A couple of days ago, my wife and I were coming home from...somewhere, I don't remember where, exactly. As we came down the road in front of my house I looked up my graceful sweep of overgrown lawn and sat up a little straighter, alarmed by something out of place amidst the ragged grass and weeds: the plastic mesh cage surrounding the chestnut tree had been knocked on its side.
I haven't provided an update on the Famous Chestnut Tree since the end of May, but it was doing quite well. It was definitely in the closest thing to the "leap" phase of the "sleep, creep, and leap" cycle that my botanist board member who used to work for a nursery told me about (i.e., when transplanting trees and shrubs, expect it to take about three years before it really starts growing). While the Famous Chestnut Tree wasn't a threat to reach 20 feet tall this year, what was taking over as the new trunk had put on substantial growth this year, and spawned an additional side branch.
Happier times
That picture was taken May 28. Just to the left of my pinkie is a bend in the trunk--everything above that bend was this year's growth. Leap, indeed.
As I ran out to check on the Famous Chestnut Tree, I hoped and hoped that the cage had just been knocked over by wind, though I did not really believe this. While we had some massive periods of rain last week, they were calm affairs: little thunder, little lightning--and pretty much no wind.
It was not the wind. This is what I found when I got to the tree (and I apologize, I can't seem to make my camera focus on the tree, so it's a little blurry; but you'll get the picture):
Oh, the humanitree!
Who dunnit? The culprits are likely one of three: rabbit, deer, or woodchuck. My money is on deer. I'm guessing the opening at the top of my plastic mesh "sleeve" was far too wide and some deer stuck its head right in, knocking the whole thing down. Looks like I need to up my security game a little.
Annoying, but not an end to the Famous Chestnut Tree, not yet. Not clear on the photo, but there are a couple of leaves left (small, yes, but still there), and there are already buds in place. Trees are resilient; I'm confident this one will just get stronger.
In other news...
I've let work on the WiP slide a little bit this last week, though not entirely. I've been participating in The University of Iowa's Moving the Margins: Fiction and Inclusion MOOC. It's a bit of a struggle to keep up, but I'm hanging in there, and I think it's going well. I have been using parts of the WiP in class, and I'm hoping it will help. I've read some fantastic short stories as course reading and I've received some excellent critiques on my assignments (and, hopefully, given some). The discussion areas are still a little clunky, but overall, it's been a positive experience so far.
That's all for me; how's everything with all of you?
The greatest gift for every writer is judgment--Obari Gumba
Back in December, Agent Carrie and I had our annual strategy session, where we set the course for the upcoming year. One of the things Carrie wanted me to do, once I was finished writing the first draft of the WiP, was to take a new look at an old project, one long-time readers will be familiar, first as BARTON'S WOMEN, then as POWERLESS. (Quick rundown: this was the project that received the offer of representation from Carrie; it went through several submission rounds before we opted to pull it). The story was deemed by some editors as being a little too dystopian, and dystopia was dead, in the wake of several years of Wool and Divergent and The Hunger Games.
But Carrie had been hearing rumblings, that publishers were opening up again to dystopia, and she encouraged me to take another look and consider potentially revising it and putting it back out there, so I did (take another look at it, that is).
It was a bit of an eye opener.
Last summer, I took an online course through the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop (written about here and here), which is where, in the first week, I encountered that quote from Obari Gumba. There was another quote, from novelist/playwright Kia Corthron that I wish for the life of me I had written down. I thought I did, but I couldn't find it. (I may not have written it down because I think I thought at the time I'd have access to all class materials, including lectures and transcripts, forever; I do not) It went something like this: "The first draft, say your point clearly; say it again a little quieter; say it again a little more subtly still." In other words, subtlety is your friend. Don't spoon feed the readers.
Looking back through POWERLESS, I am amazed (and disturbed) by how obvious and heavy-handed I was, not just with some of "the points" I was trying to get across, but just with character thoughts and emotions. There's a hell of a lot of explaining going on, a hell of a lot of spoon feeding, a hell of a lot of making sure any future readers will get exactly what I was going for, no room for interpretation. There was little subtlety, little good judgment. Ugh.
I'm hoping I've moved past this. Some time in the not-too-distant future, I'm going to crack open the WiP with the responses of beta readers to guide me. What will I find? Spoon feeding? Explanation? Dictation? Or will I find I've exercised judgment, given my readers space to fill in some of the gaps themselves, a demonstration that I've learned something in the last few years? Time will tell, but I know what I'm hoping for.
Have you ever had similar reactions to your past work? Have you found your judgment has improved over the years?
Well, look at that, me delivering on a promised post! I even went to the extraordinary step of pre-writing a good portion of this post; still, it's just past six a.m. on a Monday and my coffee's not quite ready yet, so there's no guarantee of actual coherence here.
When I wrote about this previously, I gave some idea of how the course works. I'll try not to repeat myself as I give my overall impressions now that the course is over.
It was pretty intense. The course began officially on May 15, with the first assignments posted about two days later. The final assignment was posted on June 22, with all course materials due on July 3 (July 4, for those of us in the eastern time zone). Because I started late, I was playing catch up from the get go, and put in a lot of work. I eventually did catch up, though I admit I also fizzled toward the end--I submitted my final assignment about two hours before the deadline.
