A Book of Great Worth

By Dave Margoshes

Coteau Books April 2012, 250 pp. $18.95 CDN

Reviewed by: James Onusko

Dave Margoshes’s collection of short stories is a wonderful blend of family history, story-telling, and urban myth focusing on New York City. Woven throughout this collection is humour mixed with poignancy that gives the collection a general feeling of genuineness and warmth.

Margoshes has an impressive publishing record as he has written and published several books of prose, volumes of poetry and non-fiction texts. He has also done work for CBC and has read from his work extensively. In addition to all of this, he’s been a journalist for numerous newspapers and taught journalism. He has lived in several cities and currently calls Saskatoon home.

The author takes us on journey through the early part of the twentieth century in the Big Apple’s Lower East side. We meet numerous characters that come in and out of his father’s life. There is a profound exploration of humanity including our strengths, individual warts and collective failings. Many of the stories leave you wanting to continue on the characters’ journeys and following them down their meandering paths.

In the following excerpt, Margoshes’s father is speaking with some children whom he was hired to teach Yiddish to as a young man:

“Yes,” said my father, “and that’s why it’s so important that you should meet your grandparents now, while you have the chance. They’re old.”

“And is it true that Mommy hasn’t seen her Mommy and Daddy for years and years?”

“That’s right, Estella.” My father took the little girl in his arms. “Do you ever get mad at Mommy? Or at Daddy?”

“Sometimes.”

My father smiled. “And you, Benjy?”

“Sometimes.”

“And do you sometimes get so mad you think, ‘I wish they were dead,’ or think about running away and never coming home, just to show them, to make them feel bad/”

The children pouted. Esther sucked her thumb. My father gently tugged at her hand until it came away. “Tell the truth now.”

“Sometimes,” Benjy said.

 “times,” Esther echoed.

“You have to be careful what you wish for,” my father said. “Sometimes wishes come true and you can’t take them back.”

“Is that what Mommy did?” Esther asked.

“What do you think?” my father asked.

Margoshes’s writing is revealing and filled with great care. He is a born teacher but his writing never falls into being preachy. With a less skilled writer, it would feel like pontificating but that feeling of being spoken to is never an issue. The author invites us to participate in these wondrous tales and we are left to wonder where truths meet realities and vice versa. He has a wonderful ear that is demonstrated time and time again with his exquisite dialogue.

There was not much to quibble with here. Because it is such an eclectic mix of stories, some readers may find it disconcerting, at times, to be reading consecutive stories that bear little relationship to each other. One specific story that painted a richer picture of New York City in this period would have provided some additional context for those readers that may have not read much if anything about this period. Margoshes may be giving his readers too much latitude at times in assuming there is a shared knowledge of landscape and time.

These are trifling in the entire assessment. This collection of stories is filled with love, wisdom and beauty. While not all of the stories are uplifting, that’s what keeps the reader engaged for the entire collection. Readers will not be disappointed with this fine book.

*A copy of A Book of Great Worth was sent to me to read and review. It was not purchased.

My next review will be of A Book of Great Worth from Coteau Books author Dave Margoshes. His writing has garnered several awards and I look forward to reading and reviewing this new collection soon.

Recently, author and academic Sarah Kathryn York took some time out of her very busy schedule to respond to some questions I had for her about writing in general, her latest book, writing influences, and her future projects. I trust you will find her responses as insightful and honest as I have.

JO: Can you share how you discovered Edouard’s story and what inspired you to write about him?

SY: I first heard of him through my friend and Canadian singer Daisy DeBolt. She’d been out to Willow Bunch where he was born, and recorded a ballad with words by Michael Ondaatje. I was taken by Edouard’s quiet vulnerability and strength. There’s something accessible about him that testifies to us all. To me, his story is not tragic. It’s important, and it should be told and retold.

JO: Your Edouard, is a gentle and very sweet man. Was this reflected in the archival record or something you chose to develop while writing?

