Leaving Room
Today marks the (sort of) two-month countdown to my thesis deadline. Once complete, I will receive my MFA in fiction from The New School.
For the most part, I thought I could handle this very important term, but I have been struggling increasingly with reader feedback. It started in workshop last semester when I got a less than pleasing response about a piece that was dear to my heart.
Now, here I am in the thesis term, thinking I would complete a memoir per the requirement, but I've left that project by the side of the road in favor of a sprawling novel.
Why did I do this? I'm asking myself daily. It was mostly based on one reader's opinion. She felt the memoir lacked "story" and said, "I'm not sure who is going to care about this story other than you." She didn't mean to hurt me. It was a tough love talk and I had told her not to hold my hand. I spent the next two months after that talk crafting something entirely new--all but abandoning my previous memoir project for the more fictionalized account of something that happened to me.
How do you deal with feedback as a writer? What voices do you listen to?
Francine Prose said once that there are many people in the room with you when you write. Agents, publishers, friends, lovers...
And, it's hard to block them out or tell them to shut up.
When you finally do tell them all to leave the room, that's when the good writing happens.
But, it's when you tell yourself to leave the room when the magic occurs.
posted by Meredith Franco Meyers @ 7:05 AM
1 Comments:
Sometimes the most important person to shut up is yourself. All the doubt and the ease of giving up make it difficult to finish anything worthwhile.
It's hard to let go of the reins for a bit and just ride. But that's what you have to do. Just ride and see where this thing that you're writing takes you. Trust in the editing process to get it to the point where other people can read and understand. But for now, write it as fast, as spastically, as messily, as awfully, as terribly, as sublimely, as wonderfully, as rapturously, and as personally as you possibly can.
Those critics could be right. You could be going up the wrong path. But, they could also be wrong. And that's something to think about.
Post a Comment
<< Home