The Silken Tent
      My Letter to the World
      October 2000
      October 24, 2000
      Tuesday


      I was excited about going to class tonight. There would be three pieces on the table for prose workshop, among them the whole of my novel so far written, about 5000 words, or 15 pages of manuscript and a one-page "prefatory note" designed to orient the reader in three widely spaced sections from a longer work. In addition, there was a four-page story that should have been looked at last week, and another four-page story turned in at the same time as mine (by the woman who exclaimed that mine had come in a box).

      That might seem like a lot to ask people to read and respond to, but remember that this class meets only once a week. The volume thus is not unreasonable, and is actually about the same as what I routinely expected my high school students to do. All three manuscripts had been submitted at the instructor's invitation, so it did not occur to me that there might be a problem with the length of mine.

      Most writers' workshops operate under the same general rules. The piece is read aloud by the author, if it's short, or read beforehand individually if it's long. During the critique portion, the writer remains silent while class members give their impressions. Remarks can center on structure, pacing, characterization, word choice, plausibility, and fact checking. Nuts and bolts of grammar are addressed sometimes, especially if flaws are distracting or render a passage ambiguous. Criticism is intended to be helpful. "This is a piece of crap" is not only hurtful, it doesn't help the writer. "The characters don't seem real, especially when they speak in clichés" is much more useful.

      The young woman (she's probably in her early thirties -- this is a class of undergraduates but all are of "non-traditional" age, that is, they're 28 instead of 18) asked if hers could be addressed first, as she had to leave just after 8:00. So we all got out our copies of her manuscript, and a silence fell over the group, as if no one knew quite how to begin.

      The story was told in the first person, in the voice of a woman who has picked up a man in a bar. They become quite intoxicated. Nevertheless, she goes with him in his car to his house, leaving her car at the bar. There is some groping, but the evening ends without sex. The man goes up to his bedroom to sleep, and the woman stays on the couch. In the morning she calls her girlfriend to come for her. When she goes to use the bathroom, she finds the man passed out on the floor in a pool of vomit and excrement. (I'm softening the language here.) She finds this hilarious, and describes everything to her friend on the phone as she determines that the man is not in a life-threatening situation, rouses him enough for him to make his way to his bed, freshens herself, and then is collected by her friend.

      She entertains co-workers for a week with this tale, and when the man calls her again for another date, she and her friend are very rude to him on the phone, making jokes about his soiled condition. He hangs up. End of story.

      The criticism began with one man saying he thought the whole thing was quite funny and he would enjoy hearing it. Another man said this is why he doesn't go to bars -- he's afraid he'll meet this girl. Another man said he was alarmed at the part where the narrator goes through the man's wallet and other belongings and determines his financial situation -- the narrator says all girls do this. They don't, I assured him. The instructor said she found the characters and the situation "pathetic."

      I said I had a hard time feeling any sympathy for either character because they were both so unrelievedly unappealing. It wasn't so much the risky behavior that put me off, but the way the narrator took such pleasure and made such entertainment out of the man's humiliation. He certainly brought a lot on himself, but that still didn't make his pain fun to watch.

      We talked about whether or not characters have to be redeemed, whether or not it is possible to write a good story about "bad" characters. Some of us could give examples of stories we'd read that had this characteristic. My own favorite is Sue Miller's The Good Mother. I didn't like the narrator, I thought she used poor judgment in the behavior that led to her losing custody of her daughter, but the book was well-crafted and I enjoyed reading it.

      I said there is a difference between the stories we tell our friends about our adventures and a piece of fiction. I said that if I were overhearing this story in a study hall (and believe me, even though I taught under-eighteens, I heard stories like this all the time) I would probably become tired of it very quickly and say, "Kelly!! Be quiet and find something to do!!") A young woman across from me, herself only a few months out of such a study hall, told me that's because I'm one of those condescending teachers who squashes creativity and doesn't understand "Generation Next."

      The author of the story then turned to me and told me I just didn't understand how you're supposed to behave in a workshop, that I was rude to attack her and tell her to shut up. I said I hadn't used the phrase "shut up," and that I wasn't addressing her but the character in the story. She said I was indeed addressing her because she WAS the character in the story, that it was 100% right out of her life and she was very insulted.

      The instructor interjected that it had been presented as a work of fiction, that fiction and autobiography are different. This piece suffered from lack of direction. It had a lot of plot but no theme. The writer said she'd only spent two hours on it, that she does not consider herself a writer, she just likes to write. Then she left.

      I was really stung by her attack on me. I felt bad that she had misinterpreted my reaction to a character as a reaction to her. I felt bad that I had assumed a certain level of knowledge about what fiction is, how it is crafted, and how it differs from "real life," points which are covered in the very fine textbook (Stephen Minot's Three Genres) which we'd been instructed to buy. I felt bad for having a lot of experience, I felt bad for assuming anybody thought that experience might be useful to others, I felt bad for having different motivations and goals from others in the class.

      In short, I started feeling bad for being myself.

      The story we looked at next was by the man who'd thought the "poopy pants" story was hilarious. He'd introduced himself the first night by saying that he hates to read and he hates to write, and he took the course only because he needs the elective credit and this course fit his schedule. His story had some merit, although it moved too fast and had some abrupt point of view shifts.

      I was silent at first, since I felt quite conspicuous. Later I did offer some observations about the point of view problems.

      At break time the instructor asked me to make an appointment to see her in her office next week -- she had only that day received my synopsis and the previous instructor's notes, and she wanted to talk individually with me at some depth about this long project.

      My classmates seemed to have little to say about my manuscript, except for the man mentioned above who made fun of my "prefatory note." He said the piece did not have enough action to suit him -- he wanted to see the battle scene where William takes a bullet in the head. Two people found the scene where the main character nurses a baby "offensive." (The sentence which conveys this is "Molly's little mouth latched onto Ellen's breast  with a vigor that brought tears to Ellen's eyes." Remember that some of these people found a story about passing out drunk in your own vomit "hilarious.")

      Most seemed not to understand that they were reading perhaps 2% of a 400 page book (picture Bobbie Ann Mason's Feather Crowns -- that's what I want my book to look like). No one gave me my manuscript back annotated. (I'd offered my annotations to the man, but the woman had already left, and anyway, I doubt she's interested in anything I have to say.)

      I left feeling frustrated and unhappy. I sometimes tell people that, like a lot of teenage girls, I wrote voluminously in high school, almost all of it complaining that no one understands me and wishing I had a boyfriend. Well, I no longer need a boyfriend, but I have whined on at some length now that no one understands me.

      Sigh.

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