Something to Think About
Michael Chabon wrote this and I think he makes some very valid points.
One of the problems that I've been seeing in writing workshops is that people not only take themselves and their ideas way too seriously, but at the same time, they tend to not be taking their writing seriously. Perhaps it is just the make up of the workshops that I've had the (mis)fortune to run lately. I see gratuitous mysogyny, fuckwords just for the sake of fuckwords and not much interest in the craft of the whole thing. It seems as if so many people are of the mindset that "any monkey can sit in front of a typewriter and come up with a story."
Those monkeys will flunk the class.
And I'm quite distressed with the number of them that seem to continue to emerge from behind the yellow wallpaper. People, stay the fuck behind the yellow wallpaper if this is the best you can come up with. Life's too short if you aren't really willing to feel it, to work it, to bleed it, to put it out there and accept its shortcomings and then be willing to go back and bleed all over it again. And again.
And again.
Or it really IS time to "let someone else have the floor."
"We are accustomed to repeating the cliche, and to believing, that “our most precious resource is our children.” But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is of practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are, but who find value in this knowledge, and even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared. You bring your little story to the workshop, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t; and then you’re gone, and it’s time for somebody else to have the floor." (Michael Chabon)
One of the problems that I've been seeing in writing workshops is that people not only take themselves and their ideas way too seriously, but at the same time, they tend to not be taking their writing seriously. Perhaps it is just the make up of the workshops that I've had the (mis)fortune to run lately. I see gratuitous mysogyny, fuckwords just for the sake of fuckwords and not much interest in the craft of the whole thing. It seems as if so many people are of the mindset that "any monkey can sit in front of a typewriter and come up with a story."
Those monkeys will flunk the class.
And I'm quite distressed with the number of them that seem to continue to emerge from behind the yellow wallpaper. People, stay the fuck behind the yellow wallpaper if this is the best you can come up with. Life's too short if you aren't really willing to feel it, to work it, to bleed it, to put it out there and accept its shortcomings and then be willing to go back and bleed all over it again. And again.
And again.
Or it really IS time to "let someone else have the floor."
"We are accustomed to repeating the cliche, and to believing, that “our most precious resource is our children.” But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is of practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are, but who find value in this knowledge, and even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared. You bring your little story to the workshop, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t; and then you’re gone, and it’s time for somebody else to have the floor." (Michael Chabon)