rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

back in the groove and rest for the weary, of which there is none

WEDNESDAY

rockyroad , nothing but drama last couple of days, this been a rough woodshed, perhaps

the roughest i recall,  but then i suspect the current crises is always the worst ever

until you get over the hump, then it wasnt quite so bad, this parenting notion seems to

be nothing but a litany of regret and inadequacy, w/fleeting moments of satisfaction

in struggle

rdoc

MONDAY

ive hit a rough patch, slogging thru the narrative mud, not feeling very sociable right now

SUNDAY

after all these years of sweating this novel, worrying about whether it will ever work, wondering if i had a good, okay, a great

novel, in me  -   to finally be happy w/it, to enjoy working on it, it is a blessing that i dont take lightly

still might not be the great novel i would it be, still a struggle but this time im not leaving anything but good manuscript behind me,
before i would patch a narrative  hole if thats what it took to keep going, this time its good manuscript that satisfies me

may not move anybody else but it moves me, makes all the difference in the world

rdoc

SATURDAY

okay, did a decent days work yesterday, today i got to throw down
get some real momentum, in the zone momentum

found this interesting article on the value of rewrites, wrote earlier that mfa programs
dont teach how to write but how to rewrite, how to edit, saw that jeffersons 1st draft

of declaration of independence refers to americans as subjects, which he erased and
replaced with 'citizens' major change in thinking there, apparently he was so determined

to erase subjects that he literally tried to while other words he just crossed out, document folk
reently revealed the erased word under it, this is interesting to my literary soul on many levels

including the value of keeping drafts, ive got to get in touch with the computing folk at the job
there is no way for me to archive my emails on the job software and that wont do, writers dont

do letters any more, i got to archive my emails, hook or crook ive got to figure something out

i keep everything, every scrap of paper, you never know what will interest the little graduate student
circa 2050 or 3050 for that matter, i just throw them in one of those big plastic storage tubs and

stash them in the attic, okayim gone, i suspect this is not of interest to anybody but other writers

except for changing that word, subjects to citizens, that affected us all, god i love being a writer

the director of spiderman was asked was there anything he would have done differently, he replied

S.R.: What would I have done differently? I would have done everything differently, every single shot. I think in every picture that I’ve ever made. Everything that I’ve done torments me. I really would like another chance except I’d be too embarrassed to ever really try to do them again and no one would want to see the same movie just done differently.

i cant read earlier novels, if i cant make changes i dont want to read it, ive often fantasized about
rewriting them but i just couldnt stand the pain of rereading them, i couldnt take it

i look back on previous novels and its like damn i wish i could rewrite that thing, torment is the operable phrase here

in many ways this novel im writing now is just a better version of
my 1st novel, de mojo blues - this time i hope i got it right

look at the time, i got to go, one days work does not momentum make

in the name of the conqueror

rdoc

FRIDAY 12 noon: clocking pages, its all good

FRIDAY 8 am

okay, enough fun and games, time to get back to work
if i was one of my students i would be looking at them askance now

okay, your mother died, i understand, she been dead what, a week now,
wouldnt she want you to get back to work, are you a writer or aint you

write about her if it bother you, thats what writers do

thats what i did

otherwise get back to work

i wouldnt actually say it but thats what id be thinking

i picked the manuscript up yesterday and looked at it, thats a beginning
im seriously behind now, i got to start kicking literary ass right now

its just a matter of focus, sit at the sacred desk and dont get up for 3 hours
yesterday bob gates call himself nudging me, he thought he was being subtle - not

he say you will get a substantial raise when that novel is done, that
was a very compelling argument, but no more than my own desperation

  okay let me give you something so its not just me me me, you know i hate that
that graphic novel i got coming out w/the indian press got me looking at real graphics

ran across this one call bayou by jeremy love, its like a dark delta black alice in wonderland
or something of that sort, you can actually read it online but about halfway thru i put it down

and ordered it, reading it by page will be eaiser than online panels, but check it out, tell me

what you think   - wow, just went to get link for you and its no longer up, absolute bummer,
it was deep reading  -  heres a promo blurb:

