The Artist’s Road Leads to Chicago

The title of this blog–The Artist’s Road–carries a double meaning. I launched this blog in response to a cross-country U.S. road trip I took in 2010 in which I produced short films from interviews with artists, so the title is an homage to that magical experience. But that trip triggered in me a desire to return to an art-committed life, and so in that sense the title The Artist’s Road doesn’t merely look back, it points forward. The photo in my blog’s masthead was taken on that trip; it’s a westbound stretch of I-80 in Wyoming between Cheyenne and Rock Springs. You’ll note that the immediate path ahead is clear, but what comes after that hides behind a forbidding rock face.

This photo was taken about an hour before the one in my masthead, also in Wyoming. Yes, I'm driving and operating a camera at the same time. Kids, do not try this at home.

I’ve been reflecting on the unpredictable nature of my art-committed road as I prepare to attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference in Chicago, Illinois, February 29th to March 3rd. I plan to post “AWP Nuggets” from the conference, not unlike my “MFA Nuggets” from my winter residency with the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I’ve also promised Dinty W. Moore that I will write a guest blog from AWP for the Brevity blog.

I attended AWP last year in Washington, D.C., and posted a summary of the conference after the fact. But so much has changed in the past year.

When I walked the trade-show floor at the 2011 AWP, I was approaching every table and booth affiliated with MFA programs. I sought not just to find one that suited my desires–low-residency, creative nonfiction–but also to learn more about what an MFA really is and why I would even want to pursue one. A year later, I’m in my second semester with VCFA, and plan to perform a short reading at an event for VCFA students and alums the first afternoon of the conference.

In 2011 I marveled at all of the literary journals that were exhibiting at the AWP, and wondered what it would be like to be published in one. This year a personal essay I wrote around the time of that 2011 conference will be available for sale at one of those trade-show booths in a brand-new print anthology.

I felt a bit out of step at last year’s conference. I knew I was a writer; I had earned a living with my words for twenty years. But I thought it disingenuous to refer to myself as a creative writer, and most certainly I wouldn’t have entertained the label literary writer. As I prepare to attend another AWP, I still don’t feel completely in sync. Most of the attendees there have experienced far more time in the formal study of both creative writing and literature. I teach blogging at a local writer’s center; many of the other attendees teach creative writing at colleges and universities.

Another photo from I-80. Why go around an obstacle when you can go right through it?

But one of the beauties of the art-committed path is that there is always open road in front of you. It’s easy to look around at the amazing attendees and speakers at a conference like AWP and measure oneself as falling short. But it’s rewarding to instead look around and see one’s own potential, to imagine what might be waiting behind that rocky ridge.

For the past year I have been in full learning mode, greedily consuming the wisdom of others while staying open to possibility. It has served me well. A week from now I’ll be dining well at AWP, and I’ll be sure to share generously from my plate.

If any of my readers are planning to be at AWP or in Chicago, let me know!

Creativity Tweets of the Week – 02/17/12

I’ve got blogging on the brain, most likely because I’m conducting two different blogging workshops in the next few weeks leading up to the class I’m conducting in April and May. So this week’s list of links on creativity and writing I tweeted this week includes a blogging category, because I was tweeting those as well. So be it.

CREATIVITY

• “How to Be a Complete and Utter Creative Failure,”Dan Goodwin, A Big Creative Yes: It’s the same advice entrepreneurs give: Redefine what failure is, take ownership of falling short of your goals, and learn from it.
• “12 Simple Ways to Unleash More Creative Thinking,” Jeffrey Cufaude, Idea Architects: A common element of many of this is that we should break routine.
• “Brainstorming Addiction: How to Stop Dreaming and Start Doing,” Carla Young, MOMEO Magazine: #1: Shorten your timelines.
• “A Juggler’s Guide to Creating Time for Creativity,” Sue Mitchell, Your Muse is Calling: Are you a creative who does not wrestle with other obligations of life? Congratulations! Feel free to use that time to read every one of my previous blog posts. Enjoy!

