Posts Tagged "Clarion"

• Writing a lot, poorly, makes you a fast, poor writer

  Strengths and Weaknesses

  

  One of my Clarion instructors back in 2006 was Chip Delaney (Samuel R. Delaney). Chip came in during our first week, and I’m glad he did. He imparted plenty of good wisdom to the collection of noobs who’d gathered in sweltering East Lansing that summer, but one bit of advice comes to mind when I think about strengths and weaknesses. He said it isn’t sufficient to simply write. Writing with no forethought will only serve to reinforce bad habits. One must recognize his weaknesses and work actively to strengthen those weak writing muscles in order to make them stronger. Consider golf swings, or pitching motions, or gymnastical dismounts from the parallel bars. They’re (in varying degrees) easy to understand, and it seems as though, given enough time, you could learn to do what the pros do. But you can’t simply do it over and over again and hope pig-headed repetition is going to make you really, truly good at it.

  Now, sure, there are those savants that seem to be able to pick things up quickly and learn to do it very well. And there are those that work at it for a very long time and eventually become decent at it. To those arguments I would say this: the people that succeed because of innate talent are few and far between, and the others often succeed despite their poor form, not because of it. I can’t help but think of Tim Tebow from the Denver Broncos. He’s on a bit of a tear, but no one would claim that he’s a good quarterback. He’s succeeding with grittiness, his scrambling ability, and perhaps by catching his opponents a bit off-guard by the very fact that he isn’t a prototypical quarterback.

  I’m not claiming that repetition isn’t important. It is. You’ll certainly learn a number of things by stubbing your toe on them. Still, I would very much recommend taking Chip’s words to heart. In order to do that though—to really work on your writing—you have to know what your strengths and weaknesses are. This, to me, is the biggest reason to join peer-to-peer critique groups (whether virtual or in-person). It’s also a good reason to go to professional writing workshops. In either case, you’ll receive critiques of your own work, and this is good to a degree. It helps to identify your strengths and weaknesses. I would argue, though, that you’ll find out more about yourself as a writer by critiquing work that others have also critiqued. Assuming that the others critiquers know their stuff (and you’ll get a sense of this over time) you will find others commenting on something you completely missed. Be very aware of those things, my friends, because those are your blind spots. Now, don’t worry if it’s only one other person that brings up some issue of plotting or tone or dialogue. But if three people bring up basically the same issue and you missed it? Take note. (more…)

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• We get by with a little help…

  Giving Thanks

  From our friends.

  When this subject came up, the initial urge was to thank everyone who’s ever had some sort of influence on my writing. I’ve done a lot of that already, though, here on this blog and posts on my own blog. I’ve done it in my acknowledgements. I’ve done it in person when I’ve seen them. And I made a point to email those that I felt deserved direct thanks once The Winds of Khalakovo was accepted for publication. I’m not going to cover that ground again. Not that those folks don’t deserve another round of thanks. It’s just that I want to focus on another aspect of coming up, as it were.

  I’d like to give thanks to my peers, those who helped me in smaller ways, or perhaps in mutually beneficial ways, along my path toward publication. Who am I talking about here? Well, it’s no one group. It’s a variety of groups and people and individuals that were coming up themselves. Some were ahead of where I was, and some were not quite as far, but they all helped, and I hope that I helped them as well.

  I’ll start with Critters. I never gravitated toward meet-and-greet type writing groups where people met in person and critiqued, largely because when I first got into writing, I was traveling for work and it just wasn’t very feasible for me to make meetings. Another issue was that with larger, online groups, you have a greater chance of finding those that work well with you, and vice versa. You hopefully find people that challenge your writing, and hopefully you challenge theirs. Critters was this way for me, at least at first. I did eventually find the system a bit rigid and slow for my liking, but I certainly advanced in my craft during my time there. (more…)

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