The year is 1933. Lee Wagstaff is a young African-American girl living in the racially tense town of Charon, Mississippi. After witnessing the abduction of her white playmate by a mysterious swamp creature, Lee finds her father accused of the kidnapping. To rescue both her friend and her father, Lee embarks on a quest into a frightening fantasy-filled world alongside Bayou, a green swamp monster with plenty of stature and plenty of heart.

if they put it back up i will let you know

it is now 8:30 am, there is no reason why i cannot give you a good report in 3 hours

none whatsoever

all my love

rdoc

.

TUESDAY

hello world

want to thank all the folk who have gotten in touch about my mother

been trying to get back in the groove, spent last couple of days just drifting
trip is that i knew family or health concerns were likely to throw me off my game

happens every time, call myself scheduling the hammer because it always falls

mama not doing well  made it all the more likely
hopefully ive had all the hammer this summer can carry

now im seriously behind, and not feeling it
got to get back in the groove, get back to work

now im searching for that kick that will knock me back into the groove, that light in the darkness, something
to get me home, found this little gem on on a blog called sojourner in the 21st century, it just might do

-----------------------

"Sometimes, through no conscious effort, I find myself in paradise. I am suffused with an awareness of the miracle of life, the richness and wonder of human endeavor... I feel lucky and strong and hopeful. Smile and song enliven my lips. My posture is perfect. I feel blessed.

Earth Day 2009 was almost such an experience. The weather was gorgeous in New Orleans. I put on a favorite dress, grabbed some reading material and bicycled up to catch the streetcar, on my way to the French Quarter to work for/with the Crazy Lady I love. En route, I read the most recent issue of Oxford American and discovered Arthur Rickydoc Flowers' powerful article, "Race Man". Such great writing! In a magical fantasy world, my mind would have melded with my closest friends' in the moment, to allow them the enjoyable privilege of consuming this work. And I would have been embracing the friend who gave me the magazine. And I would have been pregnant with Flowers' child."

----------------------------

now, thats what i call some damn good writing

you feeling me?

id like to get in touch with her, she sound like somebody i need to know

but id have to approach her delicately, wouldnt want her to think i got agendas

even w/o the honorable mention i was enjoying the read, i like her corn she like mine

the honorable mention put the icing on the cake, she a regulator, one of the folk on the planet

operate on the same wavelength, its not that many of you, i treasure each one i find,

its the regulators keep me going, keep me regulated

also they of a sensibility that regulate the world on a higher plane or something like that

my kind of people - rickydocs regulators

got that from starship troopers, where all the fighting units had such names
im a big believer in dubois talented tenth translated to my purposes, i figure

dont but 1 out of any 10 folk respond to your work on that harmonious plane,
the other 9 range from it dont move me to i hate your work and you too

but 1 out of 10 times all the folk on the planet is still a pretty good number, to ask for more is pure greed

just sent off another piece for oxford american that i enjoyed doing

they asked me to speculate on the future of the south, 2050

hoodoo prophecy, thats my turf, i came strong on them, sent if off this morning
w/hope that getting something off my plate will get me back in the writing groove

but im not feeling it, not at all, the power aint w/me,
guess i got to go with the flow for another day

maybe this evening i will get back to work, i sincerely hope so,
one never knows when the power switch will come back on

surely no more than a day or so, in the meantime rest for the weary,

of which there is none

all my love

rdoc

a praisesong for eloise and the sorrowsong of a reluctant patriarch

hello all

as some of you may know my mother died last week, i been in the delta and off the grid

now that she is safely in the ground beside my father i can raise my head up and take a deep breath, get a little rest

i been going fulltilt all burners

wasnt going to post about my mother but some of my memphis folk have expressed condolences online

