Blog – Page 130 – Catherine Schaff-Stump

Giving Good Crit

Last entry, we talked about being active when you received crit. Now, how can you get good karma points as a reader?

I actually do a lecture on this with my students, because we have to do some peer edit training at the beginning of the semester. There are a couple of pitfalls that peer editors don’t avoid.

“Your paper is good. I wouldn’t change a thing.” There are two reasons that I see this happen in the classroom: 1. The student doesn’t know enough about writing to make any suggestions, and sees the writing as so much better than something they can do that they really believe the paper is unchangeable. 2. The student doesn’t want to take the time to crit the paper.

In theory, in a writing group, number 2 isn’t going to be our option. If it is, get out of that writing group! Number 1 can be a problem, which is why it’s important to be in with a group of your peers. There are ways to teach people about writing so they can help each other crit. I usually model anonymous student papers with the class. Perhaps a way to get on the same page is to critique a story that isn’t from one of the writers in the group, and give people some common ground.

What about those rare instances where a paper/story/novel really is good? It *can* happen. My suggestions at this time are for complimenting readers to substantiate what the writer is doing well by telling them the specifics that work, if no other reason that you don’t want a writer accidentally get rid of good stuff when they inevitably do some tweaking.

The other pitfall? When I give the speech about being too nice, perhaps the pendulum swings the other way.

“This paper sucks.”

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Getting Good Crit

Two weeks out from the end of the summer semester. Mamma wants some down time! I guess I should have figured six weeks in which you taught a class, oriented a new group of students, presented to the board, added a level on another campus, and interviewed and hired for a new teaching position would be a little busy, huh? Didn’t even see that coming.

***

All right, world. I *think* that’s the last of the Hercules books out to kind people who helped me out with the book. I think next up I need to be thinking about a contest. Here. With amazing Morty Moose tokens. And mythology stuff. Look for something soon. In July. When the semester is over.

***

Before I move on to the next exciting installment in my series of writing process, you need to take a look at these two links:

Maggie Stiefvater Revises.

Maurissa Guibord on the qualities of a good critique group.

***

All right. So you’ve got this manuscript in your hands. What do you do with the darned thing? That’s a question if you’re both a writer and a reader.

Let’s start with the writer then. I know that, as you wipe your brow from the concerted effort of writing your work, that you think your job is over. Guess again, writer san (sorry. Bryon’s been building a tori in the garage, and he just had me out to see it) You must continue to be active. There is no passive in writing.

Remember our detachment from yesterday? This is your place to ask questions of your readers. Look over your story. Pin down any issues you might have with:

1. Plot and story
2. Characters
3. Pacing
4. Description
5. Wordiness

I could do the numbering thing all day.

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Critique: Part 1–The Need To and the How To

Once a writer has a first draft, this is the point where things get interesting.

For many writers, the idea of showing drafted work to someone initially is very hard. I tell my students from day one that they have to get over that. The benefits of getting feedback on any piece of writing far outweigh the negatives. I know that creative writing can feel very personal, and a bad feedback session makes a writer feel small. The best advice I can give you is this:

Detach.

When you are drafting, you want to care. A lot. You want to have fun and play. You want to explore. When you show your draft to other people, you have to put the draft outside of you. Outside of your ego. Outside of your emotions. What’s being examined are the words on the page, not you or your writing process, or your multiple hours (years? decades?) of work.

Someone is doing you a favor by looking your work over for you. They deserve a kind and courteous response from you for doing so. Even if you don’t agree with a blessed word they say.

I know that all peer editors are not created equal. Writers want to find someone that will give both positive feedback and constructive criticism. If a critique is only negative, and not helpful, I doubt that it’s helpful to you as a writer to go back to that person for a reading in the future. Similarly, someone who strokes the writer’s ego, but doesn’t substantiate that praise, or doesn’t give you anything to chew on as revisions occur, might not be the best person to read your work.

Another factor to consider when asking someone to critique is getting a writer at the skill level as you are currently. A more experienced writer can teach, but really can’t give a less experienced writer the same kind of feedback as a peer can. I think you need both kinds of feedback.

Writing is viewed as a solitary occupation. Where can you, writing in Cherokee Scream, Texas (population 614) find someone to read your work that knows something about writing? Glad you asked.

Not all of these methods have proven successful for everyone, but they have for someone, so I’m listing them here.

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First Drafting

On Saturday, I posted about zero drafting. Logically, the next thing to talk about would be the actual first drafting.

Conventional wisdom dictates that you write the first draft. It may seem odd to you that we have to even say that, but there are writers out there who don’t write. I doubt very much that they will ever be published writers if they don’t write, but you know these folks. I’m not sure what causes this disconnect of ideas to words on the page, but in my experience with students, the issue can be everything in the spectrum between procrastination and perfection. Anyway, if we want to write a book, we do have to write things down.

