Losing another person from the writers' group

[nolawitch58]

A little over a year after we had to toss the other person out, a similar scenario played out again. This guy had come from the group that formed at the library, which also featured the other person we had ejected who migrated there. While he had a good understanding of spelling, punctuation, and grammar, he lacked story structure and character development. He also had a complete inability to understand that he'd need to write more than a single draft to get it right. He was essentially telling the story of his meeting his wife, which was pretty boring and juvenile. Predictably, any criticism of the story was taken personally as he was basically the protagonist. What he wanted was for us to stroke his ego; what he got was direction to choose a genre, find a point of view, achieve logical consistency in his characters, and keep revising his writing until it got better.

This time we didn't have to throw him out. He got pissed off and flounced of his own accord. On reflection, he had that classic "nice guy" vibe. You know the one: all smiles and pleasant until he determines he won't get what he wants. Your average Republican type of jerk. When every woman in your writers' group calls your character "dickish" and "rapey," you should rewrite that character unless you intend him to be a rapist and not the hero. I hope he gets a clue, but I doubt if he will. His type rarely does.

There was another newbie who also quit the week before. She was writing something similar to her life story too. She didn't like the idea of having to rewrite or revise either. Those people are not writers. They don't understand that it's not mere typing, that there is craft involved. A couple of us have devised a way to weed these sorts out. I hope it works in the future.

My current novel is just past the halfway mark. I'm slogging through it as much as I can. I'm hoping I'll get a lot more writing done at the end of the month when I have to go back to Richmond for training. Airports and hotels seem to be conducive to scribbling sentences, plus the hotel where I stay is close to a great restaurant with a massive beer list. I can drink and stagger back to my room without worry.

Comments

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Wait a second, wouldn't that mean that he has rapist tendencies himself, given that you said his protagonist is basically himself? I wonder how is wife is.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

That creeped me out too. He's one of those super Christian types so he's probably just barely keeping his antisocial tendencies in check to ensure he goes to heaven when he dies. I never met his wife. I hope she's not as insipid as he wrote the character based on her.

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Good riddance to Mr. Dick ;-).

I sometimes wonder how people get to be this way. So convinced that they're infallible that they even join groups without even considering that everyone else might be a bit more serious or knowledgeable than them.
It's what put me off my philosophy class, as well.

One can't help noticing that those are pretty much always males...

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

The more I learn about narcissists, I realize they can't help it. Knowing that doesn't make dealing with them any easier. They shouldn't be encouraged to indulge their narcissistic tendencies, but there's little help for them aside from behavior modification therapy.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

Oh, there are female narcissists. I know one personally, and I stay as far away from her as I possibly can.

[nightwind292.livejournal.com]

I'm rather curious about the test used to detect or deflect such folks.

My big writing problem is dialog, I just can't make it lifelike.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

We're going to make them submit a sample of their work to a limited critique and return it with revisions. If they can't do that from the outset, they won't last.

Considering that four of us have come through the group with traditionally published works and one guy self-published, I think our track record is better than some newbie who hadn't ever had as much as a magazine article published.

The trick to writing good dialog is to read it aloud to yourself. If it sounds weird, rewrite it until it sounds natural. One of my other writer friends suggested that technique. It works pretty well for me.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

Is there any way someone can join your group and participate remotely? (Not that I need another thing to be involved in)

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

No, sorry. We haven't figured out how to Skype people in and keep the critique format the way it is. I would love to be able to do that too when I'm off on my business trips.