SY: Edouard is described as gentle, kind and shy by those who knew him. I think he was also tremendously generous, trusting and brave. He took care of his loved ones, rescued strangers, and never hurt anyone, even in professional fights. His goodness and grace were immediate. It was who he was. Of course, the Edouard in my book is imagined. So it was also a choice to portray him that way.

JO: How did writing this book change you not only as a writer but as a person?

SY: Anatomy threw me into experimental forms and spare language. The genre changed three times, in part because there’s a respect in dealing with actual people. The process led me to reconsider storytelling and representation, and where those delineations lie. The closer I ran with the facts, the less “true” the story felt in some ways. Fiction allowed me to honestly engage the characters and the integrity of imagination. Yet real details were important. The research was intense.

The book left me with more questions than answers. The need to be “lifted” up or personally resolved through stories is a peculiar aesthetic demand. If we’re not trying to understand each other better, build empathy, and change ourselves, what are we doing? Fortunately, the world has no shortage of good readers. I hope people will go on forging their own relationships with Edouard in their own ways.

Personally, writing was both engaging and taxing. Also, my life altered while I was writing it, on the edges of writing it, and in order to write it. So there’s a sense of investment, of risk.

JO: Were there ways that you were able to identify with Edouard as you wrote his story?

SY: Absolutely. In fiction, you enter characters through the humanity that binds us, and whatever stories reveal. I identify with those things foremost. His sensitivity and solitude, dreams and sacrifices, distance from home and mixed heritage, the desire to be seen, and to see others, for our authentic selves, his troubles and love of life and need for freedom – lots of people can relate, I think. Complicating the feelings of people who cared for him was not so easy. It was harder to identify with gawkers, but I avoided judging his audiences, especially in an historical context.

Edouard’s physicality was not my focus, though he was lovely inside and out. I tried not to emphasize his body, yet it shaped his experience. In order to inhabit him, I had to confront his form. I am wary of this word, “inhabit,” as though you wear your characters or somehow invade them. I didn’t want the book to be about, you know, did he really kick the ceiling and leave a shoe print?

I grew up with eccentrics and outcasts, so ‘normal’ is not something I understand well – does anyone? We’re all unusual. In some ways, Edouard was ‘regular’: a good man from humble beginnings in a small rural town, who worked hard and was passable in school, an athletic but awkward teenager, with traditional family and religious values, who wrestled with hard poverty, but never shied from eating, drinking, joking and hunting. He was also gifted, fluent in many tongues, an astounding strongman, toured the continent, led an extraordinary life, tolerated celebrity, and was a brilliant horseman, roper, and dead shot at a young age. He was flawed and heroic. He broke through everything, but didn’t fit anywhere. The poetry of finity, so to speak.

JO: What was the best part in the entire process of writing Edouard’s story?

SY: I learned a lot, but was glad to see it finished. Some people said they wished I’d written more – a good sign, hopefully. Talking with his family was the best experience.

JO: Were there books that you used to help in crafting this book Sarah?

SY: Not specifically. I avoided other creative works on the subject for fear of influence (by the wonderful Geoffrey Ursell for instance). As a child, I loved this old anatomy book that had wax paper layers. You started with a skeleton and added transparent pages of muscle, veins, and skin to get a whole impression of a body. Remembering that helped me in the narrative layering of the book.

JO: What authors have been some of your most important influences as a writer?

SY: There are too many great writers to choose from. The influence changes constantly. James Baldwin has never been an influence, but his story “Going to Meet the Man” is about as perfect, if disturbing, a story as I’ve read. I always return to the ones who blur the boundaries between place and people: Faulkner, Keats, Munro, Morrison, Robinson, MacEwen (Gwendolyn), Kafka, Dickens, McCullers, Erdrich, Woolf, James, Brontë (Emily), McCarthy, Nabokov, and many others. Who knows how it all filters down. I recently sat down with Lee Maracle, and her personal stories blew me over. The writers around me, my friends, have a sort of radiating effect.

JO: Would you care to share what book(s) you are reading currently Sarah?

