Writing lessons — why do you want a pro to read your work?

Words: 1,200

Music: Bach violin concertos

I was thinking about this recently because of screenwriter Josh Olson’s blog in The Village Voice.  Among Olson’s many pearls of wisdom there is this:

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.

(By the way, here’s a simple way to find out if you’re a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you’re not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

So here’s what I want to know: why do you as an aspiring novelist or short story writer or screenwriter want a pro to read your work? When I was starting out, I went to a con where Shawna McCarthy, then editor of Asimov’s, was a guest of honor, and I had a manila envelope of my deathless prose in my arms. Some of it was written when I was twelve, and most of it was handwritten. My plan was to go up to her, ask her if she would read my stories, and she would take them and give me kind thoughtful encouraging praise.

Thank God I didn’t go through with it. (I did talk to her though, about other stuff. I’m pretty sure she knew what was in that envelope. I wonder if she was worried.)  But what the hell did I want her to read this for? I mean, when my stories were ready, she bought two of them (and no, none of them were the stories in that envelope).

Why do we want pros to read our work? Validation? Look kid, validation is a check made out to you. A foot in the door? Like how? Like the author is going to call his agent and editor and say, hey, check out this stuff, it’s great? You know who stuff like that happens to? Scott Lynch and Diana Gabaldon, and they would have made it without jumping the queue.

The worst reason to ask a pro to look at your work is this: the expectation that someone who has achieved success as a writer has the time to give you, a stranger, a lengthy critique of your work just for the asking. That’s not just ludicrous, it’s rude. And there’s also this particular problem, as Olson points out:

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn’t actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. …Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don’t regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

Substitute novelist and it’s the same thing. There are an appalling number of people who think that you don’t have to learn craft to be a good writer.

So there are at least two people who are reading this and going, uh oh. Because they are people who I have specifically said, send me your work. But here’s the difference. I’ve taken an interest for a variety of reasons, all that have to do with my time, my scheduling, and my feeling that I have something useful to say to these people. If you read Olson’s blog, you see he also has a stack of scripts from people in the same category. And it’s not just a one-way street. I also exchange novels and short stories with other experienced writers and give and get feedback.

So if you can’t get any love from curmudgeonly writers, editors, and agents, all of whom have nothing better to do than read your work so how dare they turn you down, how do you get feedback? Join a writers group. Trade novels with other aspiring novelists. Read lots please, so that you recognize good writing and you aspire to it. Attend writers workshops. I taught at two this summer. Participants got some good feedback out of it from all the teachers. Some workshops you pay for and some are free, but the teachers generally don’t get paid. We do it as a way to pay it forward (so there, we’re not all bad).

But don’t just ask a writer to read your novel. You’ll get much farther faster if you treat your craft as a craft, hone it, aspire to writing as best you can, and don’t think you can take shortcuts.