WRITING

• “What Advice Would You Give to Someone About to Write a Novel,” Hunger Mountain: Advice from novelists Dorothy Allison, Charles Baxter, Connie May Fowler, Thomas Christopher Greene, Pam Houston, and Dani Shapiro.
• “Three Things That Happen When I Judge for a Contest,” Michelle Davidson Argyle, The Literary Lab: Her first criterion is what you find everywhere, from agents to editors to blog readers: “Judge the beginning.”
• “Prologues: Please Use Responsibly,” Roz Morris, Nail Your Novel: Are you providing value-added information, or an “info-dump for its own sake”?
• “How to Write Memoir? 1. Forget writing prompts and exercises. 2. Stake out your territory,” Marion Roach Smith, She Writes: No offense to those who write and/or use writing prompts, but as someone writing a travel memoir, I can attest that writing prompts are absolutely useless to me. (grumble)

BLOGGING

• “How do you Blog Part III: What Should You Blog About?” Anne R. Allen: One dilemma bloggers face: “There are already, like, a trillion writers out there lecturing the blogosphere about how to write vivid characters, prop up saggy middles and avoid adverbs. A lot of them probably know more than you.”
• “Please Don’t Blog Your Book: 4 Reasons Why,” Jane Friedman: Yes, some bloggers have seen their labor of love turn into a book. Jane explains the pitfalls of attempting that, including reason #2: “Blogs can make for very bad books.”
• “The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging,” KISSmetrics: A very lengthy post, but it begins with an excellent point: “Determine your guest blogging goals.”

Here’s a question for you, gentle reader. Which would you prefer from The Artist’s Road on Friday? A Creativity Tweets of the Week? Or a traditional blog post? I’ve done both in recent weeks, and am curious to see which provides more value to my readers. If you have an opinion, feel free to share it below!

My Back-Row View of the White House Arts and Humanities Awards

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.: Politics divide. Arts unite.

Overly simple, perhaps borderline trite. But consider this. Yesterday in Washington began with the White House releasing its annual budget, the first volley in what promises to be a year-long partisan exchange of vitriol and venom. Four hours later I found myself in a moment liberated from ideological divides, incongruously at an event in the White House itself.

Was it coincidence that President Barack Obama chose to grace the necks of the 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal winners with their prizes on the same day as his budget release? The President himself hinted it was not. “Michelle and I love this event,” he told the audience gathered in the White House’s stately East Room, beneath the glint of television production lights off of 18th Century chandeliers. “This is something we look forward to every single year.” Who wouldn’t choose rubbing elbows with the likes of poet Rita Dove and actor/director Al Pacino over sparring with Republican congressional leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner?

(See photos of each recipient except André Watts–who had a performance scheduled in Salt Lake City–in the slide show below.)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I stood pressed into the back of the room, behind the gold rope used to cordon us reporters from higher levels of humanity. The East Room was considered imposingly large when built—those dining with Thomas Jefferson felt the warmth of four fireplaces—but it is dwarfed today by the scale of modern architecture. Organizers could only fit in a few rows of chairs, forming a semi-circle around a temporary stage boasting only a podium bearing the Presidential seal. I stood beneath one of those tall TV light cranes, shoved in front of one of those now unneeded fireplaces.

Is Solo Creativity Really Dead?

Consider yourself lucky you’re not my wife. Every morning she is forced to endure a rant from me about something I’ve read in that day’s Washington Post. Sundays provide multiple opportunities for fist-shaking, but one editorial this past Sunday hit a nerve: the topic was creativity.

The headline said it all: “The end of lone-wolf capitalism.” For years now digital utopians have first insisted that we all believe in a myth that creativity and innovation comes from solitary thinkers; then they knock down their straw man by pointing to the power of collaboration. Citing the Firefox browser (volunteers maintain and upgrade it) and Facebook (the content comes from us, not Mark Zuckerberg), Neal Gabler wrote this: “In our global, networked economy, the lone wolf is rapidly becoming an anachronism, one that threatens to impede innovation rather than fostering it.”

Hmm.

