I’m not going to lie, I’m bad at receiving feedback. I have a knee-jerk reaction of taking personal offense. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad that my Master’s program is online. I can give myself some space and work through my emotional muck enough to see the value of the feedback. It’s painful but if we want our work to meet its full potential, we have to be open to critique. As Harper Lee said, you need a thick hide to be a writer.
The pain may never fully disappear. I’ve been in and out of workshops since high school and I still take it personally. That’s especially true when a piece needs a lot of work. I’m not willing to admit it at first. If I give myself a day or two away from it, I can swallow my pride and admit that the reader might have a point. From there I can separate the useful feedback from the not-so-useful. I still choose which points to follow but I’m open to the possibilities.
It’s even worse for me when I receive critiques from my personal tutor. She’s very nice and the vast majority of what she says is constructive. Nevertheless, she’s a published writer. My aim with this program is to improve my writing but, not-so-deep down, I want to impress her, too. When her comments involve fully rewriting most (if not all) of the story, it’s hard to read. It’s especially painful since she’s often right.
Image retrieved from “Be a Better Writer: 4 Simple Steps to Take Today”The important thing is that I consider the advice. That’s all that matters when writers interact with critique. You can cry it out all you need to, so long as you look at it again and think it over before rejecting suggestions outright.
With the format of my program’s feedback sessions, it’s easy to give into defensive impulses. You post the story, someone responds, and you immediately want to reply with some explanation of your work or justification for your choices. I’m guilty of this. I understand the reason for it. You invested a lot of time and heart into your story, you know what you envision for it, but somehow your diamond did not shine so brightly for the reader.
My advice: DO NOT REPLY THE FIRST DAY. Let it sit for at least twenty-four hours. Then reexamine the critique, maybe reread your story, and decide if you really need to defend your writing. This time will also allow you to gather any questions you have and articulate them properly.
This tactic isn’t possible with live/synchronous workshops for obvious reasons. However, I highly recommend it with asynchronous feedback and when you’re getting feedback from friends. You probably have a limited amount of time to do so with any formal feedback sessions, so don’t spend too much time on it. Even a little time will give you enough perspective to respond appropriately. And when you’re exchanging stories with friends, well, they can carry on their merry way until you’re ready to shoot them an email nitpicking their nitpicks.
In addition to stepping back, remember that you have the final say pre-publication. You decide which changes to make and which to ignore. Do what you think is best for your work. If you give all feedback fair consideration, you’ll know what to do.
Do you have any special techniques or advice for handling critique? Drop a line in the comments.
Quote retrieved from Bloomsbury Literary StudiesIn this post I’m going to switch gears from Ernest Hemingway, the “man’s man,” to renowned author and feminist Virginia Woolf. Admittedly I’ve only read one of Woolf’s works, To the Lighthouse. I believe I’ve read “The Evening Party” as well but it was in a collection with several other writers that I read for an undergraduate short story class, so I’m not certain that’s the right story. Nevertheless, I find her very intriguing, both as a writer and as a human being. (We don’t always treat the former as the latter, so I feel it’s necessary to make that clarification.)
The quote I want to focus on is the title quote from her book-length essay A Room of One’s Own:
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Things have changed since Woolf’s time, in the writing world and society overall. We allow women more independence and more financial success in their own right. Does that make Woolf’s words any less true? Not necessarily.
Society still pressures women to be “good” wives and mothers. To add to the stress, everyone’s definition of a “good” wife and mother differs and some include the need to earn money. Kids, a significant other, a job–it’s no wonder many female writers have to put off writing until the kids have gone to bed. More women have their own money, but a “room of [their] own” can still be hard to come by.
What if you’re a single woman? A childless female writer? A male writer? Do Woolf’s words still apply? I would argue yes.
Whether we’re in a relationship or single, a parent or childless, man or woman or gender-less, we all have responsibilities bearing down on us. Household chores, self-care, paying jobs–writers have to eat, too–and much more can slow our writing progress. That’s before we add in our social lives (those of us who still have one), our immediate family outside of children and significant others, and our pets.
The best solutions to these obstacles? Money and a room of our own.
