Some writers do all their work in isolation. They are the
creative hermits of the literary world. When
they get an idea for a story, they tell no one. This isn’t always the misplaced
fear that the other person will “steal” their idea. Few ideas are so strikingly
original that they have not already been told in a myriad variations. Even if
the other person were to write a story on the same idea, the stories would have
different executions. Knowing this doesn’t seem to make a difference. Some
folks just work better alone. I’ve heard some of them say that if they discuss
a work in progress, the very act of telling it aloud dissipates the creative
energy: they’ve told the story, so there’s no reward for writing it. Some of
them never improve as writers, but others seem able to teach themselves and to
produce work of quality.
I’m not one of them.
First of all, I am, as the French say, “très sociable.” I flourish with regular chats with other writers.
More importantly, I learned early on in this business that if I am left to my
own devices, I will come up with the most dreadful poppycock and think it’s
great. My stories will have plot holes you could ride a tyrannosaur through.
And let’s not mention grammatical atrocities, inconsistent
characterizations…you know the drill. Fortunately, my second and third drafts
are a whole lot better than the drivel I throw together as a rough draft. I
revise a couple of times, just to get the words on the page into some
correlation to the story in my head, before I let anyone else see it.
At some point, however, I need feedback. I need an ally.
Better yet, several. I benefit from having a “story midwife” to help me with
the process of pushing and squeezing and ruthlessly pruning a story into the
form that is most true to my creative vision.
A “story midwife” is someone whose insightful feedback helps
me to make the story more fully what I intended it to be. It is not a person
who rewrites my work to their own agenda, sabotages my writing efforts in order
to make themselves feel good, or who goes about claiming credit for having
salvaged or inspired my work. These things happen (and they’ve happened to me),
but they’re not only not helpful, they’re potentially devastating. All these
things happen because the person reading the story has motives other than being
of help to the writer. These folks are often unsuccessful writers themselves.
