Put It Out There...Then Shut Up!

My friend and colleague Gary Zenker recently wrote an article for writers on "How to Get the Most Out of a Critique."

It's a good article with some important ideas. However, I have a few points I want to add:

1)  Present Your Work...Then Shut Up!

Time and again I've seen new writers try and defend their work from every criticism. Some people find it almost impossible to just sit there and take criticism.

But that's what a critique is supposed to be: the chance for OTHERS to say what they think of your work. If you keep defending your choices, people will give eventually give up giving you honest critiques.

If someone ASKS you a question, answer it. Or, as Gary suggests, redirect their question to others in the critique session. (As in, "What did you mean here?" "Well, can anyone else answer that question?") Otherwise, shut up.


2) When You Have to Preface Your Work, Keep It Short

Sometimes you are presenting the middle of a work for a critique. In that case, you may have to give some backstory. Preferably, it should be written down, and no more than a few paragraphs long. Keep it as simple as possible.

An example is this: "This is the 15th chapter of my novel. The protagonist, Waldo Pickens, is a Junior in High School. He's being raised by a divorced mother, who has grounded him. In the previous chapter, he and his mother argued about him going out to a party. He has now sneaked out and gone to the party. We pick up the story after he's gotten drunk for the first time and is trying to walk home."

Keep it short, and relevant to the pages being critiqued. We don't need to know about his dad, the name of his dog, where he went to summer camp, or how he's doing in school. Maybe those things are important in subsequent chapters, but not in the part being critiqued.


3)  Save Your Own Questions for the End. (This is a point on which Gary and I may disagree.)

When you ask the critique members to focus on something up front, you're dragging out the process. Plus, it's important to get their honest impression of the entire piece, rather than focusing on one aspect.

If you want to ask them, "I wrote this in the First Person. Do you think it would be better in Third Person?" -- that's better asked after everyone has had their say.

One thing I like to ask is, "What do you think will happen next?" Usually, they will give you the most obvious answer. Then I'll go ahead and write the opposite. I want to surprise my readers as much as possible.


4)  Finally, Ignore the Outlier Opinions.

Act like an athlete having their performance judged, and ignore the lowest score and the highest score. Go with the majority opinion.

The guy who hates your work is probably wrong. There's a former member of one of my critique groups who often said, "I hate your characters so much I wish a meteor would fall out the sky and crush them." Yeah, that's not useful. Ignore him.

The one who loves it to death is probably wrong, too. I've actually had someone say, "This is as good as anything Mark Twain wrote." Hey, I'm good, but I'm not Mark Twain good.

The exception: if that outlier opinion is from a publisher or an agent. If someone says, "I'll publish this and pay you money if you cut out this character"...well, you might want to follow their suggestion. Or if someone says, "I'll take you on as a client if you rewrite this in the Third Person." If there's money (or the potential of money) involved, you might want to take an outlier opinion. But that rarely happens.

Happy critiquing!

Five Ways to Rock a Public Reading

Now that this guest post of mine has been up on the diymfa.com site for several days, I'm re-posting it on my own blog.

5OnFri: Five Ways to Rock a Public Reading

Oct 14, 2016 by Tony Conaway

published in Community

A guest post on the diymfa.com website 

 

It’s an old observation, but an accurate one: public speaking is the #1 fear for many people. This, unfortunately, includes many writers.
 

Public speaking, like most things, is less scary when you’re well-prepared. I’ve been reading my work in public for many years, and here are some things I’ve learned. They may help you.

1) Practice

I go to many readings given by authors, and I’m amazed how often they seem to be unprepared. I understand that, if you’re reading a new piece – or a work in progress – your reading might not be as polished. But you’ve got to read it – out loud – several times before you do it in public. You also need to time the piece, and make a note of that. If you only have ten minutes to read, you don’t want to pull out a work that will take twenty minutes.

2) Select the right piece for your audience

You may have a racy, R-rated piece, only to find out that some of the audience has brought children along. Another possibility is that a recent event would make your piece feel insensitive. What if you’d planned to read a story that involved an airplane crash, and, as you drove to the venue, you found out that an airplane really did just crash? Or (this happened to me) you’re scheduled to read on a Monday night during football season. Monday Night Football is on, and your audience turns out to be entirely female. Will they appreciate your planned piece on boxing as much as a mixed-gender audience would?
 

The best way to handle this is to have more than one piece prepared. Bring a clean piece and an R-rated piece, or a funny piece and a sad piece. Give yourself options. Even if you’re there to promote your latest book, have at least two sections (clean vs. blue, or funny vs. sad) of the book prepared.

3) Don’t read directly out of your book!

Surely you have an electronic copy of your book – print that out, double-spaced, in large type, preferably on cover stock. Why? Because the lighting where you read may be poor. (At the last Noir at the Bar event I attended, the lighting was so bad the audience could barely see the author!) If it’s double-spaced with large type, it’s easier to read – even in bad lighting. And printing it on stiff cover stock will keep the pages from crinkling as you progress, and make it less likely for them to blow away if someone opens an outside door and lets in a sudden breeze.
 