I enjoyed the course quite a bit, despite what's going to come in the critique section, which might make it look like I hated the course! Positives included a lot of reading, widely. Each week our required reading assignments typically included one or two pieces of fiction and one or two piece of nonfiction (there were usually three readings per week). The readings were high-quality works of fiction or journalism, no wild esoterica that leaves you scratching your head and saying, "WTF???" There was also a long list of optional reads, though I confess I did not quite have time for getting into all of those (I wish I had). Each week, guest authors provided a video mini-lecture (typically 20 minutes long, give or take). Guest lecturers came from all over the world and included scifi authors, journalists, memoirists. It was a nice balance. The instructors themselves provided interesting topics for discussion related to the weekly topics. Finally, there was the opportunity to meet and read authors at all levels of the writing journey from all across the world.
Holy non sequitur, Batman! One of the other things I really liked about this? In the video mini-lectures, when the authors wanted to illustrate a point about technique or weaving in social issues, they referenced...books! Not movies. Not TV shows. Actual books. This may seem like a small thing, but think about the number of times you read a blog post and the author says, "For a really great example of characterization, watch Forrest Gump" (or something like that). It was refreshing.
Back to the course. There were problems. Some of these, maybe most of them, stemmed from the technology the course was built on. It was hitchy. Jumpy. On several occasions, I started to type in a comment and found that the first five letters on line one disappeared. Or I'd actually hit the post button, and my response would be missing the last half a line. If I clicked 'edit,' Instead of having my entire post there, waiting for me to re-type the first five letters or last five words, I'd have...nothing. I resorted to typing comments out in a word document and pasting them in. I also tried switching to Chrome, and it seemed a little better, but I don't like Chrome and I don't want to have to switch to Chrome. Firefox is still used by a huge number of people, and if you say this program works well on Firefox, you better make sure it does.
The other problem, and this was a big one, as far as I'm concerned, is that there was little actual discussion that I could see. Each week, the instructors posted thoughts for discussion, and asked for our thoughts/comments/experiences. But the interface itself did not really promote discussion; it promoted individual commenting. For one thing, you could not see all the responses to the main discussion, you could only see the last five. You'd have to click 'show previous comments' to get more. Also, on the few occasions where someone replied directly to a comment on the main discussion thread, you had to click a tiny little icon at the bottom to see the reply. Instead of a discussion where people responded to each other and freely shared ideas back and forth, what you had was more of a 'stop and drop' situation, with people stopping in, dropping a comment, and moving on. This is partly a product of the fact that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of participants, along with the fact that you got credit for posting and commenting. I think sometimes people were just aiming to do the bare minimum to get credit.
Along these same lines, course participants were able to set up their own discussion groups. I mentioned joining one or two of these. But again, there seemed to be very little actual discussion. Instead, when people posted assignments, they'd share them to the discussion groups and ask for feedback. (True confession: I didn't actually start any discussions myself within these groups, so I guess I can't complain)
Would I do it again? Yes, yes I would. Despite my complaints, I was exposed to a lot of different writers of all backgrounds, as well as a lot of different ideas, and some lessons on craft. I was able to revisit old works and new (the opening to PARALLEL LIVES got a workout here, as did both the WiP and the RiP), and anytime you are forced to think about your writing is a good thing, I think. I also met a few people who could become good crit partners/sounding boards/beta readers, and have already critiqued a piece for one of them.
This post has already gotten kind of long, so I will say farewell for now, leaving you with this piece of music from Pete Yorn. Though I have not heard it for years, it worked its way into my thoughts yesterday when I was sketching out this post. Enjoy, and see you next time. Please share your thoughts below!
Sounds like some sort of bizarre memoir, doesn't it?
A few weeks back, I believe I mentioned that I had signed up for a MOOC (i.e., Massive Open Online Course). The MOOC in this case was called The Power of the Pen: Writing Identities and Social Issues in Fiction and Nonfiction, offered through The University of Iowa's International Writing Program (that's a lot of words to name a program!). Though the course is technically still open until July 4, I'm in the final stretch and thought I'd share some of my impressions about it with you. Of course, time is short for me this morning, and I have pre-written none of this (of course), so this week I'll just give an overview of the course and next week, or the week after, I'll give more of my impressions on the course.
I've never done a MOOC before, so I have nothing to compare it to. Pretty much all of my formal learning has been done in a classroom, so this was a little different, and I liked a lot about how the course was structured. After signing up and getting confirmation, you were directed to a course outline and information page, which in turn was subdivided into sections, with each section being used to summarize how the course worked, how to access discussion groups, and an optional assignment that involved reading several short pieces and participating in discussion groups with course instructors. Also, there was an initial push to get participants to form and join their own discussion groups. After surfing through the (long) list (remember, I started a week and a half late), I chose to join the "Literary Fiction and Creative Nonfiction" group, which has twenty members at the moment.
I should probably re-read my User Agreement before posting this, but...
Each week, new content was posted, based on a specific theme, such as "Establishing and exploring identity and community." Content included usually three video lectures by an author (usually around 20 minutes each); three pieces of required reading, which generally consisted of one fiction, one personal essay or memoir, and one creative nonfiction piece; a menu of optional reads; instructor-led discussion groups related to the week's topic; and a writing assignment. Assignments would be uploaded, critiques given and received--and credit given.
Course credit was received for participation: upload an assignemtn, receive six points. Participate in one of the weekly, instructor led discussion groups, receive two points per comment. Provide feedback to fellow participants on their assignments, two points per comment. The maximum number of points was 100; passing the course required 74. (There are maximums in certain categories, so you can't get more than 32 points for class discussion or providing feedback; this is to push people into participating as broadly as possible, and not allowing them to get by just making a lot of comments) There is also a certificate of completion that can be received. This requires successfully completing the course, plus paying a $50 fee. Perhaps this looks good to agents and editors when establishing credentials; I opted for the cheap option.
So. I signed up, filled out my profile, and went through the course overview. At that point, it was time to play catch up. Next time, I'll share actual impressions of the course. That's all for now!
