Category Archives: Reflection

I showed up to the writing group early, nervous and anxious and excited for the group to critique my work. I couldn’t wait for the other aspiring writers to “discover” my talent. I had felt driven to write for some time but hadn’t ever shared my craft. I was certain that I was the next big thing. If only people would read my stuff they would fall in love with it and me and I’d be golden.

I chuckle now at the memory. I had contacted a writing professor who referred me to a real-life published author (whose name somehow escapes me). She invited me to join an intimate writing group at a small monthly fee.

(At the time I didn’t know about free writing groups and networks and Superstars taught by real superstar published authors like Kevin freaking Anderson and James freaking Owen and many others).

I had presented the first three chapters of my work in progress, certain that they’d be begging for more. The group took the work home and returned with their critiques in hand. What came from the session was not what I expected.

Putting yourself out there for others to see can be scary especially if you care a lot about what others think. Unfortunately there are those that follow Homer Simpson’s advice to never try.

I have a friend that used to write. She’s got an incredible imagination and has developed some great plots. When more than one editor told her that her prose lacked structure and her characters needed deeper development she abandoned her efforts to get published.

I almost threw in the towel too.

As my writing group went around, one by one, dissecting my craft, I wanted to run away and hide. I regretted ever trying. It would have been far easier to remain a closet writer, telling myself that if only I were discovered, I’d be golden. Hiding behind mediocrity would have been much more comfortable than discovering that my perceptions were so very off base.

Good news is, I didn’t quit. As difficult as it was to look in the mirror, my writing lacked skill. I focused on the group’s advice and practiced. With time I started to see what they saw.

Later in my writing development I joined the Absolute Write Water Cooler. I couldn’t wait to be allowed to submit my writing for critique. How it works is, you post a part of your craft for the other members to see and critique, then you wait for the comments.

At first, I assumed that every member had mad writing skills and would try to be helpful. After receiving conflicting advice and disagreeing criticisms I grew confused and my writing suffered because of it. Eventually I stopped trying to please everyone online and instead relied more on folks that I knew to be great writers.

In summary, here is what I’ve learned about feedback, critiques, and criticisms:

Receiving:

Have no fear; have no regrets.
Feedback is a gift.
Feedback can have a different value depending on who is giving it. If you take it in and it doesn’t jive, it’s okay to dismiss it. Take what’s helpful and leave the rest.
If it’s right, do it. Practice.
Don’t quit. I believe that if I keep at it, success is inevitable.

Giving:

Only critique when invited to do so.
Be kind, helpful, and honest.
Be clear and specific. Examples can help.
Encourage, support, and cheer because if they keep at it, success is inevitable.

Art Is Pain: A Brief Overview of the Role of Catharsis in Fiction

October 7, 2014

Evan Braun

Author's Perspective Evan Braun Reflection Self-Awareness Storyline The Writing Life 1 Comment

Writing is scary. Like, really scary.

It’s also liberating and beautiful and a host of other very positive things, but like all art, the process of creating it is often full of pain. When I first learned of this month’s theme, I realized I’d struck gold. After all, it sometimes seems as though I have enough insecurities to fill an entire week of posts.

Most writers (and probably all of the truly good ones) mine heavily from their own lives to spin their tales—and more importantly, the characters that inhabit them. No question about it, real-life influences keep books feeling fresh, relevant, and relatable to the reading public. The dark side is that sharing of one’s self in such personal and intimate ways also requires gut-wrenching honesty. And artists are, as a rule, slightly more tormented than average. Put this all together, and you have a recipe for maximum creative angst.

In psychotherapy, it’s referred to as “catharsis”—the discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition. The term also applies to drama, with more or less the same definition. A play, a movie, a book (any kind of art, really) explores highly emotional themes, often through tragic narratives, all in an attempt to get the audience/viewer/reader to feel some combination of strong emotions, and by feeling these emotions express the pain and torment within themselves in such a way that relieves them of it, so that they don’t have to actually carry out similar tragedies in the real world.

But it’s not just the consumer of the art who goes through the cathartic process. To an even greater degree, the artist experiences it through the act of creation.