We may not be dependent on someone else’s money but we still need more money in order to free up time for writing. More money means fewer work hours needed, and fewer work hours are more hours for writing.
But do we really need a room of our own? It can mean seclusion and privacy, which begot focus and freedom. No distractions, no judgment. Just us, our ideas, and our writing. It’s why many writers withdraw into bedrooms or home offices, especially when their household is buzzing. Some even go to the extreme of renting offices outside of the home. Now that is the epitome of needing money and a room of one’s own to write fiction.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf
Photograph by George Charles Beresford, retrieved from the Virginia Woolf Wikipedia entryI know Virginia Woolf’s original statement wasn’t supposed to have this exact meaning. From my brief stint into her essay–please forgive me for using SparkNotes to research this post, I was pressed for time–I have come to understand that Woolf was trying to explain that women’s heralding duties and financial/legal ties to their husbands can affect their writing. As I said before, this interpretation of the quote maintains resonance to this day. Women may be more independent but society still pressures them in ways that men don’t always realize. However, the broader interpretation can aid all writers, no matter their gender.
You may not be able to resolve the money aspect of this issue, at least not for some time. It happens and we all have to face it at one point or another. You can only trudge through the daily work muck and hope for the best.
If you find yourself distracted by duties and losing time, you may be able to do something about it. Find a time and a place where you can set everything else aside and write. Set it in stone. Tell everyone–friends, family, your significant other–that that time and place are for writing and only writing. Some people may be mad but really, you have to write. A writer who doesn’t write is just a dreamer. Also, they can’t pester you about when your next story or poem will be published if they won’t let you write.
I digress. By carving out the time and place for writing, you are giving yourself a private writing nook that no one can take from you. You are creating a “room of [your] own”.
That’s it for this “Writers on Writing”. Keep an eye out for the next installation. I’ll be covering a personal favorite, satirist Mark Twain.
Until then, do you have anything to add to this post, either about the quote or Virginia Woolf? Do you have any writers/quotes on writing that you think I should discuss? Leave your suggestions in the comments or email me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com.
Have you ever tried on a friend’s glasses? You know how they make your vision blur, you become disoriented, and your head starts to hurt? Imagine that happening when you’re wearing your own glasses or with no glasses at all (if you don’t need them). Then move the pain to the left side of your head, make it throbbing, and increase the pain, pressure, and disorientation to the point that you’re crying. Add nausea and the threat of vomiting. Now imagine trying to write with that feeling. That’s a bit like my strife when I write during a migraine.
Migraine is a complex neurological disorder with a wide variety of symptoms. It can take several doctors ruling out all other possibilities for you to be diagnosed with migraines.
For the past week migraine symptoms have plagued me. A migraine headache nearly prevented me from completing last Monday’s article. Other migraine symptoms forced me to postpone this post repeatedly. As I sit here typing my head still hurts and my vision remains blurry. At least I can sit up and read.
I’ve had these attacks since I was ten years old. While people have started to empathize with my situation, it’s still hard to find people who know where I’m coming from, even among fellow writers. No one wants to talk about it.
This latest spike in my symptoms has given me the perfect opportunity to address a very important matter: writing with chronic illness or disability.
Writing is never easy. Writing with a chronic illness or disability is worse. Blindness, deafness, paraplegia, autism, epilepsy, the list is endless. Writing and meeting deadlines are a fight with your body, and not everyone in the writing and publishing worlds are patient about the matter. Yet you have to manage somehow or you’ll have no career.
Unfortunately, society doesn’t like talking about that sort of thing. We’ve become open about discussing depression and anxiety–issues I also struggle with and will address in another post–because they are prevalent among artists. Other conditions, however, are often ignored.
This post has been tough to write, and not just because of the symptoms. Many thoughts have rushed through my mind: how can I help other people understand this when I barely understand it? How can I avoid sounding like a martyr? I’ve been living this way for so long that it’s hard to tell what’s normal and what’s not unless I need to confine myself to a dark, isolated room. Even with a doctor’s diagnosis, how can I know for certain that I’m experiencing migraines and not overreacting? Most importantly, will anyone care to hear what it’s like?
