my critique
I should explain that my Faerie Tapeworm Adventure was not the super awesome critique I alluded to a few days ago. Those are different classes. Just so you know. Not that the Faerie Tapeworm thing wasn't well-received (for the most part), but that the super awesome critique was a different animal.
A number of factors contributed to it being a wonderful, affirming and helpful workshop. It wasn't that people loved the story and told me it was perfect, because they didn't. But they were all such very sophisticated readers. The story is a complex one about an identity crisis and repressed memories, and if you read it on a superficial level you get hung up on trying to figure out whether this woman was actually abused by her brother or not (as if the story had some kind of objective reality you could tap into). Previous critiques have glommed on thinking there is a mystery to be solved, rather than really noticing what I want it to be about (with the exception of
lizpdx, who seemed to intuit that I was going for something complicated and who unfortunately was only one reader in a rather capricious writing group).
Anyway, this gang was pretty savvy and did a really good job answering what would make the story become the story I want it to be.
Additionally, my teacher, who is a Semi-Famous Literary Short Fiction Writer, was really, really excited about the basic premise.
Any of you who have logged time in workshops knows that every teacher you have is stuck in the position of simultaneously being an artist and a teacher. They have their own aesthetic, and no matter how hard they try to be nurturing and supportive, a lot of the time if your aesthetic isn't sympatico with theirs your story will be willfully misunderstood. Not that the teacher is being a jerk, but that they want to guide you towards something they are excited about. Well, I have never. Once. Had a teacher with whom I was sympatico. I've had wonderful teachers from whom I've learned a lot, but at a fundamental level they aren't that super into my work. This is fine; this is being a writer. You don't get into it for approval, and if you do you either grow out of it or stop writing after your first unpleasant critique. But I can't tell you how relieving and affirming it is to finally hear that my premise, the bare-bones basis of my project, is fascinating, fine, and fully worth my time. To hear that this sort of ambitious and cerebral thing I'm trying to work with is actually a thing someone out there would be excited to read. Someone out there like a Semi-Famous Literary Short Fiction Writer, in fact, who edits a literary magazine and will probably be tagged to edit a BASS collection at some point in the next few years.
Also: I was favorably compared to Mary Gaitskill. I almost died in my chair.
In other news, my enforced "one page a day" craptastic draft I've been suffering through is almost finished. Now I can stick it in a drawer and forget it for a few weeks.