Charlottesville Words

The May/June issue of Poets & Writers arrived yesterday. Couple of good short articles — one from Stephen Elliott called “Surviving a Month Without the Internet.” We didn’t have Internet service on our retreat, and it was great. I missed being able to Google a fact or send an email, but I was well aware I would have gotten nothing worthwhile done if we’d had access. Elliott now rations his Internet access to make more time for reading and writing. At the end of the article, P&W urges you to go on-line and answer a poll about how you spend your time on the Internet. Thanks, P&W, I needed that.

I also took a look at “Writer as Parent,” by Dan Barden. Um, how can I put this — if you’re a brand-new parent, you might very well find it illuminating to learn the ways in which parenthood, and particularly full-time childrearing, affects your priorities and your personal identity. It’s especially heartening to hear all this from a dad for a change. But for those of us who have been doing this awhile — there’s nothing here we don’t already know. Welcome to the monkey house, Dan.

In The Practical Writer section, Ann Pancake lays out some basic principles for how to handle manuscript critiques. This would be a good one for new critique groups to print out and discuss at their first meeting. Some tips:

• “Let the critique cool” — take a little time (a day, a week, whatever) before you address the comments about your manuscript. Strike a balance between being open to criticism and surrendering your vision of the piece.
• “Avoid exposing your writing to criticism until you have a solid grasp of what you’re trying to achieve.” I’m not there yet in my group. I don’t have a large enough body of mature pieces to submit, and as a writer I’m still feeling my way toward a vision. My group helps me with this by asking questions like, “What do you want this piece to be?” On the other hand, I don’t immediately incorporate every suggestion into the piece — I do wait until I know my vision.
• How do you know whether a particular comment is valid? When you hear the same comments over and over on different pieces, or when you get consistent comments from different readers on a particular section. Pancake advises, “When you hear conflicting advice about a single issue, consider the source of the criticism and listen to your gut.”
• “As a rule of thumb, take seriously the fact that a problem has been identified. Take a little less seriously the ideas your reader offers as solutions.” Well said.
• “Be wary of ambiguous identifications of potential problems,” e.g., “This character isn’t working for me.” You can’t do anything with that.

There’s lots more in the article about how to choose readers for your work and how to keep your work from becoming “art by consensus.” Pancake’s final words sum it up: “The work itself must play the final judge.”