i figure other folk wondering whats going on so ima do a online

eulogy for her, an edited version of obit and remarks at funeral

----------------

i would 1^st like to thank all of you for coming, i would like to thank all of you for helping me and my sisters thru this moment, you think you ready for it, cause weve seen it coming for awhile now, but i guess you never really ready

it’s a bittersweet moment, because its all in the spiral of life and its part of being alive and living life well and my mother lived life fully, she lived it hard she lived it to count

so i cant begrudge god this one, its part of the deal we make, and mama had a good life about 7, 8 years beyond the doctors writing her off, i suspect she was tired, i suspect it was time, she went easy, she went with grace, like she lived her life she died

and i have been blessed in knowing her as i did, blessed with her care and her guidance, made me who i am and i like who i am,

oh i cant complain, you dont get to choose your parents and i got the best deal ever, arthur flowers sr, and eloise gwendolyn ross flowers

i remember my first famly death, my grandmother pearl flowers, and i remember me and my cousin ronnie being there in westbury and i remember kinda resenting that our parents, her children, had such a good time, they got drunk and silly, they talked trash memories all evening long and i realized that this whole funeral process is a ritual of continuance, it’s a healing, a fortitudinal process for the living, for keeping on

for embedding in our hearts this new ancestor that has been born, helping us shape this new family force,

john wideman talk about how his grandmothers death, how sitting around he hearing all these pieces of her from different family members, all these voices and sides of her and that out of that multitude of family voices come a true picture, one beyond what any one person could know, it was geneva from n.c. told me your mother liked to ride motorcycles and im like motorcycles, are we talking about the same woman

let us add to family voices, those of true friends, all praise.

i would like, on the familys part, to thank folk who have come thru for the family in this their darkest need, i want to thank bonnie for being, don pablo for trekking, walter and cheryl for representing the foster st flowers, i would like to thank geneva and janie and smitty of the north carolina foust/reeves clans, they told me last night that mama was the matriarch of their clan – who knew  - i knew she was the matriarch of ours. 

the queen mother passes.  long live the queen

and id like to thank the tillmans the batts and the taylors, the savilles and the netters for stepping up when we were in great need, for helping us anoint this new ancestor in the flowers line with grace,

and i want to thank cequita, she say whatever you need, and rachel and chris and judy, and i want to thank in particular reverend netters, i have to refrain from calling him jimmy netters cause he got that dignity now but when i think of him i think of him as jimmy like folk around here call me ricky and it was jimmy netters ricky flowers reached out to in my time of need and he came thru for me, for us – as have all of you here, folk been showing us nothing but love

i have been humbled in your love, your caring, this testimony to just how deep my memphis roots go - im my mothers name, i want to to thank everybody here, for showing her the love - please, allow me to sing your praise

and while im at it id like to take this moment to thank bruce johnson and andy bernstein, a couple of times the family in need they bust through the saloon doors both guns blazing, lawbooks in one hand bigheart in the other, gon praise your name,

and mj edwards funeral home, evelyn and mr edwards, they were . . . flexible, they been burying flowers now for about 4 generations, seem like whenever the hammer fall we land in orange mound, a good part of which was once the flowers family farm, kinda deep how deep roots go

and marcelene nanalice, she been the rock, all praises how deep roots go

let me put a few excerpts from obit here, edit out the begats (and anything an identity thief could use)

---------------  

eloise ross flowers was born eloise gwendolyn ross 1927 to james ross and cordella foust ross in high point nc.

growing up she was very close to her grandmother, lula foust reeve and often spoke of her inspiration.  in addition to being fond of riding motorcycles as a young woman, eloise was a classic overachiever, attending a private school in oxford, nc, and graduating fisk university, nashville, at 19.  she then attended meharry medical college, where she met arthur r. flowers of memphis.  they soon married and began a family before moving back to memphis upon his graduation.

eloise was active in beulah baptist church, where she taught many red circle girls that kept up with her throughout her life.  in her later years a housewife, in the early days of their lives in memphis she worked as a nurse and taught as a substitute teacher in the memphis city schools.