That’s exactly why I’ve decided to write about my struggles. We need to initiate a discussion about writing with chronic illness and disabilities. If nothing else, writers who live and work with such conditions will not feel alone. They will know that someone understands and cares.
Despite popular misconception, migraines are not just really bad headaches. Light, odor, and sound sensitivity; blurred vision and other vision alterations; pulsating headaches; nausea and vomiting; dizziness; vertigo; aphasia; hallucinations. That all sounds bad enough but those aren’t the only possible symptoms. They vary from person to person and from one type of migraine to another. Not everyone experiences every symptom. The ones you experience and how badly you feel them can change over time. On top of that, migraines are erratic.
Now if they can simulate the nausea, excruciating pain, dizziness, and all the different sensitivities, we may get somewhere.
It’s impossible to explain. You know that Excedrin Migraine commercial in which the mother wears goggles that blur her vision in order to experience her daughter’s struggles? That’s a nice start but it barely scrapes the surface.
Luckily there are sites like migraine.com. A fellow writer/migraineur posted the link on Facebook and it’s taught me loads about migraine symptoms, triggers, and types of migraine.
Doing anything under these circumstances is difficult, if not impossible. Writing, an activity which relies heavily on the mind and the ability to construct coherent sentences? Not going to happen.
I would like to say that, after all these years, I’ve learned to successfully write with migraines but that would be a lie. I can force myself to write despite it and some things are easier to handle than others (social media posts come to mind). However, I beg for relief while I do it and I don’t remember a word of what I’ve written afterwards.
This week was not the first time migraine attacks interfered with my writing. I composed an essay about Moby-Dick, the one printed in the UC Davis Prized Writing Anthology, with a horrendous headache and puking. I could barely sit from the pain and dizziness. I don’t remember how but somehow the essay was written. I wrote many of my undergrad essays that way, actually.
Creative writing? I’d have a better chance at getting my father to stop cracking his insensitive jokes. OK, it might not be that hard but it comes pretty close.
So long as I nip the headaches and nausea in the bud with Imitrex, I can typically push past the visual auras, odor sensitivity, sound sensitivity, and dizziness. The work is crud and I have to rewrite it thoroughly but it gets written.
I never edit under these conditions. Focus is key and I can’t with any of these symptoms.
Even if you don’t get the headaches, you have to fight yourself to write with migraines. The aforementioned writer friend doesn’t often get the headaches. She does, however, experience dizziness, confusion, aphasia, and sometimes hallucinations. It disrupts her daily life and her writing.
Here’s the most important thing to remember: my friend and I aren’t giving up. We’re pursuing our dreams. We work through the symptoms when we can and, when it’s too bad, we’re not afraid to rest a day or two. One way or another, we write.
Chronic Migraine is debilitating and misunderstood. Many writers struggle with it and worse conditions, and yet they do not quit. As proof, I’m going to name some published writers who had/have chronic conditions and disabilities but still succeeded:
Lewis Carroll, beloved and complicated children’s author, is just one of many famous migraineurs.
Lewis Carroll (migraine): It’s believed that the images and sensations in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass may have been based on Carroll’s experiences with disorientation and light sensitivity from migraines.
Virginia Woolf (migraine)
Miguel de Cervantes (migraine)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (dyslexia)
Octavia Estelle Butler (dyslexia)
Lord Byron (epilepsy and club foot)
H.G. Wells (diabetes)
Christy Brown (cerebral palsy)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (temporal lobe epilepsy)
Jorge Luis Borges (progressively went blind due to a genetic disorder)
John Milton (blindness): Believe it or not, John Milton lost his sight sixteen years before completing Paradise Lost. His daughters read to him and helped transcribe his writings.
As you can see, writers with chronic illness and disabilities are in good company.
Migraine and other chronic conditions are difficult to work with but not impossible. You just have to put in more effort to overcome your challenges. It’s nothing you can’t handle so long as you persevere. After all, what is a challenge to a writer but a story or poem in waiting?
For more information on writers and celebrities with such conditions, including migraine, visit these sites (which are also my sources for the above list):
I strongly encourage anyone with chronic migraine or any other chronic illness/disability to comment on their experiences here. Have any writers to add to this list? Drop those in the comments, too!