I know I can find all sorts of things to do to prevent myself from writing. In creative endeavor, it is often the case that we delay. A writer on limited time, like one of my students, or me, full-time job writer, has to make an effort to stop waxing the cat. I can fritter my writing time away, and there’s not necessarily a guarantee that I’ll have that time again.

One thing I suggest to my students, and that I do is make an appointment with my writing. I block off a certain amount of time to write and try to keep that sacred appointment. This has taken me from having no time to write to becoming a submitting author. Prioritize. You do have time to write. Maybe not every day. Maybe not as often as you want. The matter is far from hopeless if you plan and prioritize.

Many would be writers withdraw from the arena when they begin to examine the prose they write when they do finally get their fingers on the keys. Lots of my students edit their work too soon, and they comb over the introduction, or throw multiple pieces of paper away because they expect their words to shine gloriously on the page. It’s at this point we pull out the adage that there are no good writers, only good re-writers.

As a zero drafter, my work is often at several stages at one time. However, my goal is to get through a complete telling of the action of the plot. My goal is to get to the end of the story, no matter how ugly that story’s shape is in the first draft. A mistake many writers make is becoming too worried about the ugliness early on.

That first draft is not the time to become too critical. I do go back to the beginning and write forward several times as I progress toward that first draft, but only when I find the logical center no longer holds for my plot arc. Some writers find it more useful to make notes, such as “From here on out, Character X is a woman”. Whatever you do, expect the draft to be ugly, to have incongruity, to sound awful.

Make your peace with that. It’s okay. This is your time to play and let the magic happen.

On the other hand, how do you know when it’s time to abandon a project? If there’s no excitement or creative spark, maybe it’s not the best project for you. And if you’re not under a deadline, it’s possible. I’m not the best writer to talk about what you have to do if a book you’ve proposed isn’t sparking, and I’d love to hear what people suggest under those circumstances.

Let’s pretend, then, we have an ugly draft, full of error and maudlin sentences. Yay, us. We wrote a book, however ungainly it is. The important thing is not to stop here. Next stop, revision.

Catherine

Planning: The Zero Draft

There is one great thing about this darned troll story–it has caused me to think about my writing process. I’m also teaching Composition One for the last time this summer, and that’s caused me to think about what I’m telling my students about composing. I’ve been getting really reflective.

One of the things I do that is useful to me is write a zero draft. These exploratory excursions into a story help me form my characters, plots, and settings. Many people do this planning as they outline and work on their characters. I find that I prefer the improv approach, at least initially.

What I’m interested in doing is seeing how characters interact and bounce off one another. I’m interested in their motivations and relationships. I am also interested in sketching settings and basic plot. I’ll write kaboodles of these words.

I’d say I throw 80 percent of this away at the beginning. Later, as I progress through the draft, I’ll throw away less and less.

Does this sound wasteful to you? If you’re quantifiable (like being certifiable, only with numbers), you may well think so. Why write words you don’t intend to keep, at least in some form?

The zero draft is my answer to the outline. I’m pretty sure that the ideas I form during the zero draft are the ones that form my real first draft of a scene, the one I’m going to keep. The first scene of the troll story was a batch of faeries stealing the princess away. The only piece of that that stayed was the main idea. Grant started life as a kid, rather than a teen. There was originally a father, rather than a sister, tracking the baby down. Quartz had a much larger role in the first two drafts.

The zero draft gives me ideas. I’ll find that I don’t like something, but even as I’m writing it, I’ll have the idea that I really want to use. I’ll write the new scene, the new first draft which wouldn’t have happened without the zero draft.

From the first scenes that feel right to me, I’ll begin to take some time to plan. The planning process, the minimal outlining I do also changes often as old scenes are replaced by better ideas.

At a given time during the writing of a novel, I will have zero draft scenes. Somewhere in my brain, ideas are being sifted, discarded, and created. I don’t think this is uncommon for writers.

The zero draft also makes me a shameless writer. I’ll write tons of horrible crap. From that fertilizer, I will grow something passable, a first draft. As I move through the revision of the first draft, we begin the zero draft process with new scenes.

It’s important for me to also get people to look at the crap. It’s not that I think the book is ready for prime time. I want to see if the ideas I like float with other people as well. It helps me make some sifting choices.

On the whole, then, I find the zero draft helpful to me. I understand Cherie Priest also writes a zero draft, although I don’t know if her zero draft is similar to mine.

Writing handbooks talk about the zero draft as a perfectly valid way to plan, right up there with clustering, outlining, and listing. How do you get yourself started? Have you identified your planning process yet? If you’ve yet to find a way of planning that works for you, you might give this one a try, especially if you have a high tolerance for ambiguity, and you don’t mind throwing some things away.