SY: Halldór Laxness, The Fish Can Sing. Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After. Arley McNeney, The Time We All Went Marching. Arley and I went on book tour across Canada, along with others, and her book is so lyrical. As a creative writing teacher, I’m always re-reading. Right now, lots of poetry and North American fiction.

JO: To me, it seems that this book sets up very well for a film adaptation. Have you had any discussions with anyone about this to date?

SY: It would be interesting to see it adapted. I think it lends itself to that, and I’d be curious to see it visualized in new ways. I’ve had some interest from a well-known American director, whose name I probably shouldn’t mention. We’ll see.

JO: Would you care to share what you are working on currently Sarah?

SY: I’m currently finishing a novel called Sermon, some shorter creative non-fiction pieces, and a book about aesthetics that I started recently in Paris, France.

I am very pleased to write that author Sarah York has agreed to do an interview with me in the coming weeks. Look for that soon and please read my review of her superb debut novel The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré from Coteau Books found here on my site.

The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré

By Sarah Kathryn York

Coteau Books April 2012, 216 pp. $16.95 CDN

Reviewed by: James Onusko

While many books are touted as life-changing or having the ability through which the reader will gain new perspectives, oftentimes this is overblown hyperbole on the part of publishers. This smallish book, unquestionably, will change the way you think about those among us who stand out for various reasons. In most ways a tragic figure, Edouard and his story, brought to life for a new audience, has transformative powers to heighten our abilities to empathize with our fellow human beings.

Sarah Kathryn York’s short fiction has appeared in both Canadian and American journals. Sarah is a graduate of the University of Toronto Creative Writing Master’s Program. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo. Sarah is from Toronto and is a dual Canadian-American citizen, spending time in both Canada and the United States. This is her first book.

York’s writing is superb. Her writing style is both poetic and unadorned. While it is evocative it is not distracting as she humanizes Edouard. This is not easy given her subject matter as it would have been tempting and quite easy to focus mainly on Edouard’s physicality. The author’s brilliance is that she invites us as readers to know that Edouard was in fact a caring, thoughtful and complex young man. While extraordinary for being 8 feet three inches when he died at the age of twenty-three, his deep sensitivity and devotion to his family outsized his physical being. As I read the book, I could not help but think of Joseph Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man, who convinced himself that exhibition in the late nineteenth century was one of the only ways for him to gain a meager living. While Edouard’s life may not have been as trying as Merrick’s, the parallels are compelling. Both men had dreams far beyond the confines of the freak shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In the following excerpt a teenaged Edouard discusses becoming a cowpoke with his uncle Albert on the Canadian plains:

“I wanna cowpoke,” Edouard said, a faint whine in his voice. He leaned back against the post and stared out at the fire. “Besides, I’m saving up for a nice pair of boots.”

“A cowpoke,” Albert repeated. His nail drove deeper into the wood.

“You said yourself that I’m good with horses.”

Edouard hushed a long time. He sat quietly the way he did in school when the children called him mute. They thought he was stupid. Maybe he was sometimes. Unworldly. Even the tallest girl in class had mocked him, the one child who might understand. Girls don’t mean nothing, his friend had said to comfort him that afternoon, Don’t pay no mind. They were throwing rocks at an old barn. We’re nothing either, he’d replied.

“I wish to hell it would rain,” Albert said to break the silence.

Edouard looked up into the blackness and the swarm of stars. They seemed to go on without him, without the world even, washing through the sky like some great dark mouth had opened to swallow the stars whole. He realized in that moment he had outgrown a living. Outgrown the ranching life. Outgrown horses. He no longer held a place among the things he loved and knew.

York allows us to understand Edouard in a way that contemporary sideshow audiences were likely unable to, more than a century ago. While we remain fascinated by his size, she gives us the gift of narration, monologue, anecdotal evidence and pure fantasy to add further colour to his short and angst-filled life. Rather than mere gawking, we are able to share some intimacies with this complex giant of a man who in small ways enjoyed but in more ways reviled his adult years.