she had a lifelong interest in bridge and established many rewarding relationships in memphis and national bridge circles.  she had a lifelong love of the word that she fed with a house of many books and championship level scrabble play.  eloise was very active in the civil rights struggles of memphis.  (my mama was a race woman.  where i come from racial custodianship a family tradition.)  she passed on both her love of words and her commitment to the community to her children and her grandchildren.

eloise and arthur had a long and loving life together that was very much a union of equals.  dr flowers died in 1989, and after vigorous years on parkway, in north carolina and at st peters on auborndale, she took sick and was looked after, fulltime, by her daughter, elise flowers.  they had many good years together long after medical science said she was done.

her final moments were peaceful ones.

she had a full and rewarding life that enriched every life she touched.  thank you, eloise gwendolyn ross flowers.  well done.

-----------------   

i will further say that she was a very special woman but you knew that

wouldn’t be here you didn’t know that.  so many of you have said today how much of a lady she was, always conscious of her dignity but with that irreverent streak you never know what to expect, she was a natural woman

let me tell you one story, mama was very proud of me for becoming a successful writer and a professor up at syracuse after so many years of being a starving artist, one day about a couple of years ago she said i wish your father was still here to see you as professor flowers, when you told us you were going to newyork to be a writer he said that boy gon starve  -  they didn’t tell me that though, they blessed me and sent me on my way, and i remember when my 1^st book came out and miriam de costa, all praises, set up that book reading at lemoyne and me and my mama and daddy went and i was on stage and i gave my parents props and daddy wasnt at the table, he had slipped out to go play bridge across the street, but mama was sitting there so proud of me i had her stand up and i told everybody this is where i got my love of the word, that this book belong to my mama as much as it does me and so all these folk got up and went to her to get their copy of the book signed and i will always remember her standing there beaming, with her pen in her hand signing books, she wouldnt sit back down in case somebody lost track of her, she signed more books than i did

and deservedly so.  daddy had the high profile but those of us know them knew mama was every bit his equal and thats why they had such a good and rich and lasting relationship, o it had its ups and downs, ima testify to that, but they lived a good life, full of the passions that make life worthwhile, let us praise the good life

i would that we all had it so, that when the bell is rung we will be able to go satisfied that we have done the best we could with this complicated blessing called life, that we have lived this life to its fullest, that we have given our best and received the best in return – then pass it on, like my mama did

i dont really feel sad about this, it was time for mama to go and she always had good timing, mama exemplified the good life - she had a good life, she had a good death, and she has had in you a good transition,

o im sure there will be times when the sadness will well up in me, but ima have just as many good memories well up in me, including this one, for you have made what could have been a very hard moment a special one and id like to thank you for being here with us this friday afternoon, helping us raise up this new ancestor in the line of flowers, from the bottom of my curmudgeonly heart, i have been touched

and you know i cant mention my mother without giving my sister her props,

when mama had that last stroke and the medical folk were saying lets put her in a care facility, elise want having it, she stepped up in a manner nobody imagined she had in her,

she rebuilt her home for fulltime care and waged a daily battle keeping mama alive, and gave her 7 years beyond what the doctors said was the case, even when mama gave up elise didn’t and nobody else could do it, when she went into the hospital it always became a crises because nobody else could keep mama alive

i remember the time elise went on a highschool reunion cruise, she put mama in a care facility with a good rep and i came down to supervise the care and just be there so elise would feel comfortable going and sure enough it became a crises, mama is rushed to the hospital but they dont know what to do with her, cant find her a room, hours later she still in the halls and they ignoring my little passive aggressive efforts but elise was due in that day and so i left the hospital to pick her up at the airport and explained what was happening and elise start raging, and the rage was washing all over me but i took it because i knew this was good and maybe 20 minutes after we got to the hospital and that rage start washing over them mama was in a room and the doctors and nurses were all over it, cause when it came to mama elise didn’t play

i talk a good game but when it came down to life and death it was elise put her shoulder to the wheel