Perhaps I’m sensitive to the suggestion that creativity practiced in solitude is somehow an impediment to our economy and society. Perhaps it’s because much of my creative energy emerges in solo activity, in particular writing. Creative writing. Journalism. And yes, editorial writing for myself and clients.

My wife endured my Sunday morning rant with a forced smile. But I received more welcome feedback that evening from, of all places, a television commercial. The SuperBowl is the one time each year I don’t use my TiVo to skip through the commercials. Imagine my surprise when I saw this ad for Best Buy, that features Philippe Kahn, cameraphone creator; Ray Kurzweil, text-to-speech inventor; Daniel Henderson, video sharing innovator ; Chris Barton and Avery Wang, founders of Shazam; Jim McKelvey, Square Mobile Pay creator; Kevin Systrom, Instagram creator; Neil Papworth, text message innovator; and Paul and David Bettner, designers of Words with Friends.

I had the honor in 2008 of receiving a VIP tour of the Disney Animation Studios in Burbank. Disney had recently acquired Pixar, but had put Pixar’s team in charge of Disney’s animation studio. It made sense. Pixar had been producing one quality movie after another–Finding Nemo, The Incredibles–while Disney was inflicting us with Home on the Range and Chicken Little. My guide showed me how Pixar’s John Lasseter literally was rebuilding the studio by changing the interior architecture. A large, central space had been carved out in the middle of the sprawling building to create a lounge. Animators were encouraged to mingle in the lounge, to bounce ideas off of each other, to share their art and their story ideas, and seek feedback.

Anaheim's Disneyland is a magical world of lakes and swans. Burbank's Disney Studios is a complex of warehouses and asphalt. Thus, I'm giving you a photo of the moat surrounding Cinderella's castle.

That made perfect sense to me. When I covered DC for an online publication based in San Francisco, I worked out of my apartment, the news outlet’s only reporter in Washington. Most of my journalism career I spent in newsrooms. When you can ask a question of the reporter next to you or walk down the hall to consult with an editor, your journalism improves. I know, because I’ve been in both environments.

The same concept applies to creative writing. Whether you have your drafts workshopped at an MFA residency, with a local writer’s group, or even with a spouse, the feedback helps you grow as a writer and improves your final work.

But that draft of creative writing is still produced alone, from ideas formed in your head. That story that you write in the newsroom is typed by your fingers, with words formed in your head. There are actually digital utopians out there who believe a news story can be crowdsourced, that a novel can be crowdsourced. Will they need constant updates to provide value, like my Firefox browser does?

When my Disney guide and I left the animation building, we continued walking on the studio grounds. We passed a smaller, low-slung brick building with aging windows. The guide told me that the building was where Walt Disney and his animators had been housed. Each window represented a separate room, he told me. An animator would have a specific task–perhaps illustrating Bambi venturing into the meadow for the first time–and all of those individual projects would be combined to produce the final film.

Creatives working alone and yet also collaborating. That seems a good model; after all, Bambi is still delighting audiences 70 years after its 1942 release.

The editorial writer who inspired my Sunday morning rant, Neal Gabler, is the author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. I have not read the book; I likely will at some point, which will be no surprise to my loyal readers who know my obsession with biographies. I find it intriguing that Gabler, who maintains individual innovators are not only the product of myth but that perpetuation of the myth impedes innovation, would contribute to that myth by writing a biography about a single innovator.

Perhaps the book takes a more nuanced–and accurate–view of its subject, making clear that Disney was a man of great vision and creativity, and that he also knew how to motivate and mobilize a crowd of creatives to produce great art. That was what I learned about him on my Disney Studios tour. And think of those innovators featured in the SuperBowl ad. They conceived of their innovations, but presumably then worked with other creatives to bring their ideas to market.

As a veteran of editorial writing, I know the writer’s job is to posit one extreme and then knock it down with an opposite extreme. But I have little patience for extremist thinking. Let us celebrate the creative spirit and solo effort of individual artists and innovators, while also welcoming the benefits that can come when they share their ideas and collaborate with other creatives.

Thank you for tolerating my rant. Be glad you’re not married to me, thus sparing you daily torture.

