Lindsey Godfrey Eccles
Protect Your Weeds, Sharpen Your Edges
Workshops can be helpful–even lifesavers–for the camaraderie and feedback they provide, but they can also be dangerous. So often I’ll be sitting around a table listening to writers talk about each others’ stories, and I’ll hear something like the following: “X really stuck out to me.” Or, “X seemed so bizarre; I really wasn’t expecting X!.” Or, “I just couldn’t understand X, no matter how many times I read it.” And then, almost inevitably, “Have you thought about toning X down?” Or, “Do you really need so much X?” Or, worst of all, “Would you consider cutting X out altogether?”
My advice to you is, think hard before you mess with X. There’s a good chance that X is what makes your story worth reading in the first place. If X isn’t working for your readers, maybe the answer isn’t to cut X but to lean into X harder! Maybe you haven’t done the best job with X you can on the first try, but for goodness’ sake, don’t give up on X. Do a few timed freewrites on X, or write a list to yourself of all the hardest questions you can think of regarding X (these may or may not be the questions your fellow workshoppers are asking you), and do your best to puzzle out the answers for yourself.
As writers, we have to put as much of ourselves as we can into every story–that’s what makes our stories original and unique–but often it’s those unusual, strange, truly personal elements that can be hard for a reader new to our work to assimilate or understand. But the answer isn’t to become more like all the other writers; it’s to become more profoundly, strangely, and beautifully ourselves!
Don’t weed your garden, and don’t file off your sharp edges. Some readers won’t like them, but other readers will. And what’s the point of writing stories that are just like everyone else’s?
Lindsey Godfrey Eccles lives on an island in Puget Sound, spending as much time as she can in the woods and the water and occasionally practicing law. Her fiction has appeared in One Story and Uncanny, among other places. You can find her at lindseygodfreyeccles.com or @LGEccles.
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Writing Tips.
