Me and the MFA - Part 2

I’m here. At Hamline. An MFA student, carrying my bag of books and my (very busy) schedule around with me. Scurrying off to the library, taking a million notes in every lecture, meeting and talking with someone new every day. I’ve been here 3 days and it feels like two weeks already. They call this an “immersion” program and they’re right. I’m so fully immersed that I can hardly imagine the world back home!

Mind you, I nearly didn’t get here, no thanks to Virgin Australia airlines. Their staff’s behaviour at Melbourne airport was so unbelievable that even now I can hardly credit their “so sad, too bad” attitude.

Imagine setting off on one of the most important things in your life, knowing how vital it is to be there on time and not miss the first day, where so many crucial things occur. And then to be told you’ve been taken off your connecting flight (with no consultation) and you should just “go home and come back tomorrow”. No attempt to help you get on another flight or advise you what else you can do. Thank goodness for my terrific travel agent who rebooked me so I arrived only 6 hours late.

Virgin, I hope you feel my wrath through the airspace. Won’t forget, doubt I will forgive.

But I digress. Once here, I was able to finally relax. The first day was the all-important orientation, first introductory session, library session, Q&A – all that stuff that totally sets you up with everything for the course. Without it, I’d be floundering and way behind on everything.

I’m excited about the resources that Hamline offers online. The library class showed me all the books, but since I’ll be 12,000km away, it also showed me how to use the databases and online resources. On Day 2, when we had a session on how to write a critical essay, I could see how vital that online library will be for me.

I’m excited about the workshopping! Over the years, the workshops I’ve been in, both as a teacher and a writer, have often focused more on nitpicking the piece of writing, paragraph by paragraph. Here, the emphasis is on discussing the core elements of character and plot and voice, examining structure and creating an in-depth conversation about what questions the piece answers and what questions it raises. It’s a different approach and one I am already enjoying. No need to copy-edit (and how I hate having to do that and point out errors, simply because it sucks up so much time).

Of course, I’m nervous about my turn (in two days time) but I’m also looking forward to it.

This residency, the focus is on plot, so we’ve had two lectures on this already. The one yesterday brought in elements of structure, but in a more defined way, and plenty of new ideas that I will think about later (there will be many things for me to ponder later as all this new knowledge sinks in). Today’s lecture was on plot in picture books and for the first time, I understood how plot can work beyond the problem-based story. Sure, those other kinds of plots are harder to write, but when you get them right, they still work.

I’m excited to be among such a great bunch of writers. This is the thing about courses like this – for a period of time, you are among those who understand what it is that you are trying to do. We’re all here, on the same track, working hard to increase our skills and write something amazing. Everyone here shares. Everyone (even, or especially, the faculty) knows how hard this is, but also how worthwhile it is, and how much it means.

As one of the faculty said on the first day: “We are all in the same place when we start a new story, not knowing if it will work, or how to make this one work.”

As always, I’m on squirrel watch. (I take photos of squirrels everywhere I go!) So far, the count is 3 squirrels and 4 rabbits. I haven’t been fast enough to get a squirrel photo yet, but I will!

First Draft, and then...

It's easy to hang on to your first draft. And hard to let go of it. Especially when it seemed to come in a fantastic rush of inspiration. It was like a gift, seemingly so perfect and original when it burst out of you that you can't imagine how it could be improved. 99 times out of 100, that usually means it needs a heap of reworking! Yes, very occasionally (less often than you think) a story does come like a gift, placed in your lap with reverence and awe. I've had one or two poems like that, and hardly had to change a word. Goodness, one of them was even semi-rhyming and every rhyme worked like magic. It's never happened again!

But mostly what we come up with in a first draft is actually us finding our way into what we really wanted to say. It's only in subsequent drafts that we hone in on the real story, the real poem. And I think it's only in those drafts that we find ways of deepening and strengthening what was, very often in the beginning, more like an anecdote. Developing layers of meaning and creating something that leaves the reader with "something to go on with" takes time, patience and, most of all, a willingness to acknowledge that the piece needs more.

Often in workshopping, that's the puzzle to be solved. What you read sounds great, reads well, flows, entertains. But at the end you are left with a sense of ... and? You can't quite put your finger on it but something is missing, something that would satisfy the deeper part of your reading self. You're not sure what it is, but it's not there yet. This can be a huge challenge when it's time to make your comments. To say "something's missing" is of no use to the writer. "What?" they ask. "What is it the piece needs?" And unless you can answer, you're no help at all!

Today, I had to answer this question for someone, and despite years of workshopping and grading student writing, I still struggled to define it. I said words like "substance" and "depth" and "meat". They sound a bit pathetic, don't they? And theme didn't quite cover it, because when you talk about theme, sometimes people go haring off and starting inserting messages instead. It's partly about showing instead of telling, but it's more about what's holding the story up underneath. How would you define the urge to tell a story that "means something", without falling into moralising?

In the end, I came back to the question: why? Why does the character feel like this? Why do they perceive the world in this way? Why do they need to behave in this way, react, act, think? What drives them? How can you show this through the story, without explaining? How can you go beyond the surface to the hidden depths? What, in the story, will subtly reveal what's really going on? Lots of questions, but that's fine. A one-line prescription doesn't work for anyone. It's only by questioning, over and over, that we gradually sink further and further into what truly propels our characters through a story.

And no, this wasn't War and Peace we were discussing. It was a picture book! Thank you to the person I was talking to, because it made me really think about it yet again.

Learning From Others

In our course, we do a lot of workshopping of students' writing in class, whether it be fiction, nonfiction, poems or picture books. At the beginning, we talk about what everyone can learn from workshopping properly. By properly, we mean taking the time and effort to read carefully, work out what isn't working for the reader, and then make constructive comments and suggestions. All it really does take is time and effort, even for those who have never workshopped before and feel they have little to offer.

We are all critical readers (or should try to be if we are developing our writing) - we know if a beginning is too slow, if an ending doesn't work, if a character seems shallow or if a story just doesn't engage us strongly. The key to learning is to try to work out why, and then how to fix it. The "fixing" suggestions might take a while. You might not feel confident enough to make suggestions, thinking "what would I know?" You might begin by going too far in the other direction, wanting the author to revise the story the way you would if it were yours. Finding the middle ground comes with experience.

It also comes, as I said, with time and effort. Too often, I see students whose idea of workshopping is to correct some punctuation (usually wrongly!), say "I liked this" and leave it at that. Then when it comes around to the teacher's turn to comment, they sit with mouths gaping open. Or sit with arms folded, resisting. It's a good bet that when we get to workshopping the arm-folder's writing, they will either argue or stay silent and refuse to change a thing. I've even had students who declare if no one understands what they're writing, then that's the reader's problem, not theirs.

Workshopping (or critiquing, as it's called too) can be very confronting. People shake in their shoes at the prospect, thinking they will be ripped apart. Sometimes it can feel like that! Sometimes people are not tactful and encouraging, choosing to go on a little superiority trip instead and be rude and discouraging. We try not to let that happen. But way beyond any great feedback you may receive on your own work comes a far greater benefit. Through reading and critiquing other writers' work, you learn how to critique your own.

The hardest thing in the world is to be able to get enough distance from your writing to effectively edit it, to see what's not working, to realise what it needs in order to be fixed. This comes from experience, and the fastest way to gain that experience is in a workshop. But this is what counts - you need to approach workshopping with time, effort and thought. You get back what you put in, in all senses. If others in the workshop realise (and they will, very quickly) that you can't be bothered with their stuff, you only want comments for your own work, they'll pull back and you'll get very little in return. Think of it as an investment for your future writing, and put in 100%.