The Writing Workshop -- A Reflection

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned – It’s been over two weeks since my last blog post. There’s really no excuse for it other than monumental laziness. In the middle of Midwestern July heat, one finds oneself content to merely sit and wallow and occasionally pick up a book.

Last Wednesday my writing class met for the last time with a grand total of ten participants. It’s been interesting to see who comes back and who doesn’t – throughout the course of the four weeks I had a grand total of twenty-two people  show up, with about four kids who showed up to every class (Melisa, Kahil, Hadiya, and Monica, you’re the best!) and seven or eight more who tried their darnest to make it to at least three because they’d forgotten week one or had to be on vacation. As my grandfather commented, it might have been wiser to charge something for the program because then people would have a reason to come – they’d be "invested" in it.

I didn’t feel right charging people to come hear me talk about writing – for starters, I don’t think what I had to say was anything worth charging for. I was sharing experience, not proven and published fact. If I had a New York Times Bestseller under my belt or a Booker Prize, then yes, I would start thinking about selling the secrets to my writing success. As it is, I was happy I wrote six pages of my fanfic yesterday. My writing is supposed to be non-profit to keep the copyright folks happy and I think that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Over four weeks I learned just as much from my kids as I hope they learned from me. They taught me that it’s unsafe for my voice to talk for an uninterrupted 45 minutes, that this is very boring for middle schoolers in particular anyway, and that one has to be very careful with the way one words one’s advertisements. (Some parents signed their kids up thinking it would be an ESSAY writing workshop, which makes sense, given that all the other teen programs at the library are geared towards school somehow.)

In their evaluations on Wednesday night, they reminded me of many other things as well. Kids need time to practice and share their ideas (“More sharing time, please!”). High schoolers have different writing needs than middle schoolers do (“Grammar wasn’t very helpful – more on character development?”) but everyone can use positive criticism (“Thanks for all the great feedback – really helped my confidence!”). I also learned, once again, that you cannot please everyone – I had high achieving students so elitist in their reading habits I’d never heard of anything they’d read and kids who hated to read whose parents had signed them up in the hopes that I would work some magic on their kids and open books for them. (Newsflash to parents – if your child is in middle school and hates to read, it may be that they have a problem a qualified reading instructor needs to sort out. Also, if they hate to read they will probably also hate to write)

If I do this writing workshop again, I’ll be more selective on age – middle schoolers in one section, high schoolers in another. I’ll make the class longer (an hour and a half) and make sure I have enough handouts for everyone. I’ll request a better meeting space so everyone has a place to write and I'll come to class better prepared than I was this time. I’ll listen better. I’ll remember your names. I"ll always bring pens and paper. I’ll find more resources for different writing development topics like character development so that students with specific needs or wants will be able to get the help they want and deserve. I’ll make them read a little more and have discussions. I'll make your assignments easier and cleaner cut.

My students also told me something I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else – “You’d make a great middle school teacher!” Three or four of my students told me that, and that made me feel really good. Tomorrow I have to go in and take the Praxis, a big liscensure test that will measure whether I can, indeed, begin my student teaching in the spring. Let’s hope for the sake of future middle schoolers in Minnesota and elsewhere that I pass.

New Books, Author Talks, and Fanfic

Let me begin this post by saying that I never buy new books, and when I do, I buy paperbacks. I'm a poor college student and both space and hardcovers are expensive. So when I shell out twenty-six dollars to get a hardcover copy of Rick Riordan's book signed by him (in person!!), it's kind of a big deal for a lot of reasons. I was just as excited as all the ten year olds I was sharing the theatre with, and they were really excited. I got there a half-hour early (the doors opened an hour early) and sat reading my new book against the background of the musical gymnastics of the Tivoli Theater organist and the excited murmurings of the nearly 800 people who'd come to listen to what Mr. Riordan had to say. ( I also observed that I was probably the only college student in the audience, so I don't know what that says about me... or about my fellow college students, for that matter.)

I'm fortunate enough to live in a heavily suburban area with at least one indie bookstore, Anderson's Bookshop, within reach. They're wonderful people there, and they really love what they do. They also bring A LOT of authors to come and sign books, and I got lucky -- Rick Riordan was one of them. So I paid my money and bought my book and went to go hear him speak.  I guessed from his blog that he's a really laid-back, cool kind of guy, and seeing him in person confirmed that for me. (Truth be told, I wouldn't have minded having this guy for a middle school language arts teacher; the teaching profession has lost a special one there.) He basically book-talked his new book, The Red Pyramid, which I thought was funny, since these kids have already both bought it and dragged their parents out on a school night to let them hear the author speak. They're not the ones that need the book 'sold' to them on why it's a good read. But it was good to hear a well-done book talk.

