We Can Work It Out

I think I was 20 the first time I had a story critiqued in a writing workshop. At the time, I was your basic frat boy: all my clothes were emblazoned with Greek letters, I had a girlfriend who was sleeping with half the campus and I was sleeping with the other half, and I had a really bad haircut, but that was okay because it was the same haircut the rest of the fraternity had. My story, which I still have in a file somewhere, was a happy little tale called "Forecast Says Rain." It was about a guy whose dog gets run over in front of the Photomat where his sister works -- a sister so devoid of humanity that she, if memory serves, has the dog hefted into the dumpster behind the Safeway and then forgets to tell her brother -- and how he deals with the crushing loss, but really, it was all a huge symbol for the dissolution of the family structure and...well, like I said, I was 20.

I was fairly certain that this story was the greatest piece of short fiction ever written. It had all the elements: pathos, ethos, a troubled 1st person narrator, a dead dog. So when I came into class for the workshop, my sense was that the teacher -- a woman whose name escapes me, but who was only a few years older than I was at the time, and who I was convinced was, like, totally in to me -- would simply rise up from her seat and begin slowly clapping until the entire class followed suit. Sort of like the end of the movie Lucas.

Well, it didn't quite happen that way. Instead, for the next three hours, the story was taken apart piece by piece and held up to the light. As it turns out, the light was pretty dim. And cliched, too. But what I learned in that first workshop, and every subsequent one I spent time in, is that a story or a novel does not exist in a vacuum. Other eyes need to see the work, if only to show the writer what has become blind to them.

I mention all of this after reading an interesting discussion that crept up in the comments about the worthiness of writing workshops in a previous post.

I don't have an MFA, nor do any members of my immediate writing family -- my brother, my sisters, my mother, my uncle. Several of my friends who are writers have them and, I'd say, an equal number do not. I never felt like I needed it, personally, though I did take a number of classes at UCLA Extension after college while I was still a working stiff. That said, I believe in writing workshops and writers groups, if only to an extent. I was part of a group for several years -- a group that ended up producing a number of books, plenty of awards, lots of published short fiction and an equal amount of complete and total failure, at least in the publishing arena. They were a great group of people and I consider them friends, but even with people you like and admire, you end up reaching a kind of maximum density -- the people who love your work, love your work; the people who hate your work, hate your work; the people with no opinion one way or the other...well, they usually bring the best food. After four years with the group, it became counter-productive. I began to worry that I couldn't write without them, that I couldn't critique my own work and, worse, that I wasn't doing the writing anymore, that it was now almost being done by committee. True or not (and my insecurities always tend toward the apocalyptic in this regard), I had to cut ties. What I found, surprisingly, was that the group was still there in that I'd finally learned to see where my work failed (see: Fake Liar Cheat), where it succeeded (see: Living Dead Girl) and where it was most imaginative (see: Simplify). I'd learned, finally, how to negotiate that contract between writer and reader.

I think the same can be said for successful writing workshops in general -- that at their best, the writer learns how to deal with both criticism of a more academic variety (you know...fucking theme, fucking motif, fucking symbol...), and criticism of a pedestrian kind (you lost me here, this is confusing, this doesn't make sense, an alien sexbot would never say this during hand-to-hand combat with the ghost of its evil human creator). Basically, your work gets to see the light of day, dim or bright as it may be. Still, you reach maximum density there, too: either you'll change or you won't. Either you will grow and improve or you won't. Either you believe what I tell you, or at least find value in it, or you think I'm an asshole.  Which is why I believe in workshops -- it's a public barometer.

I don't know if it's about training per se, but I do believe that not everyone can just sit down and write a novel. I mean, if it were that easy, Ethan Hawke would do it (oh...wait...). So I believe that some teaching is needed for most people. I believe that the greatest benefit of a workshop is the give and take between the students, learning what is right and wrong about your work through readings others work. You can't teach talent, but you can teach someone how to apply it.

Does every aspiring writer need to be in a workshop? Probably not. Does every aspiring novelist need an MFA? Again, probably not. But every creative work likely needs another pair of eyes on it.