for 7 years now, elise been on the front line of the family battles, now she get to rest some while i try to pick up some of the family weight, cause even out of it mama been the rock this family been standing on thru some very hard years

and she the reason we gon pull this thru, we gon do this, cause we of the line of eloise gwendolyn ross flowers, we gon do right by that, we gon do right by her, we gon do right by you

and any contribution the flowers generations make to a better world that’s my mamas force coming thru, this a praisesong for eloise, everything i do an extension of you, with every song i sing, with every word of power and act of grace, im gon praise your name

that’s all, it is done, gods blessings on us all

i am a traveler who knows the road

 FRIDAY

the legendary saramago has gone where ever it is the great writers go, a reality of his own choosing no doubt

in honor of the last days of ricardo reis, i will clock more pages today

FRIDAY

was checking out daceys old hard love blog, he dropping some serious story knowledge over there
makes me envious, i would like to do more craft/critical analysis here, but that require real thinking

who got time for real thinking, as it is i just sit here and run whatever is on my mind, it dont require real
thinking, a real commitment, other than the editing, which require thinking but what can you say

doing a weeks worth of posts at a time gives me time to rewrite, edit, cleanup, assess etc before i move on
and cut out the excess, i tend to blunder about daily but by end of week i got a feel for whats real and whats

slush, sometimes i bemoan the exposure, bemoan the low readership, lack of respect in the world but

i know im generating words of power, i know it, even if the world dont, i know my words/insights
are significant, so i accept the opportunity cost of that - im singing my song, dacey singing his

im glad somebody singing that song, if you get a chance, go check it out, boy dropping knowledge
wasnt there but a minute and felt like i picked up a couple of points will make me a better writer

it dont get no better than that

remember undisputed truth, this was one of my favorite groups of the 70s, loved the voices
on the leads, she was chaka chans sister, he sounded like a funked out jerry butler

smiling faces was their big hit but i liked almost everything they did, they brought the funk, one song say  - 

"dont stand there and point your finger at me / take a closer look and you will see / there is a method to the madness"

THURSDAY

more of the teaparty armed insurrection crowd at play, gathering armies apparently - i suspect folk say it cant happen here, but the fact that this kind of thing has gone mainstream is a concern to me, when i went to youtube to get this, there is a whole world of these folk out there,

these are some strange times, ive always thought not matter how wierd the world gets, ima do my thing as my little contribution to the triumph of sanity, but now i wonder if my ivorytower work is enuf,

it will have to be, when i was a young writer i was susceptible to the activists and the soldiers charging me with being a writer/artist/intellectual bystander but as a mature artist i believe that my work is just as important if not more so in terms of shaping generations to come, which is, as you know, i believe the only viable approach to changing a society for the best, but not so good for immediate impact,

its hard to sit by and watch your own society, your own age, falter, i got to keep the faith, not get discouraged, got to take care of my busines in the name of babajohn killens, the great griot master of brooklyn -  he showed me the way

speaking of taking care of business ive fallen further behind on my daily schedule
i been juggling those balls, im wore out, i need some rest, but rest will just put me

further behind and that is not restful, i might have to take a couple of days off
sitting here now trying to clock some pages and my mind just wont move into gear

its going to be one of those days, if i officially acknowledge it as a down day it will

be restful instead of frustrating

sometime when i express my weariness to folk who do physical labor they look at me like
how can you be weary, all you do is sit there - they just dont know, work of the mind

break you down just as quick, just a different kind of weary, breakdown weary

im out

WEDNESDAY

nev candidate, sharon angle recently advocated armed insurrection "if congress keeps going the way it is'

even more disconcerting is that folk like this are considered viable candidates in todays right

slogging right along on my draft, step by step, inch by inch

an extract from my novel: a metapassage i wrote yesterday, i was pleased w/it:

Now, where were we.

