CRAIG LANCASTER | NOVELIST. PLAYWRIGHT. EDITOR.
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • Jane, Divided
    • Northward Dreams
    • And It Will Be a Beautiful Life
    • 600 Hours of Edward
    • The Summer Son
    • The Art of Departure
    • Edward Adrift
    • The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter
    • This Is What I Want
    • Edward Unspooled
    • Julep Street
  • Contact
  • Appearances
  • Plays
  • Media
  • What's up with Craig?
  • For book clubs
  • Support bookstores
  • The Short Story Project
  • Newsletter Archive
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • Jane, Divided
    • Northward Dreams
    • And It Will Be a Beautiful Life
    • 600 Hours of Edward
    • The Summer Son
    • The Art of Departure
    • Edward Adrift
    • The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter
    • This Is What I Want
    • Edward Unspooled
    • Julep Street
  • Contact
  • Appearances
  • Plays
  • Media
  • What's up with Craig?
  • For book clubs
  • Support bookstores
  • The Short Story Project
  • Newsletter Archive
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

WHAT'S UP WITH CRAIG?

a blog that drifts into high art, low humor, and random observations of the writing life

8/26/2023 0 Comments

Saturday Afternoon Craft Talk...

... if you'll indulge me:

The solitude inherent in composition is something I find absolutely indispensable to the experience of trying to write a novel. It might not be my favorite part—it's awfully hard to top the feeling of completing a first draft or holding the published artifact in your hands for the first time—but I cherish it nonetheless. If it were suddenly not a part of the effort, if writing became a spectator sport or, worse, if I were relegated to a minor participant in the whole endeavor ("AI, take a wheel"), I would just quit. Be done. The joy would be gone.
Picture
This is not to say that I believe the writing of a novel to be an iconoclastic endeavor. Not at all. By choice and habit and history, I'm alone on the first draft. The second. Maybe the third. But even then, even with those two words "the" and "end" on the last page, I'm far from being finished.

And this is where I start getting by with a little help from my friends.

Some writers swear by the workshop. If you've not experienced it firsthand, you've probably seen it in the movies. A pile of red meat in the form of pages is thrown to a group of other writers, who tear into it with equal measures of hostility and glee.

Who am I to argue? I didn't come from the academy.
I swear by the beta reader. This is someone tactically chosen to read a manuscript at a fraught point—for me, that's when I've done as much as I can do with it alone and still know in my heart I haven't done nearly enough—and provide actionable feedback on what works and, especially, what doesn't.

I choose different beta readers for different reasons, and though there have been repeat invitees over the years, the roster tends to change with the project. Three to five people, generally. Enough to get an accurate sample, to weed out the outlying sentiments, and a manageable enough number so I don't lose sight of what compelled the work in the first place. I never want to get separated from my own vision. I just want to be challenged so the work, in the end, is better.

So I choose on the basis of life experience, temperament, wisdom, intelligence, and specialized knowledge about the subject matter of my work. I'm lucky to have many, many friends who fall broadly into those categories. I choose on the basis of someone's ability to separate herself from her own inclination for how to resolve something (that's my job) and instead simply articulate why she sees a problem. 

I've been very, very lucky in my choices for these roles. They've made my work immeasurably better. I simply couldn't do it without them.

I was thinking of this today when I finally got off my duff and picked up the manuscript I'm calling She Heightened Everything, after the printout has sat for months on my office table. (You can see a snippet of it above.) Several weeks ago, one of the beta readers I asked to participate sent me her feedback, and man, was it extensive. Like I said, I've been very, very lucky.

Almost all of it was useful to me, but even that couldn't overcome my hesitation to re-engage with the manuscript. I've been preoccupied with a new job, other creative endeavors, and uncertainty about when the book in front of it is going to at last be published. (I think we'll have an answer soon.) She Heightened Everything has felt so far away from my immediate range of concerns that I've simply been unwilling to dredge it off the hard drive and get moving.

But today, I felt differently about it. So I set my shoulder into it and started working through my beta reader's laundry list of concerns. I'm not through everything, and there are some things on which we simply disagree (this is inevitable and natural and fine), but I'm back in it.

She's making my work better. I don't know when you'll see it, or if you'll see it, but it's better today than it was yesterday, and that's everything.

Thanks, Courtney. I owe you, big time.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    About Craig

    Craig Lancaster is an author, an editor, a publication designer, a layabout, a largely frustrated Dallas Mavericks fan, an eater of breakfast, a dreamer of dreams, a husband, a brother, a son, an uncle. And most of all, a man who values a T-shirt.

    Archives

    March 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    October 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021

    By category

    All 600 Hours Of Edward And It Will Be A Beautiful Life Art Awards Books Bookstores Community Connection Craft Craig Reads The Classics Dreaming Northward Education Edward Adrift Family Geography History Jane Divided Libraries Memory Montana NaNoWriMo Northward Dreams People Plays Poetry Public Policy Q&A Social Media Sports Stage Texas The Fallow Season Of Hugo Hunter The Garish Sun The Summer Son This Is What I Want Time Travel Work Writers Writing

    Archives

    March 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    October 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021

    RSS Feed