Comments

[Keith]

I was enough of a dick last time this kind of thing came up that I hesitated before commenting now. But it's 2 AM in New York, I'm done writing, and Baby #2 hasn't awakened for his 12:30 feeding yet.

I agree that another pair of eyes is useful. I also find that depending on whose head those eyes are in, I notice different problems with the manuscript. They don't even have to say anything, and already I'm seeing problems.

Tangentially related, but: I went to see The Triplets of Belleville with a writer friend. We both liked it, but we agreed the story broke down at the end. So that was my opinion--great animation, story didn't really work.

Then a dyslexic designer/illustrator friend moved to New York and wanted to see it, so I went with him.

Watching it with him, I loved it.

I've found the same thing happens with music--just playing a piece for someone else, I notice (in significant discomfort) flaws I managed not to hear before. It doesn't even matter whether the listener says anything; it's the being in a room while someone else is hearing it.

I'm still split on workshops, since what's said in them can be more harmful than helpful. But that very basic act of being present while eyeballs you don't own roll over it can be worth all the negatives.

So I guess I think workshops are all right, as long as you don't listen all that much to what anyone says in them, and just borrow various eyes for a while.

[Lee Goldberg]

Tod,

I find it amusing that you consider FAKE LIAR CHEAT a failed work when is has been, by far, the most financially successful piece of writing you've ever done. So you must have done something right. That said, you're right. LIVING DEAD GIRL is far superior to FAKE LIAR CHEAT. It's a stunningly good book...powerful and haunting...and I would say that even if you weren't my brother.

[Gendy Alimurung]

Question: When a book doesn't sell well, is that simply because the publisher failed to market it enough?

My feeling is that marketing is so powerful, it can pretty much accomplish anything. Like, if there were 5,000,000 copies of Ethan Hawke's book on the shelf at Borders, people would inevitably buy them, regardless of how good the writing was. So you don't have to be a good novelist. You just have to have good marketing. Do you think that's true?

[Tod Goldberg]

Yes and no, Gendy. One check of the remainder bin at your local Borders will prove that out. Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman seems to be cluttering up the one by my house, and god knows she got a ton of marketing behind her, but, the fact is, her book sucked and people didn't buy it. (I'm not just saying it sucked because it was remaindered...I picked up a copy at BEA myself, buying into the buzz, and, well, I read it and it sucked.) Take a book like The Lovely Bones or The Time Traveler's Wife -- both got huge marketing pushes only after the glowing reviews started flooding in, and both are seemingly the kind of books -- literary, that is -- that don't normally find themselves atop the bestseller lists. But plenty of books that are awful do succeede because of the money behind them, no question about that. In my example, one I've told you before, is that Fake Liar Cheat, a book I don't think is my finest work, but which Lee correctly points out earned me more money than anything else, benefited from advertising on MTV and more than doubled the sales of Living Dead Girl, a book I got uniformly great reviews for and no marketing. Money moves product, no question. But negative buzz can certainly crush that movement. I don't know if this is true or not, but I'd be willing to bet Ethan Hawke hasn't earned out on the advances of his novels.

[Angela]

I've been a part of a writers workshop since 2000, basically comprised of the same 6-10 people and although I value all of their feedback, I know they know my style and lately haven't been going as much because I didn't know what I was getting out of it anymore. UCLA classes on the other hand, for me, are always a different group of eyes. I like to be a part of those classes not only for the new eyes on my work, but also to point out the things that aren't working or maybe I'd not recognized if given in a workshop with my normal group of friends. Workshopping is important. For me, it is more about staying motivated and keeping me on my toes. (And it's always good to feel like you're a better writer than many others in your class.)

[Graham]

I think workshops help when they teach you how to critique other people's work, which in turn teaches you how to critique your own. I've been a part of some good groups, but unfortunately there aren't any close enough to where I like to make it convenient.

[Karen]

"You lost me here" is probably the most useful bit of criticism a writer can receive. No matter how many times you've been around the block, it's always bracing to learn that what you thought was on the page isn't.