What are your thoughts? Is the idea of solo creativity a myth? How does one combine solo creativity with collaboration?

How Do We Cure The Post-Partum Creativity Blues?

I’m feeling quite empty right now and can’t seem to focus on any one piece of writing.

That’s what a writer friend of mine wrote to all of us in her local writer’s group in explaining why she needed to skip our monthly meeting this evening. She would face no expectation to write at our gathering at a French-style bistro; we gab, nosh, and workshop. But she told us she needs to lie low because something happened recently when she finally submitted a personal essay she had been laboring over for months. “I literally had some kind of separation anxiety/panic attack when I mailed it… I’m just feeling blue because I wake up thinking about [the elements of her essay] and they have moved on.”

The National Institutes of Health defines post-partum depression as “moderate to severe depression in a woman after she has given birth.” Putting aside my annoyance at defining an expression by using one of the words in that expression, this definition cuts to the heart of the matter: A woman spends nine months nurturing a new life in her womb, and then the connection is severed. Literally, in the case of a cut umbilical cord.

A photo of my children taken four years ago at the M&M store in New York's Times Square. My daughter heads off to college in a year, and I'm already anticipating my own separation anxiety.

It’s fair to say my friend experienced a similar trauma when those words she had caressed and shaped for months were sealed into the darkness of an envelope and handed over to strangers. But what can we learn from this analogy that will help my friend find her way back to her creative self? Because I know she’s not the only creative writer to have experienced this, and I have to believe this occurs with painters, composers, inventors, and any other creative you could name.

I’m tempted here to adopt a blogging trope and write a post titled “7 Steps to Post-Post-Partum Creativity.” Pedagogical lists are a favorite of SEO gurus. But as was the case last week when reflecting on possible gender differences with creative writing, I find myself with more questions than answers. So I’m going to jot down some of my thoughts and invite you, my readers, to share your experiences and advice.

• Isn’t this just burnout? I worked for a few years with a D.C. think tank, and our signature event was a high-level policy and business summit in Aspen, Colorado. It would take the better part of a year to plan and execute. When the conference was over and the last CEO was “wheels up” (the term their harried aides would use to refer to when the executive’s private plane had taken off from Aspen’s tiny airport), none of us wanted to even contemplate ever doing this again. Yet, after a month or so, we’d start brainstorming new topics and possible keynoters. Putting on that conference was an execution of creativity, and we were indeed burned out when each conference concluded. But I don’t believe any of us felt separation anxiety; if anything, we wanted quickly to separate ourselves from that otherwise delightful Rocky Mountain village.
• Does solo creativity invite more depression? Before us conference organizers went wheels up in the coach section of a United Airlines puddle-jumper, we’d gather poolside at the 39 Degrees Lounge in Aspen’s Sky Hotel and unwind. We’d share a laugh about the drunken trophy wife of the media conglomerate CEO who shouted an obscenity during her husband’s keynote. By doing so we’d rely on each other to defuse our shared anxiety. My friend can reach out to those of us in her writing group for sympathy, but while we workshopped drafts of her essay, we weren’t an intimate part of her creative process. She gave birth to those words, not us. She alone is carrying that separation.
• Is there advice that isn’t just a cliché? My first advice to her was to find another writing project to shift to; she must have some other project in the works or in mind, and busying herself in that one might help distract her from her separation anxiety. I’d call that cliché “getting back on the horse.” But in that quote above she said she can’t focus right now on any one piece of writing, so by telling her to do it anyway, was I really helping her? Paralyzed stares at a blank screen could aggravate her depression.

I feel I’ve gotten to know this writer over the past year. She is a resilient woman, the mother of two young children who has done better than I did at her age of staying true to an art-committed life. At some point she’ll be in an MFA program, I’m sure, and that program will be lucky to have her. I have every confidence she’ll meet the program’s monthly packet deadlines. But what she’s experiencing right now is real, and I wish there was something I could do to help her.

Any thoughts, readers?

Writing Better Fiction by Reading Nonfiction

I’m honored today to be a guest blogger on K.M. Weiland’s Wordplay. K.M.’s blog provides useful tips and resources for fiction writers, and as some readers know I’m currently focusing on creative non-fiction. Thus my guest post titled “What Non-Fiction Authors Can Teach Novelists.”

