Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Walking on Eggshells

Yesterday we had breakfast in Wisconsin Rapids and this tradition at the flying club is a good interlude for getting together and discussing the hobby. Wayne wanted to sell me some broken models feeling they were repairable. I looked at them and while anything is “Repairable” the investment in time would have required twenty hours at least on each one of the three. He seemed a little miffed that I passed up on them but there was an even bigger reason for passing. It is the same rationale I use for my antique cars. I don’t care how rare or valuable a car is, if it doesn’t excite my passion it isn’t worth fooling with. Life is too short to be devoting time to "passionless" projects.

The same is true of writing. The story you are telling needs to elicit passion. It is that passion that sustains the effort over the weeks and months consumed in writing a novel. A friend of mine told me recently that using an outline kills the joy and spontaneity of writing a novel and that she doesn’t use them. In response I can only say that everybody doesn’t think the way I do (thank goodness) and some have bio processors that are much bigger and capable of keeping more balls in the air than I can.

Yesterday evening it was back to the Rapids for our monthly club meeting. I was elected Secretary and will take over the duties immediately. Roger asked me if I was going to buy any of the models Wayne was trying to get rid of and I told him and Al that they were farther gone than I had anticipated from the promotion. After the meeting Wayne asked me again if I was sure I didn’t want one of the three models he had in the back of his SUV. I declined. (Perhaps my manner was more insensitive than it should have been.)

Sometimes something like this happens in the Exploratory Writing Workshop. I will get a vignette that just doesn’t fly and I have to tell the writer how it could be improved. One of the things that help me is having a checklist with each lesson requiring things the lesson must include. These are usually “Strategic Considerations” that emphasize Character Development, Exposition (Showing and Telling) a Life Changing Event, or Dialog, as examples, and I can simply say that the component is there or it isn’t. Then, what remains, is to comment on three or more of the things I liked and didn’t. What I try and avoid is rewriting examples to make the point of what I’m getting at. I think this technique can be very demonstrative and I see it used effectively in other courses New Horizon’s Academy offers. I really appreciate it when a reviewer takes the time to show in an example of what they're trying to express. However, for some, this approach is hard to accept. Poets seem the most unwilling to deal with examples of how something might be more expressively written. I won’t tell you how many “How Dare You” replies I've gotten from a well-meaning attempt to show through example exactly what I’m getting at.

I suppose the point is that you can’t please everyone. We should probably try and be sensitive and refrain from giving unsolicited advice in sensitive areas. Still if someone persists in trying to get you to walk into a room full of eggshells there is no way to avoid some “Crunching” noises.