Tag: The Teacher

Critical

~ riggledo ~ 3 Comments

The critiques were pretty painless last night.  I made a “joke” about being nervous to our leader and so she “let me off the hook” early by making me first.  I’m actually grateful for that.  I was able to get it out of the way and relax about it the rest of the night.

I wasn’t bothered by any of what they said, in fact I anticipated some of it.  There are some areas in The Teacher that are entirely too detailed and serve no purpose for the story.  What I now have to decide is whether to cut them down, or to make them serve a purpose.  While I personally kind of like some of the details, there was a consensus among the group that a few specific areas needed to be “condensed” and what the leader told us the first night was, “take what you want and ignore what you don’t, but if there’s some consistency in a particular area, you should probably revisit it,”  so I guess I will.

A lot of the other comments were about wanting to know more about certain things that are actually already addressed in other areas of the book.  That’s one of the downfalls in the way this works.  I get to submit 25 double spaced pages, three separate times.  They do not have to be the same pages, so I can have up to 75 pages critiqued.  But the first draft of The Teacher is 418 pages.  You can’t expect to know everything about the story and the characters and their backgrounds in 25 or even 75 pages of a 400 page novel.

So all in all, I feel pretty good about the feedback.  I agree with a lot of the comments that require changes and feel good about what I covered in other places that they asked for.  While I may not be as close to Book-Deal ready as I had thought/hoped, I do feel good about what I’ve done and what I can do to improve it.

So…  full speed ahead!

Holy Hectic, Batman

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

What a day this has been.  After all those comments I made last week about not putting off the critiques until the last minute, I haven’t been able to get around to doing them until today, even though I got the samples earlier than last week.  And I’ve only been able to do one.  The other one I haven’t even cracked open yet.

I admit I’ve really been putting off doing it because it’s just so tough.  I want to be helpful, but fair, but honest, but constructive, but nice.  This does not come to me naturally, y’all! (I can’t believe I just used that word.)

I noticed last week that a lot of people did their critiques and comments electronically, using the review options (track changes and comments) in Microsoft Word and then printing out the hard copies for the writers.  The first of the two samples and the only one I’ve touched so far, the writer asked us to do it that way.  I’m not sure if that slowed me down or if it would have taken me a long time anyway, but it took me three and a half hours to do my critique and comments on an 18 page sample.  And that’s after having read the story last night.

There were a lot of technical problems with the story and some confusing points that slowed me down and I had to figure out how to comment on those in a positive and constructive way that still said, “You need to change these things.”  It’s not easy!

In addition to that, I had actual work to do today and errands to run at lunch, and blogs piling up in my reader and my own mental blocks against doing this in the first place, all standing in the way, holding me back.

I just don’t want to do them.  Not because I’m being lazy.  I just don’t want to tell people I don’t even know what I think of their writing…  but I want them to do it for me.  And I want them to like what I’ve done and have only great things to say (which is probably too much to expect) and I want them to be supportive and encouraging.  I don’t really believe in karma or good juju, or whatever.  I just don’t.  And yet, I do believe you get what you deserve.  You get what you give. (That’s different, right?)  So I’m doing the critiques and trying to be genuinely helpful in spite of my own insecurity and my fear of coming across more harshly than I mean to and hoping that they won’t, or that I won’t take it that way.

And so here we are on Tuesday night.  I’ve done one critique and have another one to go and yet, twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes from now, I will already be in the work shop, either listening to what they thought of my sample, or telling them what I thought of theirs, and I haven’t even started on the last sample, yet.

No pressure here…

In Over My Head

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

So I had the second meeting of the writing workshop/class/group/thingy, last night.  I’ve been really looking forward to it and I’m glad I’m doing it, but I’ve been in for a few surprises.

Last week, we met at the leader’s beautiful house in San Francisco where we chatted amongst our selves for a little while, waiting for everyone to arrive and settle in and then the group leader gave us copies of some pages from a book she had.  After she passed the pages around to everyone she began to read selected sections of them out loud to us.  Following along with her and trying to keep up, I wasn’t able to read them myself and I wasn’t able to fully process what they were saying and what I took away from the endeavor was:

“Secrets are lies and lies are truth and truth comes out in writing in the form or your secrets.”

Or something like that.

Then she told us to take a few minutes and write about a secret.

I really didn’t know what to make of that.  I’ve already told the biggest secret I was keeping.

Before we left for the night we selected which weeks we were going to have our stuff read and critiqued by the group.