Okay, my stage been set, lets take it up a notch.  You still with me, right.  You know what I like to do, I like to have you thinking you got a grip, then throw some moves on you leave you gasping in the narrative dust, wondering whats going on, what the fuck is he doing now, thats what I like.  But I dont want to lose you, I dont want to perplex you, I want to surprise and delight you, come at you so you intuitively feel the groove and meet the revelation, thats what I like, I want to dazzle you and leave you gasping with narrative pleasure.  A little narrative passion.  Maybe a little pain.  Forgive me, this need to disturb you.  Force you to feel.  Its working thru that move you and I want you to come out on the other end strong.  Greater than you are.  Thats what I want.

Okay, you still with me, right. You trust me, right.  Lets do this.  Lets make it happen.
---------------

i know, strange little passage for a novel isnt it, a lot of what im doing in this text i feel like was what reality hunger by davidshields was speaking about but i didnt respect that book, using other folks words strikes me as cheating, as lazy writing, no matter how you frame it

but this novel of mine doing some metalicks that i can only hope works - jeff parker recently sent me a copy of his new book of shorts, the taste of penny, i told him i was enjoying the read, i dont generally read real lit during my woodshed but thats my boy, my brother in literary struggle, i call myself gon glance at it, see what he doing, and started reading it, it was reading good and i told him so and he was defensive about it, said he tried some things, didnt know if they all worked or not, and i replied man aint that what writing is about, trying some things  -  some of them work some of them dont, but the things that work for some people dont work for others and vice versa, all you can really go on is what work for you

 in my own defense i have to say i dont have a lot of passages like that one above, when i came up with it yesterday it surprised me and i had to decide if i was going to keep it, i decided to keep it, it worked for me -

it came up just as i was moving the novel into another gear, i thought it worked, strange and quirky but it worked for me

thats what count, and thats why i like this stage of the novel, my basic storyline is down, i can play narrative games now - next draft i will assess whether it still works for me, but for right now, ima gambling man

on mfa workshops and the writing of novels

MONDAY

im amazed at myself

i got a level of distraction on me that would have been fatal to woodshed as a young man

but ima desperate man, i hear the clock ticking, and folk depending on me,  im clocking pages,

in spite of hellhounds howling at the door

knocked me off my game for about a week
but i seem to be rolling again

it will take more than this to knock a man as desperate as i am off my game
i got about 4 critical balls in the air and i cant afford to drop not one of them

so far i been dancing, but i know this is unsustainable, ima work till my
will (or my mother) give out, then im going down, if everything

fall into place im still in the game, if not im going down
and until that moment come, ima clock pages

john henry aint got nothing on me

i will die w/this keyboard in my hand, lord lord
i will die w/this keyboard in my hand

all my love

rdoc

SATURDAY

 "I’m thinking about what I can do today, so that when I’m gone, 200 years from now, they will say, ‘We had somebody with foresight.’"

That wasnt me.  Coulda been.  That was King Leruo of the Bafokeng, explaining why he is investing his nations mineral wealth into the education of his people.

“The continent is struggling. There’s got to be somewhere ...where t...hings are different. And that’s what inspires me. Are we going to be a continent of beggars forever,"

Real Leadership, aint nothing like it.  A luta continua.

SATURDAY

i keep wanting to put all this social media thing down but dont seem to be able to
it seems to have become part of my literary process

this was an interesting article about how our minds are shaped by new media
i do not agree w/those who claim new media dumbs us down, distracts us, etc

i believe it can if you let it, the old instead of you got the demon the demon got you

what it can be i believe is training for functioning in the connected 21st century, folk
learning a new way of processing information and the name of the game is making

it work for us, being more effective thru the use of it,
getting ahead of the game, not falling behind

just as the computer has supplanted the typewriter and required a new relationship w/manuscript production
so too has this blog and facebook revised my idea of interacting with the world as a literary man trying to position myself

i refuse to let it be a distraction, a waste of time that could have been used productively, got to be cost effective, i want to be graceful & strategic in my use of new media, i want to keep up

with the times, i want to keep growing  -  i can feel my mind/sensibility evolving into something new and i like that,