There were a few shortcomings. I would have liked more written by the main narrator, the obsessive Montreal doctor who examined Edouard’s corpse in the 1950s, and ultimately, had more questions about Edouard than when he began. Also, York’s gifts for sensitivity and compassion left me wishing she had delved more deeply into Edouard’s earlier years in Saskatchewan. Finally, I would have really enjoyed some brief speculation by the author on what might Edouard have done if he had lived for another handful of years. She has likely come to know him better than anyone else now and although pure conjecture, her insights would have been fascinating.

Sarah Kathryn York has produced an instant must-read. While there is no poor time to read this 206 page book (yes, that does align with the number of bones in the ‘average’ human body), it will make an excellent summer afternoon or evening read. I cannot help but think that there may be a compelling film version of this story, begging to be made. The book is suitable for mature teen readers and older. I highly recommend it and trust that it will offer a new lens to all readers. It has done so for me and I think that is the ultimate praise for a book.

*A copy of The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré was sent to me to read and review. It was not purchased.

I am just finishing up The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré by Sarah Kathryn York. Published by Coteau Books, the book is a fascinating and haunting exploration of the human condition focusing on a man who would grow to be 8 feet 4 inches by his early twenties. My review will be posted in the coming weeks.

Hypotheticals

Poetry

By Leigh Kotsilidis

Coach House Books October 2011, 96 pp. $17.95 CDN

Reviewed by: James Onusko

Poetry is not for all readers, even the most erudite and sophisticated of them, have often intimated that reading poetry is very challenging. In the end, this is true. Reading and trying to make sense of poetry, particularly excellent poetry, is no mean feat. However, I think that most readers who spend some time engaging with Leigh Kotsilidis’s poetry will find it both rewarding, stimulating and satisfying. The slim collection of poems is organized into four parts including: I) Evidence; II) Variables; III)  Falsifications; and IV) Conclusions.

Kotsilidis’s poem’s have appeared in several journals and have been anthologized in a handful of publications. She was a finalist in both 2009 and 2010 for the CBC Literary Awards. Leigh’s talents are not contained to writing great poetry. She is a co-founder of littlefishcartpress. She also works as a graphic designer and lives in Montreal, Quebec.

What the author has done is use some of the core beliefs of modern science to question meaning and truth through powerful language. No genre is as taut and meaning-filled as poetry and Kotsilidis uses this to full effect. Hers is the type of poetry, like so much of the best, to be read aloud. Furthermore, I do not believe that she is offering any bold pronouncements marked by finality. In her best poems she is offering up a conversation; an invitation to enter a dialogue that views the world with wonderment and constant questioning. Science is presented more as an ongoing search based on hope vis-à-vis seeking a final destination that will guarantee unquestioned certainty.

In this poem, Chest Wounds, Kotsilidis’s skills are in full display as she explores some of her major themes:

First there is a flutter.

Not wings or eyelashes,

but a flap of unhinged skin.

What gapes? What gasps?

Not wound, windpipe, or gash,

but lesions of men on a gauzy path.

Blades clank, clash, until shafts

sink in -  a slowing, a lag, a yawn

as brains spawn panic.

Men stop, drop in their spots,

roll shirts into cotton batting,

tighten ponytails into tourniquets,

contort their torsos and limbs

into rocks resembling the dead.

When certain their enemy has fled,

toss their losses to the wind.

Not as seeds, words or hymns,

but overripe cherries, split to pits.

Unfortunately, as with all poetry written in the last 40 years or so, much of this collection will go unread. I find it fascinating and contradictory in many ways that many critics and observers argue that the majority of people no longer have the attention spans to read like we did collectively, say a century ago, yet literature is much more accessible than in the past. An interesting exercise it to try reading some literature from the early nineteenth century, and you will be struck by how long the paragraphs and sentences were in most texts. Epic poems are almost impossible to find in the twenty-first century. In this context, it would seem that post-structural poetry would be welcomed by readers in that most contemporary poems are rarely more than a page and many collections can be read in a handful of hours at most.