I’d love for you to visit Wordplay, check out my guest post, and if so inclined leave a comment there. I’ll be monitoring the comment field there, and look forward to engaging with you!

Creativity Tweets of the Week – 2/2/12

Your weekly treat has arrived early this week, as I’m reserving Friday for another post. Below find a highlight of links I tweeted on creativity and writing this week. Let me also invite any folks in the DC area who blog or are considering doing so to join me in a six-week workshop on blog writing I’ll be conducting at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The course runs six weeks starting the evening of Tuesday, April 17th; more information to come!

CREATIVITY

• “Got Creative Block? Get out of your office and go for a walk,” Bernie DeGroat, U. of Michigan News Service: You can follow this link to read the science behind the headline’s command. Or you can just follow it. I’ll be here when you get back.
• 

  Here's where you'll find me, reminding workshoppers that the true secret to blogging success is having something to say and saying it well. Or you could do what I do and fake it.

  “The Power of Metaphors,” Michael Michalko, Psychology Today: They’re not just for writers anymore.

• “Vision + Mastery for No-Goals Creatives This Year,” Jeffrey Davis, Psychology Today: It’s okay if you’re not a New Year’s resolutions type of creative. But do you have clearly defined goals? Do you have a path to reaching them?
• “Are You Creative? A Quiz,” Jill Badonsky, guest post on Strangling my Muse: I’ll give you a hint: Jill thinks you are.

WRITING

• “10 Content Ideas that Generate Comments and Shares,” Gini Dietrich, SpinSucks: I’m resistant to posts that advise you on what to write about in your blog, but these are worthy of note. In my blogging workshop I’ll provide one suggestion: What are you passionate about?
• 

  Picture yourself at this table with me, workshopping others' blog posts. I might just bring snacks. Do you like treats with coconut?

  “Sue William Silverman,” interviewed by Derek Alger at PIF Magazine: A confession: Sue is one of my Vermont College of Fine Arts muses. It’s an interesting interview even without that connection, particularly her discussion of her transition from fiction to nonfiction.

• “5 Questions with Terre Britton, Author, Painter and Lots More,” John Magnet Bell, Start Your Novel: An engaging interview with a talented creative. Interestingly enough, John raises the “Oxford comma” in the Q&A, a grammatical device he eschews in his headline.
• “3 Numbers that Matter to Your Platform,” Jane Friedman: Advice on what matters in your writer platform that will potentially leave you feeling a bit inadequate, especially when Jane reveals her Klout reach. (Perhaps I’m projecting here.)
• “What’s the Problem With Free?” Kristen Lamb’s Blog: A lot, it turns out, if you believe your writing has value. A lengthy but forthright post, with 100 provocative comments and counting.

If you haven’t already done so, share your two cents on potential gender differences between male and female writers on my previous post. We’ve got a great conversation going!

Do Women Simply Write Differently than Men?

Allow me to plant a bare foot firmly on a third rail of modern society: gender differences. This post is inspired by a column my friend and Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA classmate Laura Warrell shared with me. Published in Salon by Lorraine Berry, it’s titled “Dear female students: Stop writing about men.” Ms. Berry has found that the female students in her creative-writing class often write about the men they’ve loved and lost. The male students don’t.

Ever the manly man, on my cross-country US road trip I paid a visit to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum outside of Birmingham, Alabama.

I don’t claim to have the answers on differences, if any, between male and female creative writers. I do know, however, that since returning to an art-committed life and engaging in a community of creative writers, I have found myself a minority. I have taken three creative-writing courses at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. I was the only male in one class and one of two in the others. I have been in two 12-student workshops at my MFA residencies, and in both I was one of two male students.

Now the courses and workshops focused on creative nonfiction, with writers working on personal essays and memoir. I’m sure there’s a blog post on why more women than men write memoir, if that is in fact true. But I think that trend I’ve noticed fits into the larger point I’m exploring here, that perhaps women are more inclined to explore their own emotional interiors on the page.

