Mark Bukovec ([info]diekreuzen) wrote,
@ 2006-05-19 07:45:00
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Goals
I'm a goal-oriented person. I believe people become what they envision themselves to be. I work hard at planning the best future for myself.

I don't always reach my goals. I had planned to finish a draft of my novel before the baby arrived. Right now I'm halfway through. Half a manuscript is better than none (the perpetual "I've got this great idea for a book ...").

I've been thinking about what my goals for the Clarion West workshop are. My primary goal is to have a three-year writing plan. I find three years is a "workable" time frame for planning daily tasks against lifetime goals.

Also, three years from now all my kids will be in school, at which point I'll no longer be a full-time parent. Then I have to decide to what degree I'll focus my energies on writing and whether I'll "get a job" (one that actually pays money).

I'm looking for avenues to explore: subject matter, genre, technique, long vs. short form, etc. What are you doing and why are you doing it?

I'm glad I missed my last fiction class. Since we're coming to the end, students are starting to get touchy about their progress. They wonder why their writing hasn't gotten better. They're lashing out at the critiques, questioning their usefulness. Such displays make me cringe--like witnessing adult temper tantrums.

All of this is the unhappy realization that no one can tell you how to write. You have to figure it out for yourself.

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[info]eclexys
2006-05-20 01:19 am UTC (link)
Mark,

From my experience studying other "creative work" subjects, nobody can teach one to be creative person, BUT good teachers help with things like sensitizing their students to this or that, giving honest feedback, and helping with technical stuff. My first music composition teacher basically made us listen a lot -- to music and other sounds -- and forced us to master the art of musical notation. Nothing about creativity but those of us paying attention learned a lot. The real artistic work can't be taught but lots can, anyway. As I'm sure you know. :)

Anyway, what I was going to get to was the point athat the fragile egos of students lashing out in creative writing classes has always been something I couldn't stand. I understand being sensitive, touchy about progress, but it always takes a long time in anything difficult enough to be worth attention. Many people don't seem to get that. My own students in my (essay-) writing classes sometimes make a face when I ask them how they feel about their progress. Then we list all the techniques and tools we've covered in the semester, and how they now consciously know how to use them and have practiced enough of them to be second nature (in a foreign language, no less), and they think differently, or at least some do.

It's nice to see another "planner" in the class. You'd think I were related to Stalin for the way I create 5-year plans. You'd think I was related to Bush from the way I discard them soon after.

As for short stories versus novels -- I have this feeling that short stories are actually very different, and somewhat harder, than long fiction. I've drafted one full novel and most of a second, and most of my "short stories" are novelettes at least. The shortest story I could find, aside from a recent bit of flash, was about 30 pages, but it was also about five years old, which was the piece I submitted to Clarion West. I'm usually working more in the 40-50 page range for "short fiction". One thing I'm hoping to learn in this workshop is effective skills for compression, or advice on how to write shorter stuff...

And also, advice about how to think about novel-publishing in terms of "name" and how it relates to short-story writing. Whether writing shorts and publishing a number of them is strategically helpful when you do it before releasing a novel. (I suspect it is, but I'd like to know more.)

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[info]diekreuzen
2006-05-20 02:35 am UTC (link)
Gord--The workshop I'm taking is an extension class (think "adult education") at the University. Most of the class has really bought into the "teacher (published novelist) knows all" mentality. Unfortunately, this resulted in changing our workshopping method to the teacher performing her critique, and then everyone else chipping in for about 5-10 minutes after.

I'm a big believer in peer critiques. I assume that anyone who enjoys writing loves to read and has strong opinions. I can benefit from hearing about their reaction to my writing. The individuals I mentioned in the original post discredit the peer critiques because, like them, we're the slobs on the audience side of the panel discussion.

Like you, I've taught writing (freshman- and sophomore-level composition while I was in grad school), and it used to drive me nuts during student conferences when students asked me what they needed to do to get an A on their paper. They just wanted a checklist.

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[info]eclexys
2006-05-21 01:42 am UTC (link)
That class sounds painful. I studied once with a guy who'd just gotten a huge national award in Canada -- his second -- and his method was to shut up and pipe in at the end for a couple of minutes. Interestingly, he usually didn't just amplify what he said, but he did reiterate some most of the time.

Yeah, "teacher knows all" is an easy thing to buy into. It's a little more understandable where I am, as I'm the only native English speaker in that classroom, but I wish the students would recognize that they can learn a lot from one another -- everyone has different weak points and when they do try editing one another the results are great -- except they don't trust one another's editing. Argh!

My students are less of the "what do I have to do to get an A" and more of the "If I write much more, it's better, right?" There's a bell-curve enforced onto me because the class is over 20 students, and so they're all trying their darndest to stand out. Well, the people who still haven't learned to double space or to use paragraphs instead of point form -- things we covered on the first day -- are going to be on the bad side of the curve. (Notably, people who don't bother to double space are also the ones who don't spent much time on the homework anyway.)

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