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Blog post Awards & Honours Ordering John Miller's novels
BLOG POST: -August 24, 2011 THREE THINGS I'VE LEARNED FROM MY WRITING GROUP
For nearly eight years, I’ve had the good
fortune to be in a writing group with two other published authors. We meet every
month for three hours to discuss work and careers, and to give each other
support. We’ve developed as writers and during that time we’ve all published second
novels and made a significant dent in a third manuscript.
In that time, these are three things I’ve
learned.
1. Free editing is good
When I decided to write my first novel, I had no skills and decided
I’d better get some, fast. I enrolled in writing workshops, mostly for the
lessons of the instructors, but benefitted more than I expected to from his edits,
as well as those of my fellow classmates. I completed the first draft of my
first novel that way, moving from one workshop to the next, writing and
rewriting eight pages at a time. I also sent my finished manuscript to a professional
editor, but it would not have been ready even for that, had it not been for those
first impressions from fellow students. Writing students are not all great
writers, but some of them are great editors, and all of them are readers. As my
father taught me, the reader is never wrong.
When The Featherbed was
published, and I began working on A Sharp
Intake of Breath, my publisher introduced me to Elizabeth Ruth and Sally
Cooper, whose first novels were published in each of the two seasons ahead of
me. Our group was born.
These days, the cost of professional editing is more and more being
pushed down to authors. We feel pressure to pay for editors before submitting
manuscripts, selling manuscripts that are nearly print-ready. In this climate,
a source of free editing is even more crucial, and not just because it saves us
from depleting the dozens of dollars we have made from the sales of our
previous works.
My writing group gives me early feedback on plot and character,
before I invest too much time and effort on a story that is unlikely to work in
the long run. They correct embarrassing grammar mistakes that I know I should
have caught, ones that, sadly, even professional editors are sometimes missing.
Being edited is hard but it has become easier as I’ve gained
confidence. And, as my hide has thickened, praise doled out liberally from my colleagues
helps soothes the dry cracks. But editing their work is harder still. Our lives
are rushed. I read my colleagues’ work too quickly during an hour stolen from a
full and busy life. I try to give insightful comments that go beyond the
critique of a particular word, or the striking out of an extraneous sentence. I
always, always feel I am getting the better part of the bargain. I can only
hope they feel the same way.
2. If we’d had more time we’d
have held shorter meetings
Pascal’s famous quote about the difficulty with writing a short
letter reminds us that good editing takes time, and makes for tighter text, but
Pascal’s main point is often missed. It isn’t simply time that is needed, but focused time, time spent with an
editor’s eye.
Our writing group wants time for everything but we don’t have it. We
want time to discuss the industry, the writing process, the promotion of our
published works, new writing, and as important as any of those things, time to socialize
and catch up.
Our meetings are painfully scheduled months in advance, a difficult
negotiation between people with second, more reliably remunerative work, with partners,
children, friends, and travel. One of us lives in Hamilton now, the other two
in Toronto. Somebody always has to be commuting an hour to ninety minutes. Until
recently, we thought these were the reasons we found it hard to contain ourselves
to our three hours.
Not so – it turns out our problem was mainly poor editing. We needed
to adapt Pascal’s advice, treating our group as the letter in his famous quote.
Our meetings had little structure and our pacing was off. Some paragraphs needed to be struck and perhaps
saved for another chapter. Each chapter didn’t need three protagonists. We
could choose one each month, while the other storylines as paused, to be picked
up later. If reading and editing new work has too often taken a backseat to
other topics, we needed to remember the crucial rule: show, don’t tell. Finally,
if producing new writing advances the plot of our collective story, social time
is its character development. We now schedule time for that too, devoting whole
gatherings to it, in a restaurant over a good meal. Without it, we’ll stop
caring what happens next.
3. You have to ride the
changes, adjusting course when necessary
In our group, we’re primarily novelists and
as such we publish only every three to five years, surfacing into the literary
world for six to twelve months to hustle new work. During this time, we experience
either praise or harsh critique, usually both, but we feel once again like we
belong. In between, while we’re producing new work, we recede into literary
exile. Meanwhile, we write, and occasionally, painfully, we don’t. When we
complete a novel, we anxiously wait for it to sell.
These literary seasons pass against the
backdrop of our others lives, which are punctuated by events that propel the
writing process forward, delay it, or completely interrupt it. We move.
Partners come into our lives, or relationships end. Loved ones die, we have
financial crises. Children are born. We become distracted, overwhelmed, pull
back and eventually, because we want it badly enough in spite of everything, we
re-engage.
In the eight years our group has been
meeting, our lives have changed dramatically. At times, it’s hard to continue
meeting but we keep at it. Last year, a confluence of stresses in each of our
lives led us to the difficult decision to go on six-month hiatus. We didn’t
disband. We used the time to re-examine our purpose, focus, structure, even our
membership. I couldn’t imagine not
being part of the group, said Sally, when we reconvened. We’re bringing on a
new member, Farzana Doctor, we’re changing our name, imagining new
possibilities. Our story is still evolving. This is only chapter two. [back to top]
AWARDS & HONOURS:
- 2009 Finalist - The Dayne Ogilvie Grant for Emerging Gay Writers
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ORDERING JOHN MILLER'S BOOKS ONLINE
In Canada, to order single copies or e-book for of A Sharp Intake of Breath, John
Miller's award-winning novel, please go to Chapters
Indigo online or Amazon.ca.
In the United States, please go to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com or in Europe to any of the other Amazon sites: Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdon), Amazon.fr (France), or Amazon.de (Germany)
In Canada, to order single copies or e-book of The Featherbed, John Miller's
first novel, please go to Chapters-Indigo
online or Amazon.ca.
In the United States please go to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, or in Europe to any of the other Amazon sites: Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdon), Amazon.fr (France), or Amazon.de (Germany)
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