Without a Teacher

 Learning to write without a teacher may be effectively done and enjoyed.

                It has been done in groups of from 5 to 17 participants. Basically, the members each commit to reading the writing of a member then to coming together with the other members to share their feelings about what they have read. 

                Hearing what others have felt as they read your works has proven a great help to improving one's writing and a powerful experience in itself.

                Any Questions?  I'll clarify one doing without being asked.
Every member reads one specified piece of  writing of one member of the group. Then in a gathering of all the members each member tells about how she felt as she read the piece. This telling of feelings is done at nearly every meeting of the group.

                The bit below is about what I have learned from my experience and from Mr. Elbow. It is something that I might offer at an appropriate moment in the gathering of my group.

                On the horizon, a Final Draft 

                Once you have some writing from which it seems you can coax some coherence, you may be close to the point at which to edit and turn out a final copy.

            Take 15 minutes to make your meaning clear to yourself.

                You might let yourself consider an outline or plan.

                Sum up what you have into a genuine single assertion of what your meaning is. Not easy, but possible. Remember that your assertion must actually assert something that can be quarreled with.

                You have grown your meaning and specified it to yourself clearly. Good for you. Your efforts and good thinking will give you a good chance to do some truly powerful writing.

                                                                            by Richard Sheehan
                                                                            or Mago Bill

In a Writing Group

 Are you serious about having a group?

                Tell me about it. I am interested; I may even be able to offer some help, or to try to do so. And remember, you do not have to have one. Many successful writers have never had the experience of a group. Most have received some feedback and many have benefited from that feedback.

The following few paragraphs may help you in your efforts to recruit group members and even help to keep a a group to keep going:

                Talk feedback. An important, and appreciated, function of your group can be providing feedback to one another. There are effective ways of doing so. I will try to touch on a couple of those ways here.

                Other purposes for your group can include: inspiring you to write, improving the effectiveness of your words, and help you to feel satisfaction in your development. On this blog are an increasing number of posts calculated to improve your chances of pleasing a reader. These posts can help you to continue writing well with or without a group. You are welcome to explore them all.

Back to group feedback:

                Selections of members' writing may be read in group, yours too. This can be an important step toward providing useful feedback to a writer. Useful feedback begins with careful reading of her work. Often the entire group will participate in providing feedback on a given selection. I like to hear the selection read aloud to the whole group a couple of times. Group members will volunteer their comments and all are encouraged to do so. Group members will often quickly learn to make their feedback more honest and more helpful with little need for encouragement. Still, it is OK to encourage them.

                Writers may find that more reading may move them to better writing. 

A writer will appreciate a careful reading of her work. Should the writer be male he is likely to appreciate a careful reading of his work.

Reading:

              As a reader don't be nervous in telling how a given selection affected you. Your job can be well done just by honestly saying something about what happened to you as you read her selection. With this you will be making a great beginning and also doing that which will continue to be helpful over time.

                Some preparation may be called for. At times a piece may be read to you a couple of times in group. At other times you may take a written copy home to read carefully more than once. Everyone ought to be prepared to give feedback. Everyone will begin to learn a bit about providing feedback useful to the writer. The practice of honesty is a good practice to follow. Honesty can be kind and even loving as well as cutting and brutal. When you are not sure what kind of honesty is best at the time, it is usually best to choose kind and considerate.  

                Your good reading habits may get even better as you read the works of your fellow writers. You may come to pay better attention to your own feelings during your reading and even remember their occasion. Better reading often results in improved writing.

More about feedback:

                Upon hearing or reading a writers work, be ready to tell her how her words led you to react or feel. Tell her what happened to you as you read her words. You can also tell her what you understood or failed to understand from her writing. If the piece bored you, tell her so. Be honest. If you had a cold and had not slept well before your reading, let her know that it may have affected your reaction to her work.