If you’re looking for works with disabled characters by disabled writers, be sure to check out this article from The Guardian.
Welcome back to Friday Fun-Day! I’ve been under the weather this week so I haven’t been able to come up with anything elaborate for today. I have, however, tracked down a quote on writing that gives me a chuckle.
Before I give you the quote, I have to preface it with a warning: I’m not 100% sure who said it. Some people say it’s Ernest Hemingway, others say it’s Red Smith. So I’m going to include the link to the website from which I retrieved the quote and leave you to research the original speaker for yourself:
Such fine words to live by. What’s a little blood when creating a masterpiece which may not even pay the bills? After all, writers are a bunch of masochists.
On that cheery note, I wish you all a happy and productive weekend of writing. I’m hoping to be back to full power by Monday, so keep an eye out for my next post on writing as a migraine sufferer.
Also, if you learn for certain which writer penned this quote, please leave that information and your source in the comments. Thanks!
Hello world and all who write in it! It’s the weekend once again, and I’m here to provide you with another excellent opportunity from our friends at Writer’s Digest.
There are no small opportunities, but this contest is definitely bigger than the last one. I’m walking about Writer’s Digest‘s Annual Writing Competition.
Here are the most important details:
The grand prize winner will be announced on a subscriber’s issue of the magazine, receive $5000 in cash, and much more.
There are nine different categories in which you can enter.
There are two deadlines, the early bird deadline on May 5th and the final deadline on June 1st.
The cost to enter varies depending on type of entry (poetry versus manuscript), number of entries, and the deadline. I normally wouldn’t recommend contests with entry/reading fees but Writer’s Digest is well-established and the contest is in its 86th year, so you can safely enter without fear of being scammed.
For full information on the contest and how to enter, follow this link:
Magic Beyond Words, TV movie about J.K. Rowling’s earlier life and the creation of Harry Potter up to the film release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Originally released by Lifetime, image retrieved from IMDb
Nothing is more mystifying than inspiration. Inspiration for all art–paintings, sculpture, film, writing–seems to come from nowhere. We’ve all read books, stories, and poems which make us wonder how the writer could have possibly thought to write them in the first place. The origins of our favorite books captivate us. I can’t tell you how often I watch Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story. We want to learn more about our favorite writers’ inspiration in the hopes that they could help us find our own.
I won’t pretend to speak for all writers. We may claim to know where other writers get their ideas but we don’t. Honestly, we don’t always know the source of our ideas.
There’s only one thing I can say with any confidence: if they can find inspiration, so can you. As proof, let me tell you about my own experience with finding inspiration.
I seem to get my ideas from the most random places. As an undergrad, my mind drifted during class much more often than I am willing to admit. I doodled in the margins of my notebook, worked on essays from other classes, and listened to my professors just enough to know when I needed to jot something down. As I zoned, I would retreat into my imagination, allowing myself to become submersed in elaborate worlds. Sometimes I would leave class with a plot, other times with new character histories, and others with an entire scene written.
Sitting through lectures, at the movies, taking walks, I find inspiration whenever I can let my mind drift from the present.
Find isn’t the right word. I don’t actively look for inspiration. In fact, writing inspiration alludes me when I attempt to chase it down. The ideas must come to me. They find me, not the other way around.
External conditions aside, inspiration finds me most when I’m reading or watching TV and movies. I’m not talking solely about fiction. Academic articles, news reports, documentaries, fiction and nonfiction alike inspire me when I’m reading/watching it. Why? It’s all thanks to the “what if” impulse.
What if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?
What if the Four Horsemen became American politicians?
What if the Roswell UFO and Kelly’s “Little Green Men” were connected by more than the “supposed alien sighting” factor?
This impulse isn’t limited to “what if” questions or to what I watch and read. Why, who, and how, what I hear and what I live, they all spark my imagination.
Why might aliens have such large eyes?
How did so many branches of my family end up in California?
What if the legend about Lemurians in Mount Shasta isn’t a legend? (Check out this link if you haven’t heard this story. It’s humorous, ridiculous, and intriguing all at once.)
