THE SILENT BOOMER RUNS AFOUL OF THE CRITIQUES

A friend of mine, Carl, told me it would happen, and it finally happened. I took a solid piece of writing, Pavlov's Other Dogs, to my writing group, and my female critiques didn't get it and didn't like it. It was working at so many levels, even I surprised myself when I rediscovered it amongst some old writings of mine. One woman did catch the correct feeling from the work. She said it was "disturbing" and that was exactly how it was meant to strike readers. So I succeeded in that.

Poor Pound Puppy

Basically, the tale dealt with discipline and abuse. It was about a housewife house breaking a mongrel mutt from the pound to the point that the dog was conditioned to believe (learned) that abuse was play. In the end the young dog was so berserk, she put him down. She drove him crazy. The sarcastic distance of the embittered narrator whose offhand remarks reveal a man damaged by abuse himself escaped his critics. They were disturbed that the narrator referred to the pound puppy as an "ex-con, so to speak". They wanted a sympathetic orphan dog and sympathetic and undamaged narrator. They wanted, I fear, a straightforward tale of maudlin woe that they could feel sorry about. In sum, they were more interested in the fate of the mongrel dog than they were about the son and stepson who the mother/stepmother had also "housebroken". She trained one with excessive and unlimited love and the other with stern discipline, and one became a drug addict while the other struggled with alcoholism, but all of that human knowledge is left out of the tale so that the tale doesn't become another "poor me" tale of human abuse. 

The tale no doubt has some flaws I cannot see because its beauty blinds me, but not one of the critiques gave the story an overall approval rating. Instead, to be kind, they stuck with small details. The negative effect of their comments was considerable upon this poor writer's spirit, no matter how mightily he wagged his tail. Two did ask if the young dog couldn't be made more sympathetic. One wanted the tale told from the dog's point of view. An interesting theory I did consider, but then I'd lose the ironic tone of the damaged narrator overarching the whole affair. In fact, I was not fully aware of his damaged spirit until the critics rubbed my nose in it. For that interesting information, I give the critiquing a hearty thumbs up.

We learn in spite of ourselves!

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE, OLD DOG

I've had 11 years of editing and/or publishing literary magazines and microzines. I've had the yeah or nay over the works of some very fine writers in my time, yet I've s

Our microzine. This issue on orange paper.

till managed to learn a thing or two from my recent attendance at two writer groups. As you know, I recently translated a novel from mss to editable files. My goal, of course, is to entirely rewrite the novel, Delinquent Lives, and put it on Amazon as an ebook...if I don't land an agent.

When the Coffee House Writers Group [chwg] looked at the novel, several readers were bothered by a lack of clarity in the way I switched between the points of view of two characters which, actually, continues throughout the entire work. At first, I was too enamored at the clever way I was integrating the personalities of the two characters whose points of view dominate the novel, but I took my reader's advisement under consideration, and this morning I rewrote several sections to clarify the characters in relation to one another, and I'm damned happy with the result.

In the other group, SW WA/OR Write To Publish, they live by a silly rule about using the word "it". Can cost a man a quarter if he uses "it". I always think of bringing the opening of The Sound and The Fury to such a class and presenting it as my own work just to see how the rule makers would deal with Faulkner's writing. However, this morning as I sat down to my writing and began to look at the "it"s liberally sprinkled throughout my text, I began to eliminate some of them and to find other ways of expressing the pronouns. Imagine my pleasure to find I liked the changes. The changes added clarity and precision to the novel.I'll continue in that way from now on.

So...as you see, even a 75 year old writer with much experience can learn if he listens.

AN OLDER WRITER'S LAMENTATIONS

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One of many problems with being an older writer, besides drooling in my coffee cup, is...

I joined a writers group over in Portland, the chwg or Coffee House Writers Group. The format was ideal. Readers read from 3 to 5 pages, double-spaced, aloud and everyone could comment or not. Further, not everyone read each Saturday. I was impressed by the intelligence and brightness of that group, but after three meetings, I realized that I could only hear about 1/3 of what was being read and little of the comments. My frustration was complete and, disappointed, I had to withdraw to find a group which was more reliant on the typewritten page to work from. 

I've now found that in a Vancouver group, SW WA/OR Write To Publish, and I attended my first meeting today. Wonderful, I thought, but it has the noble ideal of letting every member's work be critiqued each Wednesday. After two hours my antsy self had to dance away, but I'll be more prepared next Wednesday to stick it out. There has to be an upper limit to the number that the group can accommodate comfortably, but time will tell. Trouble is I'm feeling a little guilty because I'm adding one more member to the number of writers whose work will be critiqued each Wednesday.