                Do your best to complete your assigned reading. You may even suggest that it might be best for you to complete a reading during group time or to listen to a reading during group time. It's your group too. It is still unfair not to read. It is best to aim to read near your best. Read the work a second time and note the difference. Be a good reader to help others to write better and to give yourself a chance to write better. Be a better than average reader even when it feels somewhat burdensome to do so. You can tell the writer that it was burdensome. You can also tell him what you thought he was getting at and what seemed to be his main points. Your honesty can be very helpful.

                You can often help a fellow writer by telling him, or her, when and at what point, in your reading you felt perplexed, annoyed, or disappointed, enlightened, pleased and satisfied. Say what made you laugh or smile. Say when you got it and felt pleased. Say when the work felt rewarding.

                You now know some of the responsibility of a reader at feedback time.

                At that same time the writer's job is to hear the feedback, to be quiet and listen. Then to consider how to use the information to help her, or him, to write to better effect or to continue to practice his or her wonderful ability.

                Much of your ability to write well may develop with practice and experience at some distance from both class and group. Still classes have helped many, and group is helping may more, to develop their talent and ability.

                Thank you for reading.

                Keep writing.

                                                                                                 rcs

              

A Writing Group

Write With RCS: Writing Group Feedback from your group.

 

 

            Giving and receiving feedback may be the top purpose of a writing group. Here I will emphasize the job of receiving feedback. It need not be a job; we could call it the process of receiving feedback, but "job'" is shorter. Your job as a receiver is listening. Not volunteering comments or asking questions. You are the receiver of greater benefits than you may fully grasp just now.

 

            In your group you practice listening. This is not a law but rather a suggestion and what I know of how to benefit from such groups. Listen with great attention to how your words affect others. You do what to have your words to have an effect, right? You may have bee trying for a specific effect. You want to know how this group of fellow writers are responding to that which you have written. You want to know what each felt or thought as they read your work. This process is not deadly; it will help you to grow and develop as a writer.

 

            You are learning to be quiet and listen. So, be quiet. Do not tell those who read your work anything until much later. let them be uncertain of what of what you wanted your work to convey or at whom it was aimed. Let them suffer. Maybe they will notice more and be able to give you a more full and honest response. It is your task to become a better listener, and not to be a teacher or a question asker. Try changing the word "task" in the previous sentence to "pleasure." You want to know how your words in a specific piece of your writing led them to feel or think.

 

            Neither giving nor receiving feedback is easy. In both it is possible to come to feel, for a time, that you are always right or always wrong. An important activity of the imparter of reaction is is to become as honest as possible. A bit of a job. The task of you the listener/writer, is to attentive and quiet. Telling nothing and saying nothing may not come easily to you, the receiver of this treasure of feedback. But you can remember that you best teacher could probably not have given you the feedback treasure you receive from the members of your writing group. That treasure helps you to be a better and better writer. This group response of fellow writers can better inform you of how the world will receive your writing than can many an excellent teacher.

 

            Some readers of your writing may be good at tricking you into telling them more about the intentions you have for the piece in question than you intended. But you, as its writer, want only to know what your writing did to them, with no ''helpful'' hints. When you tell the readers in your group what you wanted your writing to do to them, you hinder their fresh and honest response.

 

            You, as the writer, want to know how the reader perceives and experiences your words. You want to know what it was what it was like to be him reading your words. Never stop a reader from from giving you her reactions. You very much need her feedback and she is will to give it. Let her.

 

            You can look to members of your writing group to find out what your words caused to happen in their consciousness. The better you get at the uncovering of feelings in your group and how your words effected consciousness, the better you will be at deciding for yourself when your words are most likely to be doing what you want them to. or not.

 

            It may be helpful to remember that members of your group are neither gods nor teachers, telling you how other words will work better if either this or that were changed in thus and such a way. What they can tell you very well is how they experienced a specific work of yours; how they experienced your words there, how they reacted to them.

 

            Your readers job is to provide you with a kind of movie of his mind as he read your work, and it is not your job to tell him how to do so. And it is certainly no one's job to quarrel with another's experience.

You do not need writing group to write well, but one can truly help. When you would be a writer write.

 

            More to come.

                                                                                    RCS