im out, im a week behind on my daily schedule, god help me, and got to go back south
next week or so, soon as i get my finances together, get my car back on the road - mother

still not doing well, still wavering on me, feeling a little desperate these days, lost my focus for a moment
but im working again, but i got to do catch up now, instead of 10 a day got to go for 15

if that dont work add a week to endgame

i refuse to not be thru w/this novel this summer, i refuse

went by the library yesterday, a colleague saw me and tried to hold a conversation and i was
like sorry, running late, and steady beaming im not here vibes, this is not me, this is a mirage

ta ta, got to go

rdoc

FRIDAY

so buffalo soldier mention that i should read john killens et al in the june 63 issue of negro digest
im thinking yeah i should do that but where am i going to find that issue of negro digest, so, what the hell

i google it and there it is, every issue of negro digest nov 61 to dec 69, i am not comfortable w/that google book thing but there are some benefits

it is an amazing archive of african american intellectual history, when i get a moment ima read them all

what buffalo soldier was referring to is a panel on 'negro writing" at howard, john, jimmyb, ossie and owen

i pulled out a great quote by baldwin: "One thing about being an artist is that you are produced by a people because they need you."

everytime i read it it makes my eyes water, i might have to put that on my wall of inspiration

i do have a question though, now that google has scanned negro digest into their thing does that mean if an independent black archival site like chickenbones wanted to archive negro digest would they have to pay google for the rights, does googe now own this part of our patrimony that would be a crime

all my love

rdoc

ps: clocking pages dear regulators, life still a struggle, but as long as im clocking pages i can handle it

all my love

WEDNESDAY

i had a very vivid dream last night where the gov gave me a check for 46 million dollars for an invention of
some sort, im going to take that as a sign to get back to work, god send you a sign you should pay attention

interesting piece from danielle evans blog on what you can and cannot get from an mfa program

one of the many points she made is that mfa programs dont teach you how to write but how to edit

that was an astute observation

one of the questions she raised is how to help folk write novels in that workshop format that doesnt lend itself to novel work, this is a question ive struggled with since ive been teaching creative writing mfa

so i added my 2 cents to the dialogue:

enjoyed your post, i see some of my folk have engaged the dialogue, figured i would add my 2 cents, on the question of novel workshops

you raised some very good issues that i will keep in mind for future workshops – always trying to elevate my workshop game

you asked about novel workshops, i have in fact tried to make novel friendly workshops my forte,

i do believe in ramming that 1st draft out, and i tell folk just let it be trash, thats inevitable, but get it out of your head and on paper - then we got something to work with, trash though it be

i believe in working off an outline, i believe working off an outline will save you years of wandering in the
narrative wilderness, folk thnk outlines will lock them down, i tell them outlines are written in water

difficult to critique a novel in a workshop, i let folk bring chapters in but i tell them not to pay but so much attention to the critiques because you dont know what its going to do, your workshop members cant possibly know

i dont believe that critiques, from me or workshops members, are but so viable, like alex said you have to do a lot of extrapolation, you can take advantage of the sentence and narrative feedback but structurally and conceptually you have to go for yourself

ive found a novel is not generally good for feedback until its a mature manuscript, i let folk bring in relatively large segments

but what ive found with novel workshops, which i do regularly is that its mostly a one on one thing, everybody in the workshop may not have read the whole manuscript but i have to have read it

not only so i understand the context of the chapters brought in but so that i can guide the discussion better
not let it wander too far off track for what the student trying to do

but most effective is the one on one, and even that done with a very light hand,

its mostly me going rah rah, you can do it

i have them give me segments as they do it but mostly to give them production goals, i dont really feedback them until theyve got a manuscript, preferably a mature manuscript, because with a novel its just too easy to lead folk astray, specially when they are in early stages and vulnerable to suggestion

the biggest thing is reading the whole manuscript, which when its early stage and bad, can be a daunting chore, but i like working with novels, i like helping students make novels happen

thats the contract, you do the draft, i will do the read

i will give you the best read i got to give

i am a traveler who knows the road