tears. Lots and lots of tears.

Just kidding! Being a writing major/MFA candidate has forced me to develop a thick skin, but some critiques still sting. (This also means I’m oddly sensitive about everything else. Like if my boss at work walks by my office without saying hello, I’m crushed.) I’ve learned that when someone critiques my story in workshop, they aren’t doing it to hurt me (at least I’ve been fortunate enough to have kind and helpful people in my classes). Most people have really helpful ideas for my stories, and they want to see them improve.

After a workshop I usually dive right back into the story while everything is fresh in my mind instead of letting myself stew over the critique. So that’s my advice: go right back to your story and make the necessary changes. UNLESS those changes are drastic, like start over completely from a different POV or get rid of this character. If you feel super unsure about a change, don’t hit that delete key right away. Brainstorm, outline, write out some new scenes with those changes just to see how they’d work in the story before you go back to your workshopped draft.

And always, always, ALWAYS save your old drafts. If it turns out that the critic from your class was out of his or her mind and had awful ideas, you’ll want to have your previous draft to undo those changes.  

What are your coping mechanisms for tough criticism?  

My semester so far and goals for the future

I’m halfway through fall semester, and so far I have:

-Written, workshopped, and revised one short story (about a girl who works for a hot air balloon crew)

-Written and workshopped my South Africa travel essay (I have a lot of revisions to do on this one)

-Written a partial draft of a second short story (about a girl who tries to convince her ten-year-old neighbor that she can hear ghosts speaking through her car radio)
-Written my midterm essay for Grammar about the Appalachian English dialect (I got to talk about moonshine and clan wars, it was awesome!)
-Gotten As on all my Living Writers essay quizzes so far, including the one I wrote about Tom Bailey’s short story, “Snow Dreams”
-Started a creative nonfiction piece about bride kidnapping
-House-sat for Tom Bailey (SO MUCH FUN, even though their water shut off halfway through the weekend and I thought I broke their house)

 

I’m also keeping busy with events for Zeta Tau Alpha, my sorority, and hanging out with my friends. This is absolutely my favorite semester so far, I can’t believe it’s halfway over already!

My goals for the second half of the semester are:

-Apply for grad schools (I need to get recommendations from professors, write my personal statement, and figure out what stories to put in my portfolio)

-Edit my South Africa travel essay
-Finish writing my second Advanced Fiction story and put it up for workshop
-Figure out what I’m doing for my Scholars House project (I’m thinking a portfolio of essays/stories about travel and my South Africa trip)
-Come up with an idea for my third Advanced Fiction short story
-Read a book for pleasure and not because I’m required to for school

 

Hope everybody’s autumn is going well so far. I’ve bought two pairs of boots in the past week and drinking pumpkin-flavored beverages!

Quick update!

I'm so sorry I haven't been around much lately or responded to emails (for those of you who've sent me messages). Life has been so crazy since moving back to school! I just wanted to update you guys on my classes since this is a writing blog and ALL MY CLASSES are writing/English.

English Grammar and the Writing Process: Okay, so I know grammar sounds horrible, but it's actually going to be a pretty fun class, I think. My professor is super enthusiastic and knows that grammar itself isn't the most interesting thing in the world, so he tries to make it exciting. And we're not just learning rules of grammar. We're going to be working with dialects, debating about profanity, and other things besides learning the difference between there/they're/their.

Advanced Short Story: This class is going to raise my stress level, I know it. But it's so misleading because the classroom setting is so relaxed, just 14 of us and Gary Fincke (the head of the department) chatting about stories we've read. But we're each writing three stories this semester (a step up from the usual two), and I really want to impress Gary. Since it's advanced fiction, I'm putting pressure on myself to take my writing to the next level.

Living Writers: This is SU's contemporary writers class. We're reading pieces from pretty much every writing professor at SU, the visiting writers who will be here throughout the semester, and a couple others. The professors will come into class (Gary already visited yesterday to talk about his poetry) and we can ask them questions. It's pretty cool. There are a lot of quizzes, but we're allowed to use our books, which is nice. We're reading Tom Bailey's book of short stories next, so I'm really excited since I've read most of it before.

Travel Writing in South Africa: This is my Africa follow-up course. I'm nervous about writing my travel essay because everyone who's going to be reading it was on the trip with me (and is possibly a part of my essay). PRESSURE. I have to have a draft done by September 10, when I conference with Glen, but my workshop isn't until October 8, so I'll have some time to tweak it. All we're doing in class is workshopping everyone's stories, so that part shouldn't be too bad.

Senior Portfolio, my capstone course, won't start until the second half of the semester, so I'll tell you about that when it starts!

Just to remind you guys, I'm on a hiatus from blogging as of now. I might do the occasional update, but as you can see, I have a lot of schoolwork to focus on right now. Thanks for understanding!

Intro Poetry

I'm not going to lie, I was nervous about taking poetry. The creative writing department requires all majors to take the intro class for all three types of writing: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I understand why. Most students come in with their minds set on one of the three (usually fiction, because that's what they know and are used to reading), and throughout these other classes they discover a love for a different genre they never would've known about if they hadn't been forced to take the class.

