The High and Lows of Online MFA Feedback

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A couple of weeks ago in my MFA class we turned in a scene. We were told it should follow an introduction scene we had written for a previous class and that we should summarize that whole earlier scene in about 50 words (which is almost impossible).

So I followed the directions – at least I thought I did.

And my instructor left me a video full of feedback that clearly demonstrated his dedication to helping me with my work. Much of it was insightful, and encouraging, and gave me plenty to work on, but…

One third of the video was dedicated to his confusion over an issue that could have been resolved with a single sentence added to that summary of the earlier scene and/or, had it been a live conversation, a one sentence note of clarification.

Sigh.

Then last week we turned in a plot outline. Again, I got a wonderful video full of excellent feedback and encouragement. But…

I made the mistake of referring to my book as a science-fiction adventure romance….and it does have a love story. But I write very PG kinds of love stories, and this isn’t a “romance” novel – so I got a lot of advice about turning up the heat in my book. Again, I feel like a two sentence conversation could have solved the confusion.

Blessedly, my instructor is clear that I only need to take the feedback that I find helpful, and I’m sure a quick note on my next assignment will sort things out. But it has demonstrated both the amazing things (feedback videos) and the perils (confusion over simple things) of an online MFA.

3 Kinds of Feedback I Mostly Ignore

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In many of my MFA classes, including the one I’m currently taking, I get a lot of feedback on my creative work. It’s part of why I wanted to pursue an MFA, but sometimes figuring out how to process it is challenging. After taking lots of classes, and working with critique partners over the years, here are three kinds of feedback that I’ve decided I can, for the most part, ignore.

  1. If someone is just flat out confused/wrong about the kind of story I’m writing. This usually comes in the form of people who only read epic fantasy and/or hard science fiction – or don’t read a lot of fantasy or science fiction at all. Yes, the names in my fantasy novel are “weird” if your main window into fantasy is Harry Potter (though I’m not sure that Rell and Ragaryn are any weirder than Albus and Hermione.) And if someone only reads hard science fiction, it’s absolutely no surprise when they think my space opera romance scenes are too “emotional.”
  2. If two people give me contradictory feedback. In my recent critique workshop my professor loved the exact same detail that one of my classmates didn’t like. I’m keeping the detail.
  3. Like anyone else, professors have pet peeves and strong personal preferences. If I identify those I tend to take their comments on those issues with a grain of salt. I had one professor rip my “repetitive sentence structure” apart – even grade me down for it in the grammar category of the rubric because “word use is grammar.” And yet, she was the only professor or critique partner I’ve ever had who suggested I had some kind of large scale problem with this. She also, I learned, did this to several other students. So, beyond trying to pay a bit more attention to varying my sentence structure, I stopped worrying about this.

And anything that doesn’t fall into those three categories…well yeah, I probably have to fix it 🙂

Thesis Novel Subject is Now Official…Ack!

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The class I’m taking right now for my MFA is Speculative Fiction Writing II – it’s one of the classes I have looked forward to the most, and even though we’re only a couple of weeks in I’ve already learned so much!

The slightly scary thing is that this is the class where we finally have to commit to our thesis novel. I came into the program with a novel drafted that wasn’t edited and one 3/4 under way, but from the beginning I thought it would be a good idea to use the program as a way to write a new book. And not only am I trying a new book, but a new genre as well – science fiction.

So my thesis novel, tentatively titled “The Bins” is sort of Casablanca meets Firefly with a female space rogue as my lead character. It’s also inspired by the history of World War I (there is no clear cut “evil empire”) so I’ve worked a little bit of history nerd in there as well.

In this class I have to write two big scenes for it and officially commit – so here’s hoping that I’m being bold and not just crazy!

Fun News and a Shameless Plug

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Hi everyone!

I have what I hope is a fun ask – my short short story “The Roller Coaster at the End of the World” is a finalist in a short story contest at SNHU. Part of the final judging is based on votes from the public, and the top prizes include scholarships at SNHU. If you want to read the stories and participate in the voting, which runs through December 9th, just follow this link. (You do have to login to vote using the link in the upper right hand of the page, but it’s not too painful.)
https://snhu.submittable.com/gallery/bae4928e-ef62-43d0-87c7-070b1568d056

I’m a writer, not a businesswoman!

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Please read that post title in the voice of your preferred version of Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy.

This is a continuation of my earlier post about celebration. In my MFA program, I’m currently in Speculative Fiction Writing I – only a few days in and it’s glorious. I take forever to get the actual assignments done. However, unlike the Business of Writing class this isn’t because I don’t want to do them, it’s because there’s SO MUCH to do and SO MUCH to learn. (In fact, it probably took me 1/3 of the time to do the assignments for that class because I just wanted to get them over with.) For this class, I’d like to take the time to pour over every single required and suggested resource, to do every exercise for every character I’ve ever written or want to write. (Seriously, a suggestion that you use the Myers-Briggs personality test to help you write complex characters kept me busy for an hour.) I’ve already noted a laundry list of additional resources from the required readings that I want to explore when I can and, again, that’s just in a few days.

I am giddy with it. I can’t wait to write more and learn more and do more. The business side of things is a practical thing to know – and useful if you want to make money and share your work with the world – but to me it is pure necessary evil.

I want to write stories.

A Little Celebration

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I’m a hundred percent convinced that most of us creative types don’t celebrate our victories enough. Just deciding to be creative and inventive in a chaotic world is worth taking time to honor.

