Learning Curve
By Erin M. Hartshorn
Copyright © 2009 by Erin M. Hartshorn, All Rights Reserved
I've been a member of
Forward Motion for a bit over five years, and in that time I've learned
from pros and from people who just signed on to the forum a month
before. I've learned how to give and receive crits, learned that a
rejection of my story is not a rejection of me, learned how to stretch
myself in new directions, and learned that even I can't do everything.
Mostly what I've learned is
how to listen. When I started at the site, I was the epitome of the
brash young (or moderately young, anyway) writer who was sure her prose
was the next best thing to perfect and the editors would rue the day
they turned down the opportunity to publish her work. I even committed
the solecism of telling a published author that she was wrong about how
the publishing world works. (I was going to insert my callow comment
here to demonstrate how much I've grown, but because of the cap on
search results retrievable at FM, that post is currently lost to me,
which may in fact be for the best. Who wants their idiocies haunting
them forever?)
Yeah, I was that person.
Then I got some crits that
made me want to throw things at the wall. "Didn't they read what I
wrote?" After I calmed down, I looked at where the misunderstandings
were and tried to address those issues. It wasn't easy; sometimes the
advice I got was based on what people thought I was trying to do, which
had no relation to what was actually supposed to be happening in the
story.
Having realized I needed to
improve, I looked around the forums to see if people were talking about
the things I needed to learn. I started to read the advice that people
were giving, and I practiced those techniques in my writing. And I got
better. Still not good enough for publication most of the time, but
better.
Some of that advice came in
the 2YN (Two Year Novel) class. We were all learning together, but it
was a great place to learn what wasn't clear to readers and why. And my
classmates often had ideas about new things to try to clarify what I had
written.
As time went on, I realized
that not every technique I read about would work for me -- but that I
should be willing to try new ones because only by stretching could I
improve. If I heard the same thing from many trusted sources -- whether
about my writing or the field in general -- I started to look at it more
closely. (Trusted sources are important because there are a lot of
PublishAmerica authors out there who say that's the way to go. Their
numbers don't make them right.) I heard nuggets of wisdom from tyros and
from people with over a dozen books to their credit, and I saw that I
had to be open to learning from everyone.
Sometimes it takes me a
while to put it all together. Last month, I had an epiphany about
characterization. In retrospect, I realize editors, in their rejections,
have been trying to tell me where my characters are lacking for a couple
of years. It took two personal comments on different stories from the
same editor to make me examine characterization and motivation and
character arcs -- and then everything that I'd been hearing clicked
together.
I had to be open to
learning. I had to be humble enough to admit I need to improve even
while being confident that what I have to say is worth reading.
I learned how to learn, all
over again, and I am a better writer for it.
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