Workshopping is probably one of the most valuable things you get from a course in creative writing. Most writers will eventually show their work to someone before they set off on the tortuous path to publication, and some will get genuinely good feedback from readers, but there’s nothing quite like having a room full of writers examine, assess, and critique your work. It can be a bit nerve-wracking having people you respect look at your work though because of course if they hate it it’s not just because the work is the worst thing ever written but that you are a pathetic excuse for a writer and human being and deserve nothing but scorn. Or something like that.

It’s interesting too to see what everyone brings to the mix. Clearly, everyone speaks from a particular point of view – we have fiction writers, YA fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and editors among others – as well as from personal preferences, so what they have to say can vary quite a bit. So, as Miriam pointed out yesterday, it’s probably best for the person being critiqued to pay more attention to what everyone agrees about, or to comments that come up again and again, and less to comments that have to do with personal preferences.  Unless they happen to agree with them, I suppose. Ultimately, the writer is still the writer and has to decide what to take on board and what to discard. At least that’s what you’re told and what you have to keep repeating to yourself when redrafting. Because the problem is, when you workshop writing , is that you have it taken into as many different directions as there as writers and their attendant imaginations, and most of those directions are really quite good.

It’s especially frustrating when your own idea is still fairly raw. Or entirely raw, actually, as mine was yesterday. Not being able to write when it’s your turn to be workshopped is not fun. Still, when presented with my half-baked ideas, the class didn’t skimp on advice, ideas, and suggestions. I have a few particularly exciting ones to work on, but my excuse for not developing them forthwith and writing this instead is that they still need to sink in. And I have a headache.

I dislike middles intensely. I have an idea, I have images, I have symbols, I have a story and I have research to back them all up. I also have a beginning and an ending. All I’m missing is about, oh, 135 lines of middle.

Which really isn’t that much to come up with when you think about it, specially when it’s just the middle that needs to be placed neatly between a tidy beginning and a strong ending. But this one’s different. This one’s surly. I’ve written and re-written and cut and tightened and squeezed and stretched, but it’s still all flabby and jiggly and even saggy in bits and I’m beginning to suspect it ducks out to gorge on candy bars when I’m not looking. Tsk. No discipline.

Story writing is a pain. Mostly because I think of the way I want things to end first and then work my way backwards to what set them off in the first place. Of course, when you get down to actual writing, you have to do it from beginning to end–even the bits and pieces. When you do that, however, the characters or the situation have a pesky habit of deciding that they want to have a say in what happens too, and to hell with your well-crafted, oh-so-clever/poignant/meaningful/disturbing ending.

So I write about writing instead. It’s a great escape and it still passes for work because I’m still ‘writing’ and still engaging with the original project, if only as something to whine about.

The thing is, I’ve never written actual characters before. I do poetry, images, vignettes, all of which allow you to focus on the point, and only the point, not full fledged people with lives and relationships. I’ve only ever written short stories centered on violence and gore (I was a happy little teenager) where the characters were simply vehicles for the action, not people in themselves. Ah well. What’s the point of being here if not to try on different things for size, right? And I have to say I’ve learnt a lot already about what makes characters tick, how to make them more real, and so on. I suppose it’s just that I’m fundamentally uninterested in people I don’t know–until I get to know them, of course. Maybe the more accurate word is disinterested. So the thing to do would be to get to know the lot I’m writing about and suspend the point of the story till then. Sounds like a plan.