Regardless, going into this class, I was not thrilled. Tom is teaching an English class at the same time, one I wanted desperately to be in, and I didn't understand poetry anyway. I didn't know how to critique someone's poem...I was convinced I'd be wasting my time. Fast forward seven weeks...I'm still not sure how to critique a poem, though I'm slowly learning what works and what doesn't. Karla, my professor, gives us tons of writing exercises and helps us experiment with different styles of poems.

My progress so far: I put a poem up for workshop at the beginning of the semester and completely crashed and burned. I tried to treat it like a short story but learned that poems are completely different. Since then, I've turned in two poems for Karla to grade and received Bs on both. I'm shooting for one A on a poem this semester! In a small group workshop, my group members liked a poem I'd written that had a lot of imagery and description, so I think I'm going to steer more towards that in the future.

What I've learned: When writing a poem, instead of squashing a plot or character motivations into a tiny block of text, it's better to focus on an image, emotion, or moment. It's like a zoom lens, magnifying a small piece instead of an entire story. The poems I've written that have been most successful have been about an object (a guitar), a feeling (wanderlust), and a state of mind (dealing with an unhappy home).

I'm also figuring out how to workshop my own poems. How to cut unnecessary words (which is different than cutting unnecessary pieces in fiction) and search for patterns and reoccurring images. I definitely won't master poetry by the end of the semester, but I won't be scared of it anymore!

Intermediate Fiction

One of the writing workshops I'm taking this semester is intermediate fiction. Catherine, my professor, has a completely different teaching style than Tom, so it has been an adjustment for me. She's very structured and assigns reading responses and presentations for us to complete along with our short stories and critique letters (we write letters to the other students, critiquing their stories when they're up for workshop).

My progress so far: I've put one short story up for workshop, An Unfaithful Girl. It's about an elderly man who files for divorce from his wife after discovering letters from an affair she had seventy years previously. I was happy with the workshop; I wasn't torn apart but got some great critiques.

I've also written two short-shorts (1-4 page short stories) that were workshopped in small groups. My first was written in second person (something I'd never attempted) about musical theatre boys, and my second was about a young girl whose family is always moving around and starting over in a new town (not totally autobiographical, though. I pulled a few things from my own life and gave them to this character). My group members for my first workshop didn't give me much advice, but I got tons of critiques from my second group.

What I've learned: My fiction is very traditional. I think this comes from the time I've spent learning from Tom, who believes in realistic fiction all the way. My form isn't too experimental; I focus more on the story and the characters.

I've learned to trust my instincts. Over the past seven months, I've improved so much at workshopping and revising my own work. I can take a step back and look at a story from an outsider's point of view, picking out pieces that don't make sense and finding better paths to take. During my post-workshop conference with Catherine, I told her the initial plan for my story. I'd written it another way, changed my mind halfway through, and went back and cut about a third of the story. When I told her my initial plan, she nodded her head and said, "I would've cut that, too." It was a great moment for me, because it proved I can do this on my own. I don't need a professor reading every single draft and okaying every cut I make. I don't need constant validation.

What I'm doing now: I'm in the process of writing a second short story (I'm up for workshop again March 20th!). I don't want to say anything about it yet in case I jinx it. I'm on my third partial draft; I've had trouble pinning down exactly what the story is about. I think I might finally have it, so cross your fingers for me!

Workshop 2: rewrites that need to be unwritten

My story went up for workshop again yesterday. We were a day ahead of the other fiction class, so my professor offered the option to workshop rewrites. I volunteered, wanting opinions on the changes I'd made to my last draft.

Yikes. Apparently some of those changes didn't go over so well, and in my effort to provide more information about some of the characters (that was lacking in the first draft), my story turned into one big flashback. Some people still don't buy certain characters, which is good to know, but I was a little frustrated that they weren't more specific as to why they don't understand them. I have an entire stack of critique letters, and none of them mention the believability of the characters. I was a little bummed about it, not because they gave me criticism, but because I thought I was closer to having a solid draft, and now I realize I've moved farther and farther away from it.

Now it's back to the blank Word document again. I'm doing a complete rewrite this time, keeping the same plot and characters but changing the structure. I promise you guys will be able to read this at some point! Maybe once I'm happy with it, I'll post it on here.

Into the Fire: First Workshop

In the words of Tom Bailey, my fiction professor:

"We're not in Selinsgrove anymore. We're in some serious shit now."

Today was our first real workshop day. Dun dun DUNNNNNN! For those of you who don't know, workshops are days when everyone comes to class having read one or two people's stories, and they discuss them (what works, doesn't work, what needs clarification). The person whose work is being discussed can't talk; they have to sit there and listen.

We'd done a mini-workshop earlier in the semester, but this was our first full-out workshop. And of course, my short story wound up at the front of the line. My short-short had gone first in our mini-workshop, and I think Tom is using me as the class guinea pig.

I was nervous, but the workshop went so well! Tom gave me a lot of compliments on my details, even saying I had some "damn good lines". Needless to say, I wanted to dance in my chair. I wanted to prove that I'm a good writer, and I feel satisfied after today.

Not that I don't still have a ton of work ahead of me. I'm playing around with another different beginning (I changed it for the first time after my conference with Tom last week) and need to add more background on some character dynamics. But my story has evolved so much in the past two weeks. It's so cool!

My goodies from workshop.