It’s hard not to be inspired by beauty like this, and I can see why people think there’s something mythical happening in that mountain.
Inspiration comes from everything and nothing. What inspires a writer once may not inspire him/her again. That which annoyed a writer once may become the catalyst for his/her next novel. You never know what could spark your imagination. All you can do is read, watch, and experience everything to the fullest in the hopes that something, no matter how obscure, will catch your attention and send inspiration your way.
I’ll write more on what inspires me in future posts. In the meantime, where does your writing inspiration originate? Discuss it in the comments or email me and you might be featured in an installment of “Writing Inspiration”.
I should probably wait until Banned Books Week to write this post but recent discussions about the media and “fake news” have planted the topic of censorship firmly in my mind. I will still be addressing Banned Books Week in September. However, I didn’t want to wait over five months to talk about the American Library Association’s Frequently Challenged Books.
For those who aren’t familiar with this list and/or wish to see which books made it this year, here’s a link to the ALA website.
I have been following this list since high school. I stumbled across the site while preparing a presentation on the first amendment and censorship and got a kick out of the books that had been challenged. Ever since, I’ve revisited the list for updates and when I’ve needed a good laugh. Every time I read it, I feel a mixture of outrage and amusement. Sometimes I even skim it for new books to read.
First Edition Cover of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, art by Joe Pernaciaro, published by Ballantine Books, picture retrieved from Fahrenheit 451 Wikipedia Entry
Everything from children’s books to literary classics have been challenged. My personal favorite is Fahrenheit451, which is number 69 on the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009.
What’s even funnier than the books are the reasons why they’re challenged. “Offensive language”, “sex education”, “inaccuracy”, the list goes on and on. Did you know that Captain Underpants made the list for being “unsuited for age group”? That Bridge to Terabithia was accused of occult/Satanism? That The Holy Bible was challenged for “religious viewpoint”?
If nothing else, the trends among the challenges reveal what is most on the minds of Americans the year(s) the data is gathered. That information in and of itself is invaluable. A wide variety of professionals can utilize these trends, from politicians to sociologists to, yes, writers.
I don’t mean to offend anyone by finding the challenges and the reasons behind them humorous. I have my own very strong viewpoints and I accept that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I don’t want to hinder that. However, this respect deserves similar treatment in return.
Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine made the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books of 1990-1999 and 2000-2009
Published by Scholastic, picture retrieved from Amazon
There is no excuse for censoring literature. Literature always has and always will offend people. We can criticize it all we want. That’s the flip side of free speech. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we should restrict other reader’s access to these writings. We should be in control of what we read. If we stumble across something which offends us or strikes a nerve, well, lesson learned. Don’t read that book/story/whatever again. It doesn’t mean that you should force others to follow your lead. Everyone deserves the chance to decide what they do and do not want to see. Besides, you never know what you are missing if you do not explore controversial works for yourself.
I can hear the counterargument already: what if I don’t want my children to read it?
Yeah, what if you don’t want your children to read it? I suppose that you’ll have to pay attention to your children, talk to them about what they’re reading, and teach them what is and is not OK to read. Let them ask you questions. Try and explain why you don’t want them to read something. As they grow older, expand your conversations to allow them to tell you what their beliefs are becoming. You could both discover new writings and new ideas. You could grow as people together.
The wonderful thing about literature is that there’s no end to the ideologies represented and no limit to what you can find. Don’t restrict the possibilities because you’re afraid of an idea. If you don’t want to read it, that’s fine. Don’t read it. If you don’t want your children to read it, open a dialogue with them so they know what you don’t want them reading and why.
Remember, limiting your reading list limits your brainpower.
Were you surprised by any of the books on the list? Angered? Humored? Were you surprised that a book wasn’t challenged a certain year? Let us know in the comments.
And if you enjoyed this article, feel free to share it by clicking one of the links below this post. Also remember to subscribe to our email notifications to keep up-to-date on happenings at The Writer’s Scrap Bin.
