We are freezing here in Texas. I’ve thrown caution to the wind and made myself a second cup of tea. We started with Hot Apple Spice from Harney’s and now I have Christmas tea from Fortnum brewing.
Questions from readers have been piling up, so here is an interesting one.
What is a workshop burn?
A workshop burn occurs when writers overedit. One time I watched a documentary on beauty pageants and a hair stylist shared that hair looks best when it’s a little dirty, which is why we put product in it. Good writing is like that, a little dirty in a sense that it’s slightly rough and imperfect. There is texture to it.
In a workshop environment, you have a single manuscript being edited by a lot of people, and everyone is actively looking for imperfections. Even worse, everyone is also simultaneously attempting to perfect their own writing, and most writers concentrate on a single issue at a time. Meaning that if Bob became convinced that he is using the word “said” too much, he is going to scrutinize every occurrence of said in your manuscript.
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. The way the profile of her face and body refracted in the soupy twilight made me feel a little drunk.
~ J.D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew
A gorgeous paragraph.
The writer sees the girl and forgets to breathe. It is a moment of profound loneliness and longing. You know that even if they never meet again, the writer will remember the girl for the rest of his life.
In a workshop environment, inevitably someone would want to fix “She wasn’t doing a thing” to “she wasn’t doing anything.” Then someone else will point out that it is too passive and it needs to be rewritten in an active voice, so it will become “doing nothing”: or “She did nothing,” and then someone else will point out that the girl has no description. Pretty soon you have “The girl leaned on the balcony rail, doing nothing, the curtain of her dark hair spilling over her shoulders” and the magic is gone.
Here is what Chat GPT did with it:
The apartment below mine was the only one with a balcony. I watched a girl standing on it, enveloped by the rich haze of autumn twilight. She wasn’t doing anything that I could discern, just leaning against the railing, as if she were holding the universe in place. The way the soft contours of her face and body merged with the hazy light left me feeling a bit unsteady, as though the world itself had shifted.
Ehhhh, no.
Does this mean you should ignore the workshop feedback?
It’s a complicated question. The stock answer is to use the suggestions that you feel make your writing better, but when you are starting out, it’s often hard to figure out what is “better.”
If you are in doubt, it helps to ask when the edits were made. Did the reader read the whole piece of writing first and then offered corrections because they are supposed to or was the need to correct strong enough to stop the reader? Only the second type of correction really matters. Did they stumble over something? Was the issue severe enough to interrupt the act of reading? If it was, it might be something to consider. But then again, we have Bob, who will highlight every “said” in the manuscript as he is going through it out of principle.
::raises her cup of tea:: Here is to Bob! Good luck with your writing this week.
First?
Certified 😀
That’s great! I’m in a different time zone and always end up late for the party :-D.
Thanks for the great post :-).
Can someone please explain the “first” thing to me? I feel like I’m competing for a prize and I have no idea what it is lol
There is no prize 🙂 . It’s the satisfaction of seeing an article first, or most likely, of being the one to beat the rest of the Horde to the comments. Some people play it, most people ignore it. We all still love each other and our soupy twilight differences hehehe.
Ahh, ok. Thanks!
It’s an amusing and harmless trait of the BDH, everyone wants to be the first to comment. No prizes, just the glory of it all!
🫖☕️❤️
The burn, feel the burn.
😀 The burn is how you know it’s working!
Best of luck with the temperatures; it’s a tad cool hereabouts, too.
Interesting! Thanks!
A dreary cold run up to a hopefully snowy day. Always a special occurrence around here in central TX. 🤣😜
Hey Mod R,
Quick question. I’m trying to sort out my personal KD universe timeline and I’m wondering if you could clarify how long after the shift Kate was born? I don’t think it ever explicitly said in the books but I could just have missed it.
Hi Beth.
I really don’t want any references to the timeline. 🙂 I’m trying to get Ace to edit them out. We changed the timeline as we went through the series out of the need to keep things contemporary, because people prefer to read about events in the future rather than the past, and the series is 17 years old.
Ok!
Here’s to more tea, always!! 🫖☕
I am ever grateful that I am a reader; I will leave the world of writing to those who understand its intricate workings!! 📚
That’s why I hardly ever comment on the writing l, since it’s the writer’s choice and more importantly the phrasing is an integral part of each character.
