The Separation Anxiety Blues

My writing group is taking a break. It was a good run, but I’m ready to give it a rest for a while. For the last meeting they critiqued 35 pages of my new novel. I had rushed to finish that much to hand out. It has some problems, some first-draft woe. Such as lack of characterization and long scenes where I lovingly describe apartment interiors and the finer points of videocassettes. My hapless protagonist is getting sucked into the potentially lucrative but certainly questionable business of pornography. So apartments and videocassettes (it’s 1994) play a huge role. Okay, not so huge, but it’s only a first draft. I’ll save the chapters’ worth of living room, bedroom, and kitchen description for my book of linked stories on indoor living.

My group, called Council, or Mini Council, or Secret Mini Council, is an off-shoot of a Grub Street novel workshop where many of us met, first hand or by a couple degrees. The Mini Council is an extension of this class, in many, but certainly not all, ways. Every other Thursday we met at a member’s home in JP, after having read up to 100 pages of one or two writers' work.


Two weeks is a perfect length of time to read 100 pages. For me, anyway. I’m a sort-of slow reader. And we’re reading with an editorial eye for structure, syntax, dialogue, pacing, plot, character, all that good stuff. So this adds a layer of…reading to the reading. I always come away with some points to make, some helpful (hopefully) suggestions. But I’m amazed at what the other Mini Council members bring to the discussion. Details about motive or structure I just never considered, never imagined, had no idea existed. It always makes me want to go back and read the pages again. I’m still learning, still building my critical eye.

With the Mini Council on hiatus I can concentrate on other reading. Such as a literary journal that I’m supposed to be reviewing for The Review Review website. I’ve had this issue for a few months now, and I still haven’t finished it. Granted, it’s a double issue, thick with review-fodder such as a 100-page tribute to David Foster Wallace. Also, I tend to ignore reading for pleasure more when I’m in Mini Council. Actually, that’s not true. I just do less of it.


But at the moment I’ve fallen out of the reading habit. I’ve lost that readin’ feeling. Must. Get. Back. And I will. I’ve got about three books started, and I just have to finish those up, and move on to the next. Soon I’m off for a week’s vacation, and that’s when I’ll break this cycle of non-reading. I get a lot done down there (away from here) and so will be sure to pack plenty covers, soft and hard. I may even bring my laptop to get some writing done.

I miss the Mini Council already. But it will be back in the fall, in some form. I may join in the games, or I might take another Grub class. Or, I may lay low and just do the writing. Who can say? I like being coy. I’m the coy narrator. Actually, coy narrators drive me bats. Don’t do this at home, kids.

Writing Groups, Conferences, and Critiques

A few posts back I talked about being in a writing group. We’ve met three times now, critiquing a total of a hundred pages each time (from one or two writers) while also discussing publishing topics and trends.

This past week we all got a glimpse of Randy’s new Kindle, and agreed that while Kindles and like-minded applications are convenient and fun, they will never replace the experience of browsing for, buying, and reading a paper bound item with printed text. Also, fellow-writer Stephanie mentioned that she signed up for the Manuscript Mart at Grub Street’s upcoming Muse and the Marketplace conference. During the Manuscript Mart, established editors and agents critique twenty pages of a writer’s work. I’ve been through the Manuscript Mart experience twice now with the first twenty pages of "A Little Disappeared," so I gave Stephanie some advice (don’t meet right before lunch when the editor has low blood sugar) and told her my experiences.

Which are these: the low-blood-sugar editor wasn’t enthusiastic about my writing. She explained that my novel structure bordered on experimental and the prose of my younger narrator read a little flat. I wasn’t prepared for this critique, so I was stymied. Had I been better prepared, I might have been able to ask better questions and get more out of our meeting.

Undaunted, a couple years later I came back with the same pages, newly revised, and signed up for an agent. The agent had a tough reputation but we seemed to hit it off. She liked my writing but had questions about my choices and wanted to know how the story ended. I answered her questions to her satisfaction and came away from the meeting with her business card and firm handshake. A couple months later, after I had revised my manuscript enough to feel comfortable sending it out, I contacted the agent and asked if she would be interested in seeing the complete manuscript. She said yes. I sent it off. After a few months I sent a series of prodding emails. I eventually I got a form rejection back from her agency.

Everybody’s Manuscript Mart experiences vary. I learned that editors are interested mainly in manuscripts they can publish; while agents spread their net wider in terms of knowing which publishers they think would be right for a particular story. There’s a learning curve to the publishing biz, one I haven’t mastered yet. This year I’m attending day one of the Muse and the Marketplace. If I had a manuscript ready, I’d sign up for another agent for a Manuscript Mart critique. Maybe next year.

But so anyway. The writing group meets again in two weeks it’s my turn to bring in pages. What to bring? I haven’t been working on a novel since last October (right around the time I started this blog) so I’ve been revising some stories. I have about five or six candidates for critique, and am excited to get feedback on short-form pieces. This is what I need help with: finishing. I get an idea, I write write write. But my endings are usually crap. And when I realize I’ve written a story with another crap ending, I lose all inspiration. So, I need more eyes to help me with this writing problem. And I need to take suggestions and critiques and actually incorporate them into the stories.

I’m excited about getting back to work on a novel, either starting a new one, or revising an existing one. On the other hand, I wish I could focus on shorter pieces to place more stories in lit mags, getting my name out there more. It’s an ongoing struggle. A compromise has been to try and turn excerpts and outtakes of my novels into stand-alone stories. This too has proved difficult, as I need to come up with frameworks for these sections that don’t always comprise a smooth beginning, middle, and end.

Are you a writer? Have you had similar experiences trying to carve out pieces of longer works? Let me know what works for you. And I’ll let you know how my next group meeting goes.