Kotsilidis’s poetry is the kind of writing that provides an opportunity, a gateway, to returning to poetry as a reader. She has chosen to tackle some of our grandest questions and infuses the writing with humour, questioning and compassion. There is not a lot to criticize in this collection. At times, I believe she could have lengthened certain poems and explored certain paths even more than she does. I can appreciate the open-endedness of some of the poems and I understand that that is precisely the point at times. Additionally, she includes some excellent introductions where she offers anecdotes from other writers such as John Hutchins and I think she could have done this even more as in all instances they fitted brilliantly with the rest of the poem.

This is a beautiful collection of poetry. While many readers, particularly those that do not read a lot of poetry will find it challenging, at times, to read, I believe that everyone who picks up the collection and decides to be open to it will find it well worth the effort. Kotsilidis is a brilliant writer and we should all hope that there is far more to come from her in the near future.

*A copy of Hypotheticals was sent to me to read and review. It was not purchased.

My next review will be of Hypotheticals from Coach House Books. Leigh Kotsilidis writes poetry that stays with you and has that rare power to offer a new lens through which to view the world. Look for my review in the coming weeks.

Jodi Lee Aoki, Trent University archivist and author of Revisiting “Our Forest Home,” kindly agreed to respond to a few questions abour her recent book featuring the letters of Frances Stewart. In our discussion, she talks about some of the challenges of writing about nineteenth-century life, how Stewart continues to resonate with her in her daily life, and some of her possible future writing plans.

JO: Can you tell us what the most challenging aspect of compiling and editing these letters was for you?

JLA: Definitely the fact that many of the archival documents are copies or extracts which were made by recipients of Frances’s letters and passed on to other family members and friends contributes to an extremely complicated set of raw data. Trying to decipher originals from copies and identifying the anomalies in text between the originals and copies was time-consuming. Choosing the content for Revisiting “Our Forest Home” was also complicated by the fact that I did not have access to some original letters which Ellen Dunlop, Frances Stewart’s daughter, published in the 1889 and 1902 editions of Our Forest Home; these letters may no longer exist. An important distinction between the Revisiting edition and Ellen’s earlier editions is that not all letters are represented in all three publications; the earlier publications include letters which were outside the scope of my project around the originals, and the Revisiting edition includes letters which Ellen may not have had access to. All three editions contribute in significant but different ways to the telling of Frances’s story.

JO: Why do you think it’s important for readers to revisit an era that has a great deal written about it?

JLA: If I flash-forward 200 years and look at all the ways in which our lives intersect, how each member of a community contributes to the community and to community development and how we all do influence the governing decisions of our leaders, I can see that it is the complex interweaving of all the lives of a population, of both women and men, which constitutes the essence of human experience. For this simple reason, it is important to consider the writings of nineteenth-century women as an incredible resource for furthering our knowledge of the period in general – the women did not live in isolation from husbands and brothers who were more commonly associated with having authority and power. The personal narratives of Upper Canadian immigrant women – and men – contribute meaningfully to the historical canon and have the potential to constructively extend a founding consensus which has tended to endorse the white male gentry renditions of the historical past.

JO: You’ve worked with these letters for years Jodi, what did you discover about Stewart that you hadn’t known before, in your writing and editing processes?

JLA: I became increasingly aware of the depth of Frances’s feelings of sadness at being parted from her loved ones in Ireland. These feelings permeate all her writing; her stoic acceptance of her situation in the New World seems to be intricately tied, at least in part, to a sense of duty which she had come to embody.

JO: Did you find yourself identifying with Stewart by the end of the editing and writing process?

JLA: I wouldn’t say that I identified with Frances, but I do think that I got closer to seeing who she was. There are so many opportunities for research in these documents. What is intriguing is that, at the end of the day, the writings of Frances Stewart will continue to be what they are, just what their author meant them to be, regardless of the meaning which we impose on them. We can never really “know” her.