I have to admit that I often get emotionally involved in my stories. When I’m writing something sad, I work myself up into a state of sadness. It’s not always conscious, either. I don’t make myself sad so that the writing will better convey the sadness. Rather, the act of writing about sadness takes its toll on me. The same goes for a wide range of emotional states. And this effect is amplified when I’m writing about scenarios that are relevant to my life; if my character is experiencing a sort of sadness I myself am sincerely steeped in in my personal life, it’s awfully easy to get worked up about it. (The challenge in editing then is to remove some of the melodrama from the first draft.)

I’ve probably made myself sound sufficiently insane now. A bit schizophrenic, perhaps.

Well, you’re welcome. Delving into my own pain is a sacrifice I willingly make to enhance my reader’s potential enjoyment of my work! This doesn’t just make the books better, though. While the writing process is somewhat painful at times (and perfectly enjoyable at other times, yes), it’s also incredibly fulfilling.

Webbed Toes and Dream-Memories

September 29, 2014

Nathan Barra

Author's Perspective Horror Nathan Barra Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life 1 Comment

I almost never remember my dreams. I am certain that I dream most nights, but at best, I retain only a vague synopsis or a phantasm of the feelings inspired. Despite this, I have one reoccurring dream that my mind holds onto despite my efforts to forget the morbid stillness of the tableau.

In the dreamspace, there exists only a room. The floor is covered in white tile that extends into an undefinable vagueness around the edges. At the center of the room is a sunken pool, a large square depressed into the ground about a foot. The tub is mostly filled with gently rippling water which reflects the glow of lighting that feels coldly institutional. The grout between the squares of ceramic are a pale brown-red where water had been splashed during a struggle. The water of the pool is pink with what I am certain is my blood.

I never understood why this image inspired dread upon awakening, until I mentioned the dream one day in passing to my mother. She had been washing dishes at the time, and stopped to listen as I talked. I remember the silence that followed my description, and the deep breath she took as she set the item she had been holding back into the sink. Turning to me, she told me that she had hoped I would not remember that place, but because I had, I needed to know.

You see, when I was almost 3 years old my parents had left me with the sitter they and many of the families in our neighborhood had been using for years. The woman ran a childcare service out of her home, and unknown to all the parents was over the capacity she had been legally licensed to care for. This fact came to light when one day I was loose in the kitchen while she was making Jell-O. With the infamous timing found in nightmares and fiction, I managed to get underfoot just as she lifted the steaming bowl from the counter to bring to the fridge to cool.

The burns on my little feet were horrific.

I was rushed to the hospital, where my parents met me. In a twist of luck also rarely found in the real world, one of Canada’s best plastic surgeons was in the receiving area of the ER as I was dragged in and decided to take my case.

Each day, my toes had to be cut free from each other and the wrappings the doctors had to use to keep them separated. Despite medications and the other treatments they used, necrosis had been unavoidable. To keep the infection under control, my dead skin had to be scraped off with a stiff bristled brush nearly daily. My mother, late in her pregnancy with my younger brother, had to hold me down as I screamed and thrashed so a nurse could do the gristly task in a shallow depressed pool in a white tiled room.

It was both brutal and necessary, but because of those chances and the choices of all involved, my feet eventually healed and grew normal and whole. Even so, my mother says that was the hardest thing she has ever done. She took a leave of absence from work to stay with me in the hospital and only left my side at night when my father took the vigil with me. After catching what sleep she could in the Ronald McDonald House next door, she would return to let my dad shower and go to work. That experience and kindness is why the Ronald McDonald House is one of my favorite charities.

I’ve often read stories where writers use dreams to have characters cope with traumatic events that occured in the buried past, but never believed that it happened in real life. After all, if the person wasn’t old enough to remember, how could the trauma reappear in dreams? How could it be so specific and real? I would have sworn that it wasn’t possible. Apparently, I was wrong.

In the Company of Giants

September 27, 2014

fictorians

Conventions Guest Posts Interacting With Fans Networking Reflection Starting a Career The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Lou J. Berger.

As other writers have mentioned to me, sometimes life manifests situations so improbable that, if you were to write them into a story, no reader would accept them as plausible.

And yet…

I walked through the dealer room at Reno’s WorldCon, showing my girlfriend Kelly around, marveling at the artist displays, looking around to see if I could spot Bob Eggleton, a tremendous artist that I’ve only met via Facebook, never in real life.

My eye lights upon a grinning, elfin woman with graying hair and the eyes Yoda only wished he had had, as expressive as a sunset. She spies me and calls out my name and wraps me in a hug that conveys love and adoration and respect, then calls over her husband, Joe Haldeman.