I’ve only ever seen one author who could justify reading out of his book. This was a fantasy author who drew over 75 fans to a bookstore reading. Some of the fans were so ardent that they actually dressed up as characters from his books! The author began by announcing, “I’m going to read the first chapter of my new book. I see many of you have purchased it already. Would one of you like to lend me your book to read from? Afterward, I’ll autograph it, noting that I read from it tonight.” 

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have fans like that, and you probably don’t either. So read from pages, not a bound book.

4) Prepare your script

This is another reason to read from double-spaced pages rather than your book. If you can do character voices (as I do), you can eliminate some of the “he said/she said” attributions – it will be obvious from your voice who is speaking. You also might want to cut or change some words from the book version: homonyms that might be confusing, curse words, or simply words you have difficulty pronouncing. And finally, there is much more room to make notes on a double-spaced page than in the tight confines of a bound book. I make marks and notes on the page, indicating that I should pause here, or look up at the audience here. I even differentiate the dialogue of different characters by typing in different colors. I read a noir story last night at a library event. On my pages, the narrator’s dialogue was in blue, the character of “Colin” had his dialogue in red, and the very loud thug called “Moose” was in boldface. That kept me from getting confused, and my character voices were spot-on.

5) Type your introduction

Someone invited you to speak: an organizer, a librarian, a bookstore owner, whomever. They might or might not be a good public speaker. Make things simpler by handing them your introduction before you start. Do it the same way you prepared your script: large type, double spaced, on stiff cover stock. You’re making their lives easier, and you’ve increased your chances of getting an accurate introduction immensely.
 

If you’re truly phobic about public speaking, following these tips might not be enough to make these events fun. But you’ll feel more confident if you’re well prepared.

---

Tony Conaway is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. He has co-written ten business books for such publishers as McGraw-Hill, Macmillan and Prentice Hall. His fiction has appeared in eight anthologies and many publications, including Blue Lake Review, Danse Macabre, Rind Literary Magazine, the Rusty Nail, and Typehouse Literary Magazine.
 

Some of his odder writing gigs included writing a script for a planetarium show, and co-writing jokes used by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. He has blogged often about reading in public; you can find his most recent post on the subject (with links to previous posts) right here.
 

You can Tweet him at @tonyconaway or contact him at tonyconaway@yahoo.com.

My Goal Each Month

Each month, my goal is to have 25 short-story submissions out.

Understand, that doesn't mean I have 25 unsold short stories. Some are previously-published ones that I'm trying to re-sell. Others I've sent to five different magazines or anthologies; whoever responds first, gets the story. Only a few of the stories went to markets that specify "no simultaneous submissions." I don't like to send stories to those markets, but sometimes you have to -- they're the most prestigious, or they pay the most.

It's a lot of work to research 25 different potential markets. Even using Duotrope, it takes me an average of one hour to go through potential venues, find one that's appropriate, and adjust my submission to the venue's rules. Most months I don't get 25 out. But it's always my goal, and I'm glad to have accomplished it this month.

I'm Not a Nice Guy

My schedule is changing, so I won't be free to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants.  It's not a special place, just a chain restaurant that serves guy food.  But I've been served by the same waitress there for almost ten years.

Today I went by for lunch mostly to say goodbye to her.

Now, I've been a bartender, and like most people who have been in food service, I tip well.  And, when  I could easily get two-dollar bills from my bank, I used to tip with them.  It was just a way to be remembered.  "That's the guy who tips in deuces:  he's a good tipper, let me take care of him."

(My bank has changed owners twice, and the new bank doesn't carry twos anymore, not even back in the vault.)

That waitress told me a touching story about her late son.  He died a few years ago at the age of 23 - a car accident I think, although I didn't want to pry.  She'd already told me that she gave my two-dollar bill tips to him.

Today she said that she was going through his things, and found a big atlas.  She opened it, and discovered every two-dollar bill I'd given her inside the atlas!  Page after page with four two-dollar bills, pressed like flowers.

Understand - I'd never met her son.  I barely know this waitress.  We talked a little each time I came by.    I don't even know her last name.

It was touching, nonetheless.

But I'm a writer.  And we're ghouls, using the pain of others in our stories.

So here's my question: would it be churlish to use that story in a work of fiction?

Don't Hate Me

I'm cheating on my Starbucks this afternoon by writing in a BrewHaHa.

I know, I'm a rebel.

So What Have You Published Lately?

As I mentioned in my last post, last month I had an unprecedented number of stories and articles published.

I had three works of fiction published.

And I had three articles published on local history.

But that was then, this is now.  Today is September 3rd, and there's nothing on the horizon for this month.  I have a story in an anthology that might be out next month.  And that's it.

So today, I sat down at my computer and sent out ten new submissions.  (Not ten new stories, mind.  I sent out four stories to a total of ten markets.  That's called simultaneous submissions in the writing business.)