For the past two weeks I’ve been participating in my program’s second writing forum. Here, in a nutshell, are what these writing forums consist of: students are divided into groups in which they stay for the entire year, they post stories for feedback, and the students and supervising tutor give feedback on all the stories. The second week, as people are wrapping up their initial feedback, students ask/answer questions about the feedback and the tutor posts topics for general discussion. If they have finished their initial feedback, students can post general discussion topics as well.
This time I posed a question for my fellow writers: how do you change aspects of a story without ruining the parts that readers liked?
I have wrestled with this issue most of the academic year. The pressure has only gotten worse as the May 31st deadline for our portfolio inches closer. Well, “inches” takes the urgency from it. It’s more like how objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
Since the deadline has gotten so close, I’ve begun to edit and rewrite the stories that I plan to include in my portfolio. The most prominent problem at the moment is that two of my stories have a very distinct feel that the readers enjoy. In attempting to address the weaker points of the story, I’m afraid that I will shatter that which makes the readers enjoy the stories already. I liken this conundrum to playing Jenga: if you remove or alter one piece, the whole structure may come tumbling down.
I know I’m not the only writer struggling with this issue. That’s why I want to discuss the answers I received on the forum.
Their advice boils down to four simple points: trust your intuition, do what’s best for the story, step away, and save your revisions.
Trust Your Intuition: If something in the story doesn’t feel right to you, there’s a reason. You know what you want for your work. External feedback points you to weak spots and helps put you on the right path but at the end of the day, it’s still your story. Did your readers suggest alterations to the dialogue that felt artificial when you put the advice into practice? Step away to give yourself some space and then take another look at it. Did your readers really like a scene in your story but you don’t feel that it fits with the newer version? You’ll have to decide which is better for the story, that scene or the entirety of the revision. Deep inside you sits your inner writer, the one that is connected with the essence of all your writing, and if he/she starts telling you that something isn’t right, you need to listen. It may conflict with feedback but it’ll be worth the risk. You can always start over again.
Do What’s Best for the Story: This idea seems obvious but, in fact, it’s often forgotten. We end up worrying more about what the readers want than what will help our stories become what they should be. Readers and their opinions are important but, as I said in #1, you have to trust your intuition. You can’t make your gay character straight just because your target audience wants. You have to ask yourself, will it make the story better? Or worse? If a reader suggests adding exposition to the dialogue, you have to decide if it will weaken the integrity of the narrative. You won’t be able to please everybody. Your only real obligation is to the story and your inner writer.
Step Away: I’m going to give you this advice a lot. Might as well get used to that right now. In this case, I was given this advice by the published writer supervising my program’s forum. We read our own pieces to death. Our objectivity all but disappears and we risk missing weak points that objective readers see instantly. We skim over spelling errors, holes in continuity, and flat out bad writing. Almost more importantly, we become bored by our own work and so we don’t know when we’re bored with ourselves and when something will genuinely lose the reader. Robert Frost once said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
Save Your Revisions: I made this point bold and red because I cannot stress it enough. Keep copies of all working drafts. Our tutor also recommended labeling them clearly and/or using track changes. Every time I make a change that isn’t very small or I make several small changes that add up to a significant change, I save it as a new file. I have five to seven copies of one story on my computer at any given time. Trust me, when you suddenly decide that you’re writing from the wrong character’s perspective and attempt to rewrite nine-tenths of the story, you’ll be happy to have those earlier drafts. Don’t think that it’s only with major changes like that for which you’ll need copies. You may decide that you liked how a sentence was worded the first time but you don’t remember it exactly. Maybe there’s a small gesture by a character that you removed, thinking it insignificant, only to realize that it was much more important than you first thought. You’ll hate yourself if you have that sort of epiphany but not the earlier draft to refer to.
Revisions and implementing feedback are rarely easy. (I’ll go more into revisions and feedback in future posts.) Despite what common sense may dictate, fewer or smaller edits do not necessarily mean the process is easier. Instead, you find yourself in the limbo of “I need to change this but changing this may ruin that.” There’s no clear-cut answer. However, the four points above are a good place to start.
If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this: SAVE YOUR REVISIONS.
Have any ideas for making small edits without destroying your stories big time? As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
