So how was the writing workshop?

Back from four long days at the UCLA Extension Writers Program's Novel Revision Techniques workshop. And when all is said and done, I must say I got a lot out of it. The instructor, Mark Sarvas, was well prepared and he enthusiastically imparted his knowledge of novel revision. It was hard to tell that this was the first time he had ever taught this workshop. As a result I’m very tempted to sign up for his Novel IV class that starts in April.

His best advice is: Read Like a Writer

He also encouraged us to keep reading novels all the time.

The class was really grueling. It included lectures on these subjects: 

The Many Drafts of the First Draft

Revision Tools

Structure

Scene

Character

Language

The Essential Revision Questions

Mark used The Great Gatsby over and over again to illustrate his points, and believe me, he is an expert on The Great Gatsby. He reads it at the start of every year. As much as I like the book – and I like it even better now that I know some of its back story – I don’t think I’d read it that often. We also listened to Mark read letters between Maxwell Perkins (Fitzgerald’s editor) and Fitzgerald and Perkins' suggestions for Gatsby revisions.

In preparation we sent in advance fifteen pages of our own novels so we could read each other’s work before the workshop began. Then each day we spent time work-shopping them. That is, each member of the class provided feedback based on their read of the material. Our instructor ended each discussion with his feedback and an assignment to revise a shorter portion incorporating some aspect of the review comments. Once the first workshop rounds were over we immediately started on the second and didn’t finish those until an hour before the end of the workshop late Sunday afternoon. Just in time to hear Mark’s last lecture – a wrap-up of the whole weekend.

And what made this adventure especially nice was that my friend Deborah Kalan and I carpooled and ate lunch together each of the four days. Even though we see each other at the gym and once in a while socially, this was a great chance for us to bond. She is a wonderful writer and working on a memoir, so she work-shopped with one of my memoir heroes, Samantha Dunn. Sam and I have known each other virtually for years, but only met in the real world Thursday. It’s like we’ve known each other forever.

This is where I'll be spending lots of time 

in the future - so why am I smiling?

Now the real work begins. I wanted to take this class to jump start working on my novel again, and it surely did. I got some wonderful and enthusiastic feedback, so I think I have something very viable going on. But I have at least a year of work left to do on it – if I work on it everyday for several hours. If I don’t spend that much time daily, of course it will take longer. The first step is to print out a hard copy and just read it – not even taking any notes or making any small edits. I have to literally sit on my hands. In fact I’m not even going to incorporate any of my workshop comments and revisions into this draft. I’m going to freeze it as of January 30, 2012 and go from there.

Next stop, Kinkos, to make a copy.

My UCLA workshop starts tomorrow

I’m scheduled to start a novel revision workshop through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program tomorrow, taught by Mark Sarvas. (He looks like he could be my grandson.) I just hope I’m doing the right thing by taking it. Not that I don’t think my work is any good, it’s just that it might be premature for the stage I’m in on my novel. But I know one thing for sure; it will jump start my work on the novel – something that has been too much on the back burner lately.

So to prepare for this class I had to pick a portion of the novel that others could read and critique. I chose chapters three and four. That took up the allotted page count – 15 pages double-spaced. We were also required to turn our selections in by January 22 with a one-page synopsis and what specifically we want help with going forward.

On January 23 I received a compilation of the entire classes’ work – or so I thought – and began reading. At the outset we were told that if our material wasn’t received by the 22^nd it would risk not being read by the instructor or the class before the workshop starts. Well, that was definitely bogus. Late last week and early this week I began receiving pages to review from three late registrants. And then we were told that one person dropped the class so need to read her work. Guess what? I already had. All in all I've read about 200 pages of my classmates' chapters and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby to learn how it was revised. That part should be very interesting.

Along with other material we received about preparing for the class is a list of critique guidelines. It’s so important that we are respectful of our classmates’ work. Here are the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program guidelines.

Rules of the Road 

•    Always begin with what the author has done well.

•    Be specific in your praise. Single out particular instances in the text of 
successes. Once you have done this, move on to areas requiring attention.

•    Your best input will be as READERS. Do not try to be writers. You do not 
have to fix things, or suggest fixes. You merely have to point out things you do not feel work and you have all read more than enough to have a great sense of this. You are, after all, a book’s final audience.

•    Be mindful of the writer’s intention. Don’t try to rewrite a piece the way you would have written it, rather help the writer improve his or her vision of their own work. And if you don’t understand that vision, say so.

•    Be very specific about your problems. Avoid flabby, useless, subjective language like “I didn’t like it” or “I was bored” or “I don’t get it.” Instead, talk about how a character’s behavior strikes you as inconsistent, or not fully thought out and then explain why. If you articulate your problems as clearly as possible, the writer will have a better shot of figuring out a fix.

•    Try to preface things with “to me” or “this reader” or “to my eye” or “for my taste” – it reminds both the reviewer and the reviewed that responses are subjective.

