Two other hobbies (Diablo 3 and Ark survival evolved) have pushed my writing back a bit this month. I basically haven’t written anything for the last two weeks. As writing is a hobby, I do change it up with other hobbies depending on how I feel. I managed to get chapter twelve done which I think is more likely to be chapter sixteen once I rebalance the chapters after I finish the first draft. In any case, it’s about the end of the second act or middle part of the book with act three about to start. I may start up again next week but it will depend on if I’m still staying at home every day.
My masters’ classes are starting to get to that stage where they require more reading and writing and at the same time I’m starting to work on preparing for my assignments which I will get more into in my regular monthly goals post. For this post, I actually wanted to talk about writing but just to say that it’s hard to focus on writing my novel when all my thoughts are focused on my masters.
“Writing workshops, creative writing classes are a complete and utter waste of your time.”
This is a quote from a youtuber I follow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtzwxCqlsv8). He’s been doing a series on writing and publishing and in this particular video, he talks about creative writing classes and workshops.
I’m not sure I completely agree with him. His main contention is that they only teach you bad habits and the people who will “criticize” your work don’t actually know what they are talking about. I think I will have to make the distinction between creative writing classes and workshops.
For creative writing classes, I think there is a place for it when you are just starting out. When I was getting back into writing, I didn’t really know where to start so I took an online creative writing course from Wesleyan University and I feel it helped a lot to get me regularly writing again. I could have just read a book on writing (I’ve read quite a few actually) but talking to other people who were also taking the class and getting actual feedback on the different pieces we wrote actually helped quite a bit. Of course I think the other students knew about as much as I did, which wasn’t a lot and quite often the pieces I would read and give feedback on seemed more an example of how not to write then how to but I don’t regret having taken the class. I wouldn’t take another one though.
For writing workshops, I have to say I’ve avoided going to any of them, even the local Shanghai writing workshop for various reasons.
When I finished writing the draft of my first novel “Daughter of Barra” I asked in my writing social media group for any volunteers to alpha read and I got a few. Most of the feedback was positive but one of them said “the writing was good but the story was trite.” I’m not sure what they meant by trite. Perhaps just having a fun action/adventure story wasn’t enough if there isn’t some hidden meaning or agenda behind it. I feel most of the people in those kind of groups are more literary than genre writers. From the way they talk, they’ve all been working on the next great American novel for the last fifteen years. I don’t think that any of them really know what they are talking about when it comes to fantasy or science fiction novels which is what I’m writing so I don’t think anything they say will really be applicable or useful.
Another reason I avoid attending workshops or writing meet-ups is for the same reason that I don’t write that many blog posts. If I’m spending all my time writing weekly prompts for the meetings, which is fair because if you’re gonna read someone else’s work you need to exchange with your own, then I’m not writing my own novels which are the projects I really care about. I could be wrong, but I feel that the people who are attending these kind of meetings are those who either don’t really have an idea of what they want to write or like to call themselves writers but can’t come up with their own ideas so they work off the prompts given them and hope something will come of it. If you are writing a novel, all your energy should be focused on that novel, not writing random other stuff. You can do that once you’ve finished writing your draft or rewrite.
The last reason I avoid sharing my work in writing groups or workshops is that I am not writing my novels for other writers, I am writing it for my target reader. My target reader is someone with similar tastes to mine when it comes to science fiction and fantasy and who is more or less up to date with recent genre novels or at least knows the main ones and can compare my novel with what has tickled their fancy in novels they’ve written before. This is why I care more about gathering a group of alpha/beta readers who can give me feedback on my novel which I feel will be more in line with what readers want.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. I can’t think of any author who has thanked their writing workshop group in their dedication but almost all of them thank their alpha/beta readers and I know who will be getting my thanks when my first novel gets published.