Gay Haldeman is an angel among people, and she has an encyclopedic memory, knows everybody, loves everybody, and is one of the nicest folks I know. Without my being able to figure out how, she manages to convince me that she considers me one of the most important people she’s ever met. I know, in my soul, that I am just another cog in the gears that permeate her life—and a small, insignificant cog at that—but she has that magic touch, that personality that the best of the best seem to have.

Joe smiles at me and shakes my hand, I introduce them both to Kelly, and Gay says, a hand upon my forearm, “You will join us for lunch, won’t you?”

I glance at Kelly, she nods, and I say, “Of course!”

A rare cloud crosses Gay’s unlined brow. “Oh. Do you mind if I invite another person to join us?”

Well, I had been hoping for some one-on-one time with Joe and Gay, but any friend of hers…

“Sure,” I reply. “The more the merrier!”

Gay’s cloud dissipates and sunlight radiates from her again. “Great! I’m sure Larry will love to meet you.”

Larry. That’s such a familiar name, especially the way she says it. I open my mouth to clarify, because, after all, there is no way it could be… “Oh, here he is!” Gay cries out, grinning, looking past my shoulder.

I turn and, in true Ewok form, there strides one of the greatest giants of SF-dom, Larry Niven. It is him. Of course it is him.

He’d passed me in the hallway at Denvention, a couple years earlier, and I’d said, upon seeing him, “Shoot! I was hoping to attend your panel!” Without breaking stride, he shot back. “Well, you missed it.” And then he walked on.

So we walk, the Haldemans and I and Kelly, with Larry Niven beside me. I’m trying to be cool, but this is the man from whose brain all those books I read in high school sprung. He’s the Ringworld Engineer Deluxe, the guy who invented the Mote, this is Larry freaking Niven!

“You’re a writer,” says Larry to me. (See? I’m calling him Larry. Like we grew up together. Like we’re old pals. Like I have any damn right to be walking beside him, this ordinary-looking man whose prose has put me on the badly-colored carpet of a Reno convention center, walking toward an unimpressive cafe in an adjacent casino.) “Tell me a story,” he finishes.

I take two careful, measured steps. I think of the works I’ve written to date, the stories I’ve excised from my fertile imagination, the tortured words I’ve yanked out of my brain and through my fingers and onto the page, the single story I’d sold. Worthless. In the company of a god, my best work is fool’s gold, iron pyrite glittering with false richness, not worthy of discussion.

“I’m sorry, Larry,” I stammer, after a while. “I’m a little star-struck. My brain isn’t working quite right.”

“It’s okay,” he says, patting my shoulder. “Happens all the time. Give it a moment.”

I walk alongside Larry, watching the carpet flow beneath our feet, and we walk into the casino, my hand clutching Kelly’s. We sit down for lunch and I listen to Larry and Joe talk about old times, laughing and reminiscing, and I slowly relax, beginning to process that what’s happening around me, this august company I’m part of, is because of Gay, not because of anything I’ve ever done.

She’s the catalyst, the one who keeps her eyes peeled for the spark, that ineffable quality in a writer, just starting out, that signifies some semblance of promise. And like any spark, the spark she sees is tenuous, hesitant, and should, as most sparks do, simply wink out. She captures it, fans it, finds a home for it, and nurtures it into a small flame.

Then she brings that flame into the firelight and welcomes it home.

I’m not sitting with Joe Haldeman and Larry Niven because I’m some sort of brilliant writer. I’m sitting with them because Gay believes in me.

I lean across Kelly and catch Gay’s attention while Larry reminds Joe of something arcane and brilliant. “Gay,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

She peers at me through her glasses and a warm smile crosses her face. “Thank you for joining us, Lou.” She turns to Kelly. “And you too, Kelly.” She gazes at us for a minute and then turns her face back to Joe.

Her eyes go soft as she looks at the man she loves.

I squeeze Kelly’s hand and we eat our lunch in the company of giants.

Guest Writer Bio:
Lou J. Berger lives in Denver with three kids, three Sheltie dogs, and a kink-tailed cat with nefarious intent. He’s an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has been professionally published in short form, and is writing his first novel, a non-genre YA book set in 1978’s North Carolina. Take a few moments to visit his website.