Epiphany

Last night I went to my critique group. It'd been about a month since I last went. And it'd been longer than that since we had a decent group of folks. I had a blast. Granted, it took us two and a half hours to get through only two offerings, but it was a lot of fun. I don't think Linda enjoyed it, though. I think she wanted it to be more orderly than it was. We can do orderly. But it's wicked fun when we don't. Well, it was kinda frustrating when I kept getting interrupted as I tried to bring the newbie up to speed on HD. I didn't mind too much until she started her crit and seemed pissy that I hadn't told her about X,Y, and Z in my little summary. Oh well, what can you do?

Last night also gave me a clear example of voice. Voice is one of those nebulous, hand-wavy things. You are supposed to know it when you see it. Getting a definition for it makes you think of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. But I finally "got it" last night. The first paragraph of the chapter I brought for review was a tad awkward and caused pretty much everyone to stumble. So Linda decided to take a stab at rewriting it to make it more clear. As soon as she read her first sentence, I heard her voice. "Denise huddled under a blanket, pulled the satin edge up to her chin." While it's a good sentence, I would never, ever write it. Instead, I would put all tactile references either as adjectives for the blanket, or I would make her fingers do the feeling. "Denise huddled under a blanket, her fingertips gliding over the soft, fuzzy material." I don't know why I suddenly heard voice in this example, but it was an interesting moment.

Another a-ha moment came when the newbie had a problem with a long, somewhat complicated sentence I had in the middle of the ending action sequence. Oddly enough, I realized I always saw that particular image described in the sentence as slow motion when the scene played in my head. And that was why I used a long sentence that slowed down the action. It's strange what the subconscious manages to make you do.

And a further thought on the vagueness thing Judge 1 harped on (rightly so). It was intentional. Mainly because I was under the impression that you weren't supposed to spill everything in the first couple pages, and you were supposed to clue readers into the mysteries, the motivations, the characters as you go. I guess this is what I get for reading Sherri S Tepper. But here's the catch, if you're so vague as to blur the tension, the action, the conflict that's supposed to drag the reader in and not let go, then you ain't doing your job as a writer. But Judge 2 didn't have a problem with the vagueness until the ethics debate. I think Judge 2 also saw my work for what it could be sometimes (i.e. saw what I was trying to do and, in some ways, helped me out by considering the effort as the real thing) and commented accordingly. Wow. The more I think about the whole writing contest thing, the more it fascinates me. The subjectivity, the personal quirks, and the individual preferences. And yet I don't feel cheated in the least. They gave me scores within four points of each other, letting me know that I submitted average writing contest material, but also letting me know how to make it publishable.

One thing I've realized for certain from both the writing contest and last night's crit: I'm going to need to revise again. Holly's One Pass Revision idea is great, but I'm not ready for it. I'm going to fix a lot of thing in this first pass, but I've still got quite a few big things to fix in the second pass. Maybe it's time to set a December deadline for sending HD out for rejections.