After his prepared remarks, he took a few questions from the audience, most of which I took notes on if I didn't know the answer already. (Ten-year olds ask some really obvious questions sometimes.)

He says he was inspired to write about Ancient Egypt because that was always popular with his students while he was teaching. "Maybe it's the mummies, maybe it's the pyramids -- I don't know exactly why." It takes him about a year to write a whole story, but he's trying to shorten that to six months now that he's writing both the next two books in the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Half-Blood Series Heroes of Olympus. The title is always the last thing he writes  and the he really made my day by reaffirming something I'm going to share with my writing campers at the end of June.

He said that if there was one thing that he'd recommend to new writers it would be to outline everything that's going to happen in the book before you start writing. That way, he explains, you'll never be stuck on where the story will go next. He talked about how he started writing when he was twelve and there are a lot of stories he never finished, but that's because you're just practicing and you're learning how to write.

A real life example of prewriting! Fantastic! I was really excited for that.

Anyway, I've had a post-it note with a question for Riordan all ready and waiting on my desk since I found out he was speaking at Anderson's -- it was a good question, too, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to ask it to the big group because I think there was a little ageism going on with the microphone lady, but I guess that's what I get for being a college student going to a young adult book signing. The question was this:

Mr. Riordan, on your blog you've made several posts about YouTube videos of tapes of Carter and Sadie Kane that fans have made themselves from the audio clip posted on your website and you say that 'it all must mean something.' I was wondering if you could expand on what you meant by that and what you think of other fan-produced works like fanart and fanfiction based on your work?

Needless to say, I didn't have time to ask all of this in the signing line, so I clipped it down to a very simplistic version of my original question.

Scene.

Me: Mr. Riordan, I have a question. What do you think of fanfiction? [had to add the 'question' marker since I obviously looked old enough not to be the one getting the book signed for myself]

RR: *slightly stressed face, appropriate for a man who's had to sign several hundred books in the space of two hours* Well, you know I can't read any of it, for reasons of copyright and all that, but I don't...I mean...I... I don't like it. It's like someone else trying on your clothes. *gestures with hands as if indicating he is trying to get something slimy and disgusting off them.*

Me: Trying on your clothes. That's a good one. Thanks! *moves along in line and writes this down in notebook*

End Scene.

And it was a good one. In fact, it was a great metaphor. Writing fanfiction and using someone else's characters is exactly like trying on someone else's clothes. I don't think he'd ever gotten that question before (His lack of an immediate answer would seem to suggest this) and I'm glad I asked it for that reason. There are a dozen better ways I might have asked it, whether he was impressed or flattered that children love his characters so much that they want to write adventures of their own for him, but I didn't, and I think that means I got an honest answer.

Does this mean I'm going to take down my PJO fic because I have it from the author himself that he disapproves? Nope. The way I figure, my one lonely PJO fic uses a character Riordan himself used for about a paragraph, and my story uses characters exclusive to PJO for a small fraction of the story. I think it's a fair exchange, more like borrowing a pair of socks from a friend after yours were soaked through than stealing a favorite t-shirt. You return the socks when you're done and thank him for the gesture.

I had a lot of time on the drive home to extend my metaphor, and this is what I came up with.

If writing fanfiction is like trying on someone else's clothes, then isn't writing fanfiction about a dead author's works something like second-hand clothes shopping?

Think about it. Jane Austen's dresses are having the ride of their life right now if that's the case.

In Over My Head

When I said I wanted a doodle, I really, really hope I didn't sound like I was saying "Drop everything and imperil your academic stability to draw me something!" Because that's what I seem to have done, and now I feel really, really awful about it.



Last week I got a chance to go visit my good friend and writing buddy (We could almost say 'partner-in-crime' in place of 'writing buddy') Helen. We had a grand time, doing the things normal university students do when they have free time -- watching movies, discussing boys, baking -- and it was lovely. Quite a change from life in the cottages, and life the previous week with my mom, sightseeing in London. Helen and her roommates were incredibly gracious hosts, but it wasn't until after I left that I realized how much time they had devoted to me when they could have (should have, probably) been working on their own schoolwork.