In the best of my writing classes:
One gentleman, whose native language was NOT English, wrote a story so beautiful we had no suggestions. None. I deeply wish I remembered his name, because I would love to see if he had continued to write — no doubt whatever in my mind that he’d be published if he did.
My story, which by no coincidence was the only genre fantasy story, got completely torn apart. No one understood what was happening. I was told I had to be explicit that the POV was from a dragon, and none of the clues I left lying around — including the burned body of a dead knight — was sufficient. The professor made me stay after and gave me a long talk on genre writing, the key point being that a reader generally knows when they are sitting down to read fantasy and/or science fiction, and has their brain set likewise. And to ignore about 90% of the corrections. And to find myself a genre writing workshop for better feedback.
But that experience definitely helped me develop a thicker skin.
You had a good professor there. I hope we hear from the other student someday, in addition to hearing from you.
Oh, meeeee toooo.
You could use ejaculated instead of said.
Hey, if it’s good enough for Arthur Conan Doyle 😁
Oddly that’s one of the things that stops me from reading sometimes – if the author slavishly follows the “Never say ‘said'” rule. All those awkwardly selected verbs get distracting and I lose focus on what is being…said.
That’s not odd at all hehe. It’s one of the very common amateur writer pitfalls and something any editor should waste no time setting right.
Although the time Watson ejaculated out the window is still one of my faves 😅
Apropos of nothing: your avatar is adorable!
lol – Many are fond of that one!
It takes reading him again to remember, at least for me, how good a writer he was. And I *love* Katherine Addison’s update in Angel of the Crows.
I guess “said” is sort of invisible. It doesn’t trip me up, either way.
Said is an invisible word. 🙂
And then there’s Robert Parker who proved exactly how invisible by only EVER using said. “Where are you going?” she said.
I was halfway through the second book by him that I was reading before I noticed.
Aaannd, in hindsight I used a poor choice of adjective to modify “follows”. That could cause some readers to stop in their tracks too. I could have used rigidly, doggedly, or dutifully, among others.
I need to get back to writing again. I’m not an amazing writer but when rereading my old writing I’ve been able to get lost in my own work 😂 My biggest problem with writing is my small children. It is hard to find the time to write.
iIt’s not surprising a computer with no soul would take the soul out of writing….
I Beta read for one of my favorite authors and went in with the mind set of must fix everything….which after the first time I was like oh no..I learned to stop and reread what the whole paragraph was saying. I didn’t want to change what they were trying to say. then I proceeded to ramble on in a email about a novels leangth answering questions lol. so probably not much help tbh.
I dropped my daughter off at Ontario Intl Airport, CA yesterday for a trade show she is particpating in Dallas. It was about 60 when I dropped her off. It was 28 degrees when she landed. This morning she said it was 23 degrees.
Stay cozy down there! Up in Wisconsin we woke up to -8F and we’ve made it all the way up to two. I’m rereading an old favorite of mine on Libby, and the typos from whatever auto-upload they did are like catching a toe on a sidewalk crack. I’m so grateful for good writing and editing!
I’m drinking Harney’s Victorian London Fog this morning. It’s a new bag of tea and it smells amazing.
I appreciate the explanation of workshop burn. I’ve always been a bit fearful about sharing my writing with unknown people for that reason.
Thanks for the Monday morning blog post. I needed a pick me up today!
Enjoy that second cup of tea!
Tea is my drink of choice always. Roibbos (red bush) with mint Home blend. When I need the caffeine whole leaf Chinese with Assam or Darjeeling. Yay tea.
i have been obsessed with this black tea lately–
https://www.harney.com/products/new-vithanakande?variant=35000708678
strong but not bitter and smooth and velvet in the mouth. Well, I guess too many other people thought so too since it’s sold out haha whoops
Thank you! I think this applies to any art form, and it’s a very useful reminder.
Is cold here in NM too. Will be down around 14 tonight for us–unusually cold but we get a night or sometimes two during the winter that is terribly cold. No snow on the ground, but tomorrow will be cold. It’s cold right now. If I were standing on a balcony, I’d only notice someone else if they had a thicker coat than me. As it is, I have on three shirts, one of which is my dad’s heavy flannel, a goose down vest, woolies and thick sweatpants. And I’m INSIDE. When I put on my down coat and shearling hat to go outside, I look like a ninja turtle muppet.
I wondered about this with all of the Maggie editing.
It’s freezing here too (Oregon). The only good thing about it is it kills a lot of bugs.