But getting those ten submissions out took me all day!  I worked on this from 1 pm to 9:30 pm, and got nothing else accomplished.  I did no new writing today!

Oh, I revised some of those stories.  One had been rejected several times, and I'd already decided it needed a different opening line.  One flash fiction market only accepted stories of up to 900 words, so I had to cut 25 words out of the story I wanted to send them.

But that's rewriting, not writing original material.

Why did it take so long, even using a good tool like Duotrope.com ?

Well, in addition to the rewriting, I try not to send stories out that are inappropriate for the market.  So I had to actually read some of these publications online.  It also takes time to read the submission guidelines.  And any interviews with the editors, in which they express their preferences and peeves.

So it takes me about 45 minutes per submission.  Ten submissions = 450 minutes.

Add 60 minutes for coffee, dinner, interrupting phone calls and bathroom breaks, and that comes to 510 minutes.  Or 8-and-1/2 hours.

Yes, I had a productive day.  I did necessary work.  But it doesn't feel satisfying.

Different Opinions

Last night, I had 3,500 words (about 15 typewritten pages) of my latest work in progress critiqued.  Eight different writers read my work, and the comments were generally favorable.

The interesting parts were the places where they disagreed.  Not just sections that some readers liked and some readers hated.  No, what's interesting is where readers drew wildly different conclusions from the same paragraph.

For example, in one section, the protagonist (a homeless youth) slips a five-dollar bill out of the wallet of a drunk, hung-over lawyer.  Then he goes and buys donuts and milk and brings them back so both of them can have breakfast.

Some readers didn't like the fact that the protagonist stole money, even though he spent part of it on breakfast for both of them.

Another reader felt that the fact that the protagonist only stole five dollars (when there was more in the wallet) showed the protagonist's depth of character.

But this work takes place in 1963.  Five dollars went a long way back then.  You could buy an entire sit-down meal in 1963 for a dollar, let alone a few donuts and a bottle of milk.

What I'd intended to show was that the protagonist stole enough money that he'd have several dollars left over, even after he purchased breakfast.  He knew he had to deal with this lawyer when the man sobered up, and he didn't want to alienate him by emptying his wallet.

Ah, well.  That reader was too young to have known what prices were like in 1963.  I was a child back then, but I remember getting a five-spot most years for Christmas or my birthday.  When comic books were only 12 cents each, a fiver could buy a lot of comic books!

The Capricious Muse

Yesterday, the writer's muse granted me three good ideas for short stories. Unfortunately, yesterday was an absurdly busy: I rushed from appointment to appointment with no time to site down and write. All I managed was to scribble a few notes while standing in line.

Today I had more time, so I sat down to flesh out the three story ideas. But the muse is capricious. I failed to cherish her gifts yesterday, so today she took my talent away. (I don't suffer from writer's block, but on bad days I just grind out dreck.)

When my talent returns - tomorrow, I hope - I will get some decent stories out of these ideas. In the meantime, I've been given a warning. I must write, write every day, every damn day until I die. Then I can stop.

The Midnight Disease

I awoke at 4 am and couldn't get back to sleep. I was worrying about my mother. We put her in a nursing home last week. No option, really. She has Alzheimer's and had to be in a lock-down facility. She kept trying to leave the house she'd lived in for 40 years to go to her childhood home in Manayunk (a Philadelphia neighborhood). She thinks her mother is still alive, waiting for her there.

Fifty years ago, HER mother was doing the exact same thing. Except that, back then, nursing homes didn't have keypad door locks or put monitoring bracelets on the patients. My grandmother escaped and made it to the bus stop several times.

So I couldn't get back to sleep. No matter. In Michael Chabon's book Wonder Boys, the narrator calls insomnia "The Midnight Disease" and claims it often afflicts writers. My rule for insomnia is this: if I can't get back to sleep in a half-hour, get up and write.

At 5:30 am I hear a neighbor leave for work. It reminds me of my own early-morning jobs, some twenty years ago. I remember working construction, showing up at the contractor's office at 6 am, being on the jobsite by 7 am. I was a plumbing apprentice. I had permanent bruises on both shoulders from carrying 22 foot lengths of pipe. Come to think of it, that's when my problems with my knees started.

It's 7 am now. Soon the school buses would make their rounds. How many times have I been on deadline, writing all night, only noticing the time when I hear the school buses in the morning? Too many to count.

The muse rarely inspires me late at night. My midnight writing is quotidian, workmanlike. Nothing brilliant. Just grinding out page after page. But that's what much of the writer's life is about. If deadlines permit, you can insert brilliance in the rewrite. It beats the hell out of writer's block.

Alzheimer's is also a midnight disease. I'm sure my mother awakens at night in the nursing home, not knowing where she is. But she was already doing that in at home, not recognizing her husband of 56 years. So she's no worse off. And now, perhaps, my father can get a full night's sleep. But it will take him time to get used to sleeping alone.