I was a terribly distracting individual even after I left -- I mentioned that I would love one of Helen's famous sketches and I would tempt her with a North and South fanfic I had been inspired to write, I sent Helen recipes for lemon bars and then she not only baked the bars but also produced not one, but two doodles! And I have no North and South fanfic to praise her efforts with. Well, only the vague shadow of one, a few sketchy scenes and no plot whatsoever, or the very frailest of outlines slightly resembling what I remember of Wives and Daughters, something about one girl always getting the guys and a misunderstanding with her friend about her intentions on one of them. It's very confusing to me.



I'm finding, as I've mentioned before, that this trip is leaving me little time to, well, be me. Sit in a room with no one but myself and write something that has nothing to do with class, or read a book that I don't have to take notes on for discussion. I'm always around other people, and while that's fun (We spent the better part of four hours last night sitting around drinking and talking with some of the guys last night in a series of events that involved us making dinner and them making dinner and everyone eating and then just staying) I find I long for silence. I miss being alone.



So I get up at six in the morning to write my blog and upload pictures and try and shoehorn in some writing that isn't about the Northern Troubles or my understanding of Ireland or anything graded at all. I suppose it doesn't help that my brand of writing is sometimes so terribly academic -- I love to research, to read about what it is I'm writing, and I can't do that here. I have no resources to read and more importantly, I have no time. And I cannot, repeat cannot, produce well-informed, historically based fanfiction without research. It wounds me to the core to even contemplate it -- Books were broken and authors' work disrespected with such carelessly constructed houses. (Recall, reader, the Twilight/Austen crossover abomination. Seriously uninformed, a serious breach of the unspoken trust a writer should form with her Canon.)



After this weekend our excursions end, and I'll have some room to breath again. Or at least, I hope that happens, as we have also been threatened with increased academic rigor given our change in cirumstances. I know I shouldn't say this, but I'm kind of looking forward to being home, and being able to crawl back into my hermitage again. That's who I am. I can't very well change that over three months.



So, Helen, mea culpa. I offer what little I have close to finished on that dreadful story in payment of my debt.



Opening Scene, John and Margret over breakfast, two years married, discussing the contents of the morning's post.

Scene.
----

“You shall have to tell me what is in that letter, John,” Margaret Thornton declared across a very full breakfast table, watching her husband’s normally stern face contort into a pleased smile. “The outer wrapping declares it cannot be full of business and that grin of yours betrays it is far too amusing to keep to yourself.”

“Am I allowed nothing to myself?” John Thornton asked mockingly, smiling at his wife over the top of the decidedly feminine stationary, edged in a silvery blue gilt that could only have appealed to a lady. “It is from a cousin of mine, in America. She wishes to visit and begs our hospitality. I laugh because I have not seen her in nearly eight years and yet I can still hear her voice when I read her words,” her husband replied.


“A cousin? I did not know you had any cousins in America. I thought I had been introduced to your family entire,” Margaret remarked, laying aside her napkin to hear what could only be an enlightening piece of what her husband’s life had consisted of before he had met her. Nearly four years ago now, that would have been, and she found she was still uncovering little secrets. It was not that John Thornton was a secretive man, or that he felt he had something to hide, for if Margaret asked a question, he always answered with the strictest honesty. It was rather more that he never thought things worth mentioning.



“Forgive me, she is not a cousin in the strictest sense,” Thornton amended. “Her father, Mr. Grant, was a friend of my father’s, and his father a financier. My father borrowed heavily against the elder Grant’s bank; it was… that family who helped to repay our debts,” the industrialist finished carefully, looking up from his plate to see that his wife’s face was filled with fond sympathy.


Her husband’s words caused Margaret to pause, thinking back to that day, so many days – nay, even years -- ago now, when she had first heard this tale from her father. Bits and pieces returned now, from the depths of her memory and the time when she had not, to her great shame, esteemed the man who would later be her husband as much as she ought to have. Returned to Milton…. went quietly round to each creditor…and all was paid at last… helped on materially by the circumstance of one of the creditors, a crabbed old fellow… taking in Mr. Thornton as a kind of partner. “It must be a trial, then, to think about them. I know you do not often discuss that,” the wife told her husband very gently.



“The Grants were – are -- wonderful people, and I should be very remiss if I did not sometimes remember them and their kindness to me,” John said strongly. “Besides, I cannot refuse cousin Phoebe’s request – she begs to meet you, and I would not deny that to anyone in the world,” he added with a fond smile for his wife, a gesture that made her color even after two years of marriage.


“Is that her name, Phoebe?” Margaret asked, curious to learn more about this cousin who was not a cousin on the other side of the world, a relation that might at any minute descend on her house.


“It is. A Boston name, I think it. At any rate it would not go in Milton, as Mother would say.”