•    Stay impersonal, polite and respectful. Remember you are discussing the text, not the author. Do not confuse the writer for his or her writing.

•    Be encouraging and remember – it’s scary (and brave) to put yourself out there!

•    To the writer: Do not argue or defend anything. Do not speak at all. Listen and take notes on anything that rings a chord. (And feel free to disregard anything that does not.)

•    When the critique is done, if you have a question or would like clarification or want to discuss a possible solution, begin by asking, “May I ask a follow up question for clarification?”

•    Remember – whatever you intended or think you did doesn’t matter in the face of a reader who does not get it.

•    And if everyone in the room says the same thing, you should probably listen. 

I think this is a very helpful list. Since I’ll be in class for the next four days, I’ll follow up on how the workshop turned out next week. I’ll also let you know how everyone adhered to these guidelines.

And this is really cool. I looked on the writer's program website and found my success story among others who have taken classes and workshops there. Here's the link to mine: http://www2.uclaextension.edu/writers/success.php?recordID=237

Writing Life Stories

We were out to dinner with our friends Patti and Pat the other night and Patti shared with me that she’s taking a writing class at her church. I’ve never known that Patti had an interest in writing, so I was fascinated to know that this is a class in lifestory writing – a topic that’s been very much on my mind lately. I also discussed it with a friend who works at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Los Angeles, suggesting they offer a class for the folks who live there. As people age, we mustn’t lose their stories. We must find a way to record and save their stories for future generations. I would love to teach the class should the Jewish Home decide to offer it.

Writing life stories has become all the rage. We’re in the so-called Memoir Revolution with volumes written about how to write your life story or memoir and how to produce it into a book. One in particular is Sharon M. Lippincott’s The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing: How to Transform Memoires into Meaningful Stories.

I’ve been journaling for years, and I wrote and had a memoir published, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Dream of Things, 2012). But, I’m thankful to say, a long time before I even started to tell my story, my husband Bob began his over thirty-year journey to write down our family history. I thought I’d share what motivated him to spend so much time on this project and how he managed to get the information that went into it.

Madeline and Bob at the California Science Museum

It all started because he loved hearing my uncle telling stories about his family’s escape to Russia from Lithuania during World War I. Pretty soon Bob began writing these stories down with pen on paper. Later on he taped Uncle Dave and my mother who had encyclopedic memories about their life in Eastern Europe and their eventual immigration to the United States with their mother and other four siblings.

Soon he realized how many people in both our families had gray hair, reminding him that they wouldn’t be around much longer. So he decided that if he didn’t get them to tell him their stories soon they would eventually be lost. He also used Ancestry.com to gather data related to the families’ journeys to America, he hired a genealogist to help him get facts about his father’s family in Blackburn England, and he traveled to Lubeck Germany where he found meticulous birth and baptismal certifications for his mother’s parents.

Luckily some members of my family – my mother, my mother’s uncle and cousin, and my aunt on my father’s side – also wrote their stories down. Bob used these typed documents and a multitude of photos from both his and my families to flesh out the researched material. His father told a lot of stories about living in New England in the early 20^th Century.

Bob spent the first twenty years collecting data in between working full time as a program manager in the aerospace business. And then for the next ten years or so he stopped working on the history all together. By that time most of the older generation – his best resources – had died, and he had to find others in the family who could fill in some blanks. My one surviving aunt and my cousin did a lot of that work – although my cousin insisted that Bob edit out the material about his father’s and our family’s mental illness.  Bob’s cousin also helped him identify many family members depicted on a photo taken in 1928. But because it took so long to write and produce into two volumes – one for his family and one for mine – Bob was bitterly disappointed that both our brother’s died before they had a chance to read it. He feels he shouldn’t have sacrificed timeliness for accuracy. He is also disappointed that so many of the extended family members didn’t really care to read it at all.

Bob felt writing a family history was well worth it although in a sense he did it for himself. He needed to record the old people’s stories before they died. And he was successful in doing that. He became the family’s historian and is widely recognized for his accomplishment. He also believes he has left a legacy for those younger than us. Otherwise how will they know where they came from?

Although Bob stopped the histories just at the point of our marriage in May 1970, he wants to write a third volume to record the events since then. He also churns about what to do with all the family photographs – the hordes that came from my mother and uncles and his cousin. Fortunately our own family photos have been organized and digitized. The rest need to be as well. That is another daunting job that will help complete the legacy he will leave to our family’s younger generation. 

His advice to those who want to take on the job of writing a family history: “Start interviewing the elders in the family as soon as you can because they will start disappearing. They are your first-hand sources for your life story.”

My advice is to start writing your own life stories now. Take a class as my friend Patti is doing, grab Sharon’s book to get some great prompts and examples, or just sit down and write. Your children and their children will be glad you did.

(portions of this article were originally published at PsychAlive.