Over the last week, I received writing samples from three of the people in the group and was expected to read and critique each sample.  I didn’t really know what that meant, exactly, and as I mentioned yesterday, I found that harder than I imagined I would.

I received a chapter from a memoir which was competently written with lots of descriptive imagery and scenery and even showed a bit of growth in the person the memoir is about, but ultimately was just a piece of a larger work.  I wasn’t personally interested in the location and history of the place in which the story happens.  The feeling and sentiment of the character is moving, but not overly compelling to me.  I marked a few typos here and there, indicated an analogy I really liked, but mostly had very few comments to make.

I received a short story, 15 pages, the first half of which I really enjoyed.  Beautiful locale, really well written, with just a couple of stumbling points in my mind, but then halfway through I felt like the story fell apart and she rushed the second half entirely.  Again, I marked some typos, made a few notes and comments, but for the most part, I wasn’t engaged in the story.

Then I received two pieces from the third person.  An 8-page short story that was whipped out in one morning, because she hadn’t expected to have to submit so early and it just played out that way.  Given that she wrote it in a couple of hours and sent it out with not much editing, it was really good.  Well written and executed.  And sad, depressing subject matter.  The rest of her pages were an excerpt from an early stages novel in progress.  There wasn’t much to glean from that in my opinion because it seemed to come from somewhere in the middle of the book and didn’t cover much.  There was nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t grab my attention.

But what really had me worried was when we got to class and the rest of the group started giving their critiques.  We sat in the circle and started with one person, going around the room, each of us taking a turn giving our feedback.  We have a four-minute limit and when that time is up we move on.  I listened as each person started commenting on the imagery and the symbolism and the subtext and so on and so forth and I thought, “well, shit, I didn’t see any of that.  I wasn’t even looking for that.”  I don’t think like that.  I don’t go looking for those things.  If they jump off the page at me, fine, but most of the time I see just what the words say and not much more.  So I didn’t need my full four minutes and I didn’t have much to say and I felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight.  And then I felt like a fraud because when it was my turn to talk, I found myself saying things like, “I really like this story” (I didn’t), “This was beautifully written” (sometimes true, sometimes not.  I mean we’re all competent writers or we wouldn’t be there, but some of the pieces weren’t exactly exceptional).  And then I was trying to give my feedback on the things that I saw that needed work and I was so afraid of saying something wrong that will come across as mean-spirited, when it’s really just an observation, an opportunity for improvement or clarification.

I drove home seriously worried about next week.  I am one of the three people who signed up to submit pages for the next session.  I’ll be submitting chapters 3 & 4 of The Teacher.  They happen to add up to exactly 25 pages, wich is convenient, but also, Chapter 1 has been posted on this blog and read by several people with lots of commentary.  It’s pretty polished.  Chapter 2 was given to two people and both had encouraging positive things to say.  So it only stands to reason that I would move on to Chapters 3 & 4.  But I found myself worried.  What if I’m the one person in the room who doesn’t write flowery, symbolic, laced with subtext, deep, meaningful stuff?  What if they all come back next week and tell me that my chapters are vapid and meaningless, with no substance and nothing to pull you in?  What if I just look like an idiot because I’m not an abstract thinker and that’s what this calls for?

Okay, let’s be honest here.  I know I’m a decent writer.  With the occasional lapse in proper comma use (or is it coma? – See, I’m screwed!) I’m pretty technically proficient.  Spell check is my best friend, unless I’m spelling the wrong word the right way (see coma/comma) in which case it’s of no use to me whatsoever.  But I’m also pretty straight forward and literal.  I’ve never been an abstract person.  Suddenly, I feel like a kid wearing his daddy’s clothes in the middle of a grown up party.

I know everyone will be nice.  And the truth is, people who look for those kinds of hidden, deeper meanings, will probably find them even if they’re not really there.  And all I have to do is sit quietly scribbling notes and nodding my head reverently.  Try not to roll my eyes and, please God!, don’t let me blush.  (That’s a pipe dream.)

I want the feedback and I know I’ll gain something from it.  I just don’t want to feel like too much of a fool.

I’m so in over my head.

Lazy Saturday

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

It’s been a very lazy Saturday here in the Riggledo household.  I haven’t been to bed before midnight (and usually much later) in more than a month and sitting here at the end of my second week back at work since my most recent vacation, the late nights have taken their toll.