Catherine

Birthday Thanks, Bits of This and That

Thank you all for the birthday wishes yesterday. I spent most of my birthday in meetings for the glory of the college, and every one of them ran late. Bryon took me out for dinner and dessert, and darned if that didn’t take some time too. And well, I won’t talk about afterwards, but yes, I didn’t have what you would call a productive day yesterday. It was a wonderful day nevertheless. It’s always a good day when you get roses.

Interesting birthday trivia. Even though we roomed together for a week at Viable Paradise, I did not know that Chia Evers and I shared June 10th as our birthday. That’s cool.

Today I’m waiting for Russian lessons, but something must have come up. Olga has a Russian friend who’s in the hospital with a serious affliction, and I could well imagine she’s translating somewhere. I have a meeting with the Iowa City dean and my dean about expanding ELA offerings down here, so I would have been here anyway. Yes, I know it’s Friday. That’s why I took a large chunk of Wednesday off to write.

And speaking of writing…O-Taga-San still needs clean up. I’ve gotten some great feedback, and I’ll get that in there. I received a yes to my query, so now I have to send in the story.

Early next week work will be killer, as we have some students coming for a summer program. I expect to have Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning, and all of Friday to write, however. I’m in Kaz Mahoney‘s summer camp. This troll novel will be done by August. Enough is enough.

I’ll see you all again after my story is off.

Catherine

Forty-five

I like the birthdays with fives and zeros. This particular birthday has the bonus of being divisible by 9, which happens only, say, every 9 years. 🙂

I also finished O-Taga-San last night. A little polishing, and it’ll be ready to go out.

I have to admit, I feel pretty good this birthday. My lost weight is making me feel more zippy, and writing always makes me feel less compressed.

How are you this fine June day?

Catherine

Last Day of Wiscon

I’ve been working on a short story that someone has invited me to send for an anthology. The working title is Kitsune Girl, but it will probably end up being called O-Taga-San. This is kind of cool, using my familiarity with Japanese culture in a very different way. And it’s stretching me. The relationships in the story have thorns, much like they did in Sister Night, Sister Moon. However, I think the outcome of this story will be less tragic than the other.

***

The last day of Wiscon I had a good time lunching with Catherine Lundoff and her wife Jana. We had some good breakfast, and we talked about Catherine’s upcoming guest appearance at Akon, which went pretty well for her last weekend.

There was the sign out. Let me tell you, signing books is pretty cool. Caroline found us some great seats. Ellen Klages sat on the other side of Caroline, so it was a rollicking table.

Wiscon gives each author a bag of goodies and takes orders for munchies. It’s really something.

The most moving thing I saw all convention was when Lisa Cohen asked Caroline about when her new book was coming out. Lisa has had a very hard year. Caroline’s response was to give Lisa the copy of the book she had at the table, even though the book isn’t out yet (June 10th, folks!). Yup. I really am impressed by Caroline.

After the sign out, Ellen seduced Cassie, Dan, and Lisa with her iPad. I admit to getting pulled into that and all the Space Babe merchandise after checking out the Rothfuss baby. Cassie, Dan, Lisa, and I had lunch, and then I went back to Iowa with the other two musketeers.

A good time was had by all, and I look forward to making the pilgrimage again next year.

I may be a bit sparse for a bit. Interviews are heating up at work, and I need to get some writing done. Of course, just as soon as I say that, I’ll figure out something I need to tell you about.

Catherine

The Con of Many Readings: Saturday

The previous occupant of our room left the alarm set for 5:30 am. As the alarm went off, I reassured Lisa it wasn’t me as I scrambled for the alarm in a sleepy stupor, and after a few comments we went back to sleep until, for me, about 6:30. Off to the exercise room for a conversation with some other college teachers about our glamorous job. Andrea Hairston was one of them, so I reminded her that a friend and I were really looking forward to Redwood and Wildfire, and she let me know that it would be available through Aqueduct next year. That was a good thing.

After a quick shower, I threw what we needed for our reading into a bag, and I headed out to the farmer’s market. I had breakfast, and then bought cookies and honey sticks for our reading over at the Inn at the Park.

Keyan story snippet featured a valley girl selkie, Carolyn read a piece from her new book Magic Below Stairs, and I read a snippet from Hulk Hercules. Kater Cheek, however, had the best piece of the day. She read this wonderful piece of a young adult novella that was spot on perfect voice with parents and kids, and even mind-controlling hamsters. If there is a god of publishing, we’ll be seeing that one out there soon.

The reading went well. Carolyn and I went off to lunch with Dakiwiboid (whose actual name I’m not using, because I’m noticing she doesn’t use it on her site, so we try to be sensitive to things like that) and her friend. After that, full of vegetables, I headed back to the hotel.

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