I believe this trend may be true in fiction as well as nonfiction. Last year I read a fantastic memoir in which the author shares when she was a young writer living with an unemployed boyfriend who belittled her and stole from her. Then I read a great novel by the same author about a young writer living with an unemployed husband who belittled her and stole from her. There was little doubt where the inspiration for the heroine came from, but that knowledge didn’t prevent me from enjoying the book.

Here are some of the questions I’m pondering:

1. Is it even true that women write differently than men? Any sociologist will tell you that data outliers exist. The male poets of the Romantic Era certainly wrote about women and love, and Patricia Cornwell doesn’t write romance novels. The question is if those examples are outliers or instead are representative of the fact that there’s no trend to be drawn from the data.
2. 

   I also tapped into my sensitive side on the road trip, as I took in the roses in the Biltmore Estate garden in Asheville, North Carolina.

   If true, is this a bad thing? Ms. Berry seems to think so, but I think her bigger concern is that the young women in her class lack perspective. She wants them to know that broken hearts heal, are broken again, and yet the person grows and survives. But isn’t that really an issue of age, not gender?

3. If true, is it in part a reflection of the audience? We hear about “chick flicks,” which feature tender stories of love and loss, and “guy flicks,” with crazy sex and action. Clearly Hollywood thinks there are gender differences in their audience. And I suspect you’d find more women than men read romance novels, and more men than women (although I suspect a smaller differential) read suspense. It also seems true that more women than men are published romance writers, and more men than women are published suspense authors. So which comes first, the writer’s inclination or the reader’s expectation?
4. If true, are men simply not as introspective? A primary goal in my MFA is to learn how to put myself on the page. I’ve written about that struggle here on The Artist’s Road, and the very act of sharing that with all of you has been difficult. I’ve wondered if part of the reason I seem poorer at sharing than many of my classmates is that men simply don’t reflect as much on their own lives, experiences and emotions as women.
5. If #4 is true, is that a result of societal conditioning? It’s safe to say that men are not encouraged, as a rule, to share their emotions, although frustrated girlfriends and wives may often wish they would share more. I believe society is more supportive now of men displaying their sensitive side (I’m seeing a lot of male politicians crying), but from an early age, girls tend to receive more support and less derision when they share their feelings.

I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this subject, if I’ve raised any good questions, if you have answers for them, or if this subject is even worth discussing. Join me on the third rail. It’s electrifying!

Creativity Tweets of the Week – 01/27/12

Today’s creativity links outnumber the writing links two to one. I’m grateful to be named a Top 10 Blog for Writers, but I’m also grateful my readers tolerate my polymath interests. These, of course, are some of the links I tweeted this week, and thus are a reflection of what caught my fancy at a moment in time. What’s on my mind also finds its way into my summaries; this week you might see a reference to coconut.

CREATIVITY

• “The Success of Failure: Pulitzer winner’s surprising road to the top,” Todd Leopold, CNN: “Successful people — creative people — fail every day, just like everybody else.” I fail constantly, so by extrapolation I must be very successful and creative.
• “Training Creativity,” Allan Douglas, guest on Creative Flux: Is your muse housebroken?
• 

  This is the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a necropolis I visited in 2006. The vault of Evita Peron is located there. Why am I posting this photo, you ask? Since when have my photos had any relation to my posts?

  “Placing Too Much Importance on Passion,” Jane Friedman: So you’re really passionate about something? Who cares, Jane says: “What matters is how that translates into action.”

• “Study: The Brains of Storytellers and their Listeners Actually Sync Up,” Discover: All creative action involves telling a story, I believe. Thus, all creatives connect with their audience on a neurological level. Cool.
• “Open-plan offices killing creativity,” The Sunday Times (Australia): “Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.” That’s true for me. Of course, when I crave interruption there’s always Twitter.
• “Ten Steps for Boosting Creativity,” Jeffrey Baumgartner: #9: “Read as much as you can about everything possible.” YES, I AGREE! #7: “Don’t watch TV.” Um, you know a new season of Archer has just started, right?