So in keeping with that, here’s my little celebration – One more class down toward my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing! More importantly, done with the two classes of the program that I was the least interested in. (Not that they weren’t important – but it was a bit like going to the dentist. You know it’s good for you and you have to do it, but that doesn’t make it fun.)

To add to the celebration my next stop is a class that is all about writing speculative fiction – I’ll actually get to work on my creative writing in my creative writing MFA – about dang time. Huzzah!

And a unicorn would be nice too – On finding an agent

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Before the pandemic, and trying to get tenure, and relocating to a new state, and… I was a writer in search of an agent. I researched, queried, went to conferences, entered contests, followed up on leads, and tried to take each rejection as just another step in the process of becoming a traditionally published writer. What I got for my trouble was a lot of understandable radio silence (agents get SO many queries, it’s a miracle they find anyone) and a small but significant number of encouraging rejections. Five different times I had agents ask for the full manuscript of one of my books, only to ultimately pass. I had an editor read the first few pages of a manuscript at a conference and tell me that there wasn’t anything wrong with it, that I was obviously a talented writer – it just wasn’t the kind of book/protagonist that was selling right now.

Lots of aspiring writers have similar stories. I am definitely not alone in this.

Deciding to self-publish Rell and start working on an MFA put all of that in the background. I can just say that I don’t have time to query like crazy while figuring out self-publishing and doing homework for graduate classes. Until this graduate class…which is all about publishing. In fact, for this upcoming week I had to write about criteria for finding the right kind of agent for my work. The obnoxious version of me wanted to say that talking about my criteria for an ideal agent is like talking about what you’d do if a million dollars fell out of the sky. In reality, there are only two criteria – 1) They are a reputable industry professional. 2) They said “yes.”

I reined in the snark and completed the assignment (like a professional), but I’m not kidding about those being the only criteria for most of us.

I’d like to just rise above all the publishing drama – but, thing is, I’m about to finish editing another manuscript, an alt-Victorian fantasy for adult readers, and I do have plans to shop it before looking into self-publishing again. So it’s back into the arena, or the snipe hunt, or the unicorn quest for me again soon. Oh the adventure.

On Being a Book Girl

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For a long time my husband has called me “Book Girl” as a term of endearment. and BookGirlJenel is my new Instagram handle.

This week I got a copy of a book called Book Girl from the library, and just started reading it tonight. I already have my favorite quote for the week:

“To be a book girl is to be formed by a bone-deep knowledge that goodness lies at the heart of existence…. I want your imagination to be shaped by beauty, filled by characters of grace and strength, livened by a sense of wonder in the ceaseless gifts of ordinary life.”

– From Book Girl by Sara Clarkson

Kill Your Fill: Five Dreaded Filler Words in Fiction

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I’ve been working on editing a novel today – it was that great feeling where you get sucked into a project and don’t want to stop. It felt great. Then I decided, “Maybe I’ll spend a few minutes working on getting rid of my filler words.”

Filler words are those words that 90% of the time need to be cut from a manuscript. It seems like no big deal – I mean how bad can the word “then” be? It’s harmless right? And has actual uses. Until you hit Ctrl+F and find it’s in your manuscript over 300 times – and about 282 of those can be deleted. Those aren’t the exact numbers, but they aren’t far off either. Working through my bespoke list of filler words today shrank my manuscript by over 1500 words. And I’m not done with the list yet. Ugh.

I don’t need spell check, I need a “don’t use that word” alarm.

There are many lists of filler words online – but I have refined my list over the last couple years to specifically focus on words that creep into fiction, and those that I personally overuse. Here are my top five filler word nemeses.

  1. Just – outside of quoted dialogue (and even sometimes inside of it) this word can be cut 98% of the time.
  2. Thought/realized – if you’re in a close point-of-view of any kind you can usually write the idea without having to clarify that this particular character “thought” about it.
  3. Then – as mentioned before this one sneaks into almost all of my narrative prose. You don’t need to telegraph every dang action your characters take. They can just do it.
  4. So – I start a lot of my dialogue with this word. Not brilliant word craft, Jenel.
  5. There – While I don’t use this one quite as frequently as the others, it’s almost always in places where I could be more specific, or where I don’t need any word at all.

They say one of the keys to editing is to “Kill Your Darlings.” I think my new motto should be “Kill Your Fill.”

5 U.S. Historical Fiction books in Honor of Independence Day

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Fireworks! Hot Dogs! Books? Okay, well not a traditional way to celebrate – but I thought I’d make a list of five of my favorite U.S. historical fiction books in honor of Independence Day!

  1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – some books really are as good as everyone says they are. This books gives a very specific window into childhood, racism, the legal system, stereotypes around mental illness/disability, and does it all with a unique narrative lens. I will judge you if you haven’t read this book 🙂
  2. The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder – when people ask me how I first got interested in American history I trace it to this series about a quintessential pioneering family.
  3. Molokai by Alan Brennert – This is one of the best books about the history of Hawaii and the devastating history of Hansen’s Disease in the United States. Plus it’s just a really, really good story.
  4. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates – In my Goodreads review of this book I said it’s not often that the fantasy geek, writer geek, and history geek in me can all be delighted by the same book, but this is one of them. If you can do justice to the history of slavery, and still make a book uplifting and magical, that’s definitely worth reading.
  5. Fools Crow by James Welch – reading this book in college gave me my first taste of the ability of some authors to put me in the shoes of someone of another culture, in this case a young man of the Blackfeet Nation, while still telling a compelling and relatable story.

Happy Fourth everyone!

Photo Credit: Paul_Stachowiak via Pixabay