I’m sitting in my living room, in my recliner with my feet up.  I’m wearing sweat pants, a t-shirt and a fleece, Old Navy pull over.  There’s a throw blanket covering me from just below my chest all the way to my feet and it is an electric blanket which is plugged in and turned to high.  My laptop is– well, on my lap and my geriatric cat is curled up in a ball on my shins, sleeping and probably dreaming that the laptop will go away and free his preferred spot for him.  For the first time in weeks it is actually 70 degrees in my apartment and, just to be clear, that’s the warmest it’s been.  (On a couple of occasions in the last two weeks I’ve actually had to break out the space heater which I never use because it draw so much energy that my electric bills triple when I do, it’s been that cold.)

I am cozy and I do not want to move.  I’ve actually fought off sleep a couple of times already today.

It’s been a pretty good week, personally, filled with fun, social interactions, and personal accomplishments.  Dinner with Lil’B on Monday; Lunch with K on Tuesday; finally made it to the Library to pick up that book they’ve been holding, on Wednesday; Thursday I had my weekly noontime meeting with the little advisory council for my Emergency Response Team program; and yesterday I had a lovely, long lunch with my friend Chantelé to celebrate her birthday.

It has also been a week of completions. One of the reasons I’ve been up so late and getting so little sleep is because I’ve been working on a baby blanket for a friend of a friend.  Michelle asked me if I would make the blanket for someone she knows, and I’m always happy to do it as long as the requester supplies the yarn (that sh-stuffs expensive, yo!)  I finished the blanket earlier this week.

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Baby Blanket, hand crocheted by yours truly.

 

I’ve also been at the office late every day this week because I’ve been working on the first round of edits on my manuscript, hereafter called by its name, “The Teacher”.  I guess if I’m serious about getting this thing published, I should start treating it like it’s real, and that means, among other things, calling it by its name.  I found it easier to do this stage of the editing process, red pen on print out copy, sitting at a proper desk and not stretched out in my recliner.  As of about 7:15 last night, I have finished that process and now I have to go through and translate those edits to the soft copy.  And I need to get on it because I have eleven days until the first meeting of the writing group I’ve been talking about.

I’m super excited about the group, and also a bit nervous.  I won’t know anyone going in and that’s never a pleasant experience for me.  Plus many of the people involved are already published authors while I’m just a little blogger/writer with a small audience, a dream, and a not particularly mainstream manuscript.  I know it’ll be an excellent, educational experience, if nothing else; it’s just the buildup that I dread.

Tomorrow, I spend the afternoon with Lil’B and I really have no idea what we’re going to do.  I think it’s supposed to rain so we’ll be looking for something indoors.  Normally, that means movies, but I’m not sure there’s anything for us to see.  I’ll figure that out in the morning though.  For now, I’m just going to sit back, relax, and watch my Dotor Who (original series, season 21) DVD from Netflix followed by the Rock Hudson movie in my Netflix instant queue that’s about to expire, and then call it a night.

It’ll be lovely.  I’m already yawning and it’s only 6:45.

Write On Edge: Salt Water

~ riggledo ~ 11 Comments

This is another Write on Edge piece.  The prompt this week was “salt water”  In this piece of fiction, the salt water was to be used to solve a problem:

———————————-

 

Hunter awoke from deep sleep as a ray of light played across his eyes.  After a long stretch, he sat up in bed, casting his gaze toward the bay window.  The skies were clear.  The sun already shone brightly at 6:30 on this Saturday morning.  Today was the day.  Hunter cast aside the cobwebs in his mind and lunged from his bed, anxious to awaken his roommate, Cal.

They shared an over-priced flat that looked out over San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.  The price they paid in rent, the endless days of fog and gray skies, they were all worthwhile when they got a clear day like today.  They both liked to make the most of it; a run in the sand, a game of Frisbee, a lay out in the sun, it didn’t matter.

The beach was empty this early, too cold to lay out, but a rollicking game of Frisbee sounded just about right to them both and they played hard.  Suddenly, Hunter let out a shout of disgust.  “Why don’t people clean up after their dogs?” he groused to Cal as he hopped on one foot, not wanting to step on the crap again.

Cal approached his friend and after ducking under Hunter’s arm helped him to the water’s edge.  “Here,” he said, “use the water to wash off.”  As Hunter splashed in the water and rubbed his soiled foot on the sand, Cal stared out at the rolling waves.

Hunter looked at his friend.  When he saw Cal’s posture, squinted eyes, head thrust forward at the waters, he asked, “What is it?”  He turned toward the sea, “What are you looking at?”

“Look,” Cal said, pointing at the tumbling form, approaching through the froth.  “What is that?”

Soon, their questions were answered as the body, broken and battered, washed ashore, near their feet.