JO: Was this project something you would undertake again Jodi?

JLA: I would. It was fascinating to become so involved in the letters. I sometimes look out across the Otonabee from my work-place at Trent University and try to imagine Frances walking along the river between her daughters’ houses in her later life. Frances continues to be of great interest to me.

JO: Were there any other books that you used as models in crafting this one?

JLA: I pored over many books which deal with immigrant writings before I decided how I wanted to present the letters in Revisiting “Our Forest Home”. A few books which were especially helpful were: A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada: The Journals, Letters, and Art of Anne Langton, edited by Barbara Williams; and three books edited by Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael Peterman: I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill; Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime; and Letters of Love and Duty: The Correspondence of Susanna and John Moodie.

JO: Is there anything in nineteenth-century Canadian literature (fiction or non-fiction) that is of particular interest to you Jodi?

JLA: For my research on Frances Stewart, the many books published by Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie were especially of interest as they helped to provide context for visualizing Frances’s life. Travel literature of the period, including writings which cover the explorations of Canada’s North during the nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century, is also of immense interest to me.

JO: The book is shaped by a feminist perspective. Was it important to you to frame it this way?

JLA: This is an interesting question for me. I guess I’ve never really thought of myself in a feminist framework. Framing this book as I did came absolutely naturally to me; it wasn’t conscious. This does make me a feminist, doesn’t it!

JO: How has the book been received by Frances Stewart’s family?

JLA: Some Stewart family descendants attended the book launch and were very supportive of my project. I had met with a few members of the family while doing my research and they were very helpful in ironing out many elusive details. I heard from some who have read the book and they expressed that they enjoyed it and appreciated that I had undertaken this project. I am grateful for their support. I’ve always felt a responsibility to the family to do the best job I could to represent Frances accurately.

JO: Do you have any plans to write or edit another book in the near future, Jodi?

JLA: I’m very interested in nineteenth-century Upper Canadian history. Currently, I’m looking at other women besides Frances who immigrated to the Peterborough area early in the nineteenth century. Peterborough has a rich legacy of women’s writings from that period. I’ve recently given a paper about six European settler women who arrived in the Peterborough area between 1822 and 1837. I’m interested in understanding how these women coped when they found themselves, separated from their families and loved ones, forging out new lives in the bush in an unknown country. I’m aiming through this lens to glimpse the ways in which female lives intersected community development in the colony. The authors’ representations of their lives in their writings are intricately mixed with nostalgia and memory of their lives in the homeland and this is an intriguing area for me.

A good friend and emerging author here in Peterborough has agreed to share some of the challenges and small triumphs that she has experienced in her nascent work. More specifically, I asked her to offer us what she has gained from a current critiquing course. She was a first reader for an International Writing Competition, Whispering Words. She writes both junior and Young Adult fiction. She has had her work reviewed by Canadian publishers, but nothing has come to print, yet; that will soon change. I am certain you will find this piece as thoughtful and revealing as I have.

On Being a Writer

By: Jocelyne Stone

Anybody can write, but it takes hard work and a whole lot of patience to write well. Sure you need to add some imagination and maybe even some talent, but if you don’t put the effort into making your craft better, honing your writing skills, the chances of you making a career out of writing is almost impossible.

I’ve been writing, seriously writing, now for four years. During that time I’ve taken many writing courses, been to many seminars and belong to a wonderful writing critique group, Critical Ms, created from a mix of extremely talented writers—both published and not.

Aside from whatever I’d learned through high school or University English classes, when I took my first writing course I knew nothing. Over the first few courses I began to get an understanding of the concept of a story—setting, plots, characters, point of view (POV), and narrative style. Then I started to learn the importance of scenes, and how to write dialogue.

As my knowledge grew, so did my writing—I started to get better at it.

Currently I am taking a critiquing course offered by Sam Hiyate—the co-founder and literary agent for The Rights Factory. Had I started out taking this course in the beginning of my writing career, I think I would have gone home crying and packed it in. It’s not that