Of Workshopping and Editing and Reviewing

At the Indiana Writers Center, I've led a workshop group for the last ten years and we occasionally have a great discussion on the different approaches to "workshopping."

This particular workshop was founded ten years ago as an outreach for the IWC and is, first and foremost, open to anyone who is or becomes a member of the IWC. Thus, in a sense, we're a very open group as opposed to most ongoing groups that can be selective in who they allow at the table. At any rate, the IWC workshop operates on a single guiding principal: each of the writers participates with the goal of doing their very best to help the other writers make their work the best it can be, based on where that writer is in the process and what they've chosen to write. In return for those efforts, we receive from the others around the table their own best efforts to help improve our writing based on our specific goals and motivations and vision--not theirs.

Of course, this approach isn't the only way--nor maybe even the best in other circumstances--to operate a workshop. Keep in mind there are three (at least) approaches one might employ in commenting on another's writing: straight critiquing (our approach), editing, and reviewing, and each has a place and value. Just as with the three modes of prose writing--narrative summary, scene, and description--and the importance of the writer's awareness and control of which mode they're using--and when and how to mix them--it's crucial that members of any group remember those workshopping principals and understand where they might be stepping over the line into another mode. 

A Title by Any Other Title

What's in a title? Wouldn't a title by any other title still smell as sweet? A title is a title is a title, right?

With apologies to both Willie and Gertrude, I find myself thinking about titles and their importance not only for that potential buyer out there once we finish our masterpiece, but even--and maybe especially--as guideposts and north stars for us as we work through our drafting and fine tuning. We recently published a marvelous short story in Flying Island by a talented young writer who mentioned that they really struggled with titles and sometimes didn't even have a working title for a project. We chatted about titles and their importance and how they indeed can sometimes evolve as we progress, but my point was that having at least a working title can and should inspire and guide us as we work.

Speaking of evolving titles, the original title of my civil war manuscript (see these posts, Knit One, Purl Two and Unravelling the Yarn) had been Come Retribution, which had apparently been one of only four code phrases used by the Confederates during the war. While still finishing up the first draft, I had a chance to pitch a New York agent at a week-long workshop and, having never done it before, I launched into my ramble and forgot to even mention the title. When I told her the protagonist finally realized her goal had to be "to strike a single hour" from the war, her face lit up and she stopped me to ask "Is that the title?" Of course, being reasonably bright, it only took me a few seconds to catch my breath and nod "Yes, do you like it?" She loved the title and asked me to send her the full manuscript whenever I was ready. She ended up considering the novel for seven months and testing the concept with a couple editors before finally deciding to pass on it, but the name stuck.

Random Acts of Editing

George and Michael and I finalized our search for an editor for our first Random Acts Books publication and are moving forward with revisions to our stories. The first book to come out will be Illusions, an Ekphrastic Trio, with a target publication date next spring. In the earlier post, And Then There Were Three, I noted we were in the process of finding that editor but didn't get into much detail. The process was fascinating and enlightening to say the least.

We started by selecting seven likely editors from several sources, mostly those recommended by Joanna Penn at her great website The Creative Penn. I emailed all seven, telling them about ourselves and our concept for our company and our projects--and including samples of our writing where requested--and we got responses from five of them. Not bad. Two of the five said they were extremely busy and probably couldn't work with us for months. Of those two, one said she loved my writing sample and we engaged in a lively email discussion of the arts and have actually reached a handshake to work together on my story collection, A Quiet Polyphony, once I've completed it. Very exciting and inspiring.

Progress and Poetry

Our Random Acts Books project continues to make progress, and we hope to finalize an arrangement with an editor by the end of the month.  We've had more skype sessions and have enjoyed getting to know a few editors as they've read the stories for our first collection, An Ekphrastic Trio.  We all agree we want to add a more engaging title for each of our miniologies, but we still like the Trio theme as a subtitle.  More on the final selection process once we've reached an agreement with our editor!

In the meantime, I read a marvelous piece on the editorial page of the New York Times this morning, titled "Poetry: Who Needs it?" by William Logan.  Wow, the LEAD editorial--well, in the digital edition, anyway--the one with the engraved illustration!  For poetry!  Is there hope for the world, after all?

And Then There Were Three

In Sci Fi Agonistes III, I chatted about starting on the path toward Indie Publishing for my science fiction novelette, And on the Eighth Day.  As I continued to surf and read more about the process, I found a number of websites and books that have been extremely helpful, and I've mentioned them all in that earlier post.  I'll just say there are many, many, wonderful folks out there blogging and posting and linking great tips and guidelines, and you can really learn from them...so be sure to thank them as well.

So, here I am, exploring and making notes and nodding, "ah ha, didn't realize that," and wondering where to begin--not to mention how I'd be able to accomplish all that new work and still be able to do any writing, oh, and yeah, that other something called a job--when a good friend and fellow member of our fiction workshop, Michael Bloom, says over coffee one day, "How about we team up on doing the Indie thing and start our own boutique publishing company?"  Eureka!  "And let's see if George Evans wants to join us."  Double Bingo!

One by One

Last night, my wife and I were overwhelmed by a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem at the Palladium.  Britten, a pacifist, combined in telling fashion the latin mass for the dead with poems by Wilfred Owen, the poet best known for "Dulce et Decorum est."  Neither of us had heard the complete piece before, but we were excited since one of our daughters sings in the Symphonic Choir, a neighbor is principal flute in the Indianapolis Symphony, and my wife had trained many of the singers in the Indianapolis Children's Choir.  The work, for orchestra, chamber orchestra, chorus of over a hundred with three soloists, plus a children's choir, is a powerful and moving piece with its juxtaposition of the requiem mass and Owen's pacifist poems, and the audience sat in total silence for nearly a minute after the final "amen" died away.

This morning, those lingering motifs and words haunt me as I continue revising my manuscript, To Strike a Single Hour, a civil war novel intended to find a potential truth amid the puffery of P. T. Barnum's "Spy of the Cumberland," Pauline Cushman.  I've draped my narrative over a bare skeleton of the little known "facts" about the brave and steadfast heroine, a woman who, unlike "...the milk-and-water women of the day, whose only thought is of dress and amusement, but one of the women of old, whose soul was in their country's good..." threw herself, according to Barnum's commissioned vanity biography of her by F. L Sarmiento, into the breach with nary a hesitation.

A Guest Post on the Indiana Author Awards Blog

I was honored today to contribute a guest post on the Indiana Author Awards blog at

http://www.indianaauthorsaward.org/the-blog/

Take a look and explore the other guest posts by many Indiana writers, including JL Kato, Poetry Editor for Flying Island, and Ben Winters, recent winner of the Philip K Dick Award for his novel Countdown City.

Keep your eye peeled for the 2014 Indiana Author Awards coming this October.