Writing Class, Workshop Style

Writing class means every week we read one or two people's work (the euphemism for "don't know what the hell it is yet but I had to have some text to come to class") and then we talk about some other aspect of writing, like character development or plot or style or dialogue.

This class is a "breaking into fiction" class. It's for people who haven't written much before. I am not sure that I am the target audience for this class, but it's also good for me to be able to moderate the level of the challenge for class myself. Like this week, we're supposed to write a scene in the style of our favorite author. First, I have a hard time picking a favorite author, so I'll just pick from the ones I like the most. I could do Roald Dahl pretty easily, but I've opted to try Wodehouse instead. I'm not worthy of attempting, say, Toni Morrison. See? Self-moderated challenge. (By the way, the Wodehouse went okay but not great. Wodehouse is hard. Funny is hard.)

My fiction class has the same old people who are in everyone's fiction class. We've got the people who are weathered and grizzly and taking this class to write about their own lives. We've got the fan girl who follows this teacher from class to class. We've got the girl from the Peace Corps who has many interesting stories to tell and wants to tell them. We have the mommy who's taking the class to have something adult to do (that's me). And we have the prat.

In my past life, I ended up becoming a pretty decent (and harsh) copyeditor. I hack and slash with the best of them. I didn't realize how technical I had become about good writing until I started doing serious editing. But what I learned is that nobody (except the serious writers) wants every detail the editor has to offer. It's too much for most people.

I turn off my copyeditor brain when I read stories for class. I'm not talking about punctuation or typos, although I do mark the random typo from time to time. I'm talking about basic Elements of Style stuff. Why? Because Elements of Style is so simple that nobody does it all well, at least not in a "Breaking into Fiction" class.

This gets us back to the prat. The prat is the person who introduced himself at the first class as "specializing in sci-fi/fantasy, currently shopping my novel around to agents." Whoop de freaking do, sir. Get back to me when you sell the damn thing. The prat, having a novel that he's "marketing," feels the need to comment on all the Elementsof Style stuff, plus typos, plus ripping whatever story is there to shreds because, hey, that's how you learn, right?

I think it's crappy, especially when I don't see any signs of brilliance in his edits. Being a good writer does not make you a good editor.

Anyway, I submitted a short story (but only five pages, since, you know, people don't have time to read 15 pages) and I didn't get much feedback at all, which I don't know if that's a good sign. It was raining and I believe most people in SoCal turn their brains off when it's raining and they have to drive; maybe they didn't turn their brains back on. Maybe they didn't have any places for hack-and-slash improvement. I don't know. I used the word "genitalia" at one point in the story and someone commented that I shouldn't use the euphemism, which just made me laugh. I think anyone who knows me would have a hard time accusing me of holding back on a vulgar or obscene word out of shyness or prissiness.

There you go. Taking the class makes me think I need to do something to keep my editorial brain primed. We've got one left this week and that will be it. I'm not seeing anything that I'm terribly interested in for the next round (at least, not that I won't miss significant sections of for Bella Italia), but I'll definitely try a class again on some other level. Maybe not so much the workshopping.