WRITING

• “Focusing on Flash Nonfiction: An Interview with Dinty Moore,” Jenny Patton, River Teeth: Hey all you flash-fiction writers. Hear from a fav writer of mine–and the editor of Brevity–on the CNF equivalent.
• “The Delicate Tension of Being a Writer,” Charlotte Rains Dixon: “The pull of the story is always with us.  And that creates a constant tension in our lives.” That sounds about right. That, and looming deadlines.
• “How to Put On Your Own Writer’s Retreat,” Jane Porter: Great DIY advice. Given that currently I have a coconut jones, let me add another suggestion–put out a plate of macaroons between writing sessions.

Here’s to a great February. I hope yours is filled with creativity, coconut, and bacon. You could try engaging the first by combining those last two. If you do, let me know how it worked out.

Guest Post: Write Yourself a Bad Review

Today I’m honored to provide a guest post by author and writing mentor K.M. Weiland, whose blog Wordplay also was named a Top 10 Blog for Writers for 2011-2012. Her bio is below the post.

———————————————————————————————————————–

We all hate the critic in our heads. You know the one—talks with a nasal British accent, uses words like “deluded numbskull” and “insufferable incompetent,” and never fails to announce that your latest story is tripe. This critic of ours never seems to have a good word to say and is always running us down. So, naturally, we try to block him out as much as possible. But what if we were to actually give him permission to speak every now and then? What if his grumblings and mumblings had something of benefit to offer us?

Think about it. We’re used to gritting out teeth, shutting out the soul-battering harangues of our infernal internal editor, and writing the best stories we can. Then we send our poor shivering darlings out into the world to face something even worse than our inner critics (cue thunder and scary music duhn-duhn-duh-DUH)—the outer critics of critique partners, agents, editors, and, perhaps worst of all, readers.

How much better would it have been had we listened to our inner critic’s helpful, if admittedly snarky, advice before we submitted ourselves to the censure of the writing world at large? One of the best and easiest ways to harness the inner critic’s laser-like perception of your writing’s weak points is to write yourself a bad review. Why would you want submit yourself to that kind of depressing degradation? Quite simply, because as painful as it may be, acknowledging your faults is the best way to overcome them.

So sit yourself down at your computer, pretend you’ve just read your story for the first time, put on your best nasally British accent, and start writing your review from the perspective of someone who noticed your story’s every single flaw.

• Have fun with it. Since you have to face your faults, you might as well do it with aplomb. Turn up the snob level, write hyperbolically, and just generally give yourself permission to make this onerous assignment as snarky and witty as possible.
• Be instinctive. Your inner story sense knows more about what’s wrong with your writing than your conscious brain does. In your first pass over the story, don’t think too hard about what you’re writing. If something bugs you—even if you’re not quite sure why—write it down.
• Be specific. Once you’ve got your instinctive list of problems out of the way, go back and flesh them out. Where you wrote “weak plot,” dig a little deeper to identify why it’s weak. The more specific you are, the better your chances of understanding how to fix the problem.
• Be thorough. Review the entire plot. Analyze every character. Skim through the manuscript, page by page, to make certain you’re remembering everything that’s wrong with the story. This is where your ruthless side needs to take the lead. Don’t let yourself get away with so much as a single weak chapter ending.
• Analyze objectively. Once you’ve finished your snarky, snobby, nitpicking review, go back over it with an objective eye. Make certain everything you’ve written down really is a problem—and not just an overreaction from that part of you that wants to believe nothing you write is any good. Depending on how hard you usually are on yourself and how objective you are about your failings, you may want to take a couple days to recover before looking over the list.
• Create a plan of action. Finally, and most importantly, decide what you’re going to do to fix all these problems. If your critic’s disparagements were legion, try dividing them into categories: plot, characters, pacing, etc. Then make a chronological list if everything that needs fixing—and what you can do to improve them.

Writing a bad review can be rough business. But don’t let it dampen your self-esteem. Use it as a building block to face your writing weaknesses and rise above your mistakes. Then, after you’ve finished your rewrite, give a try to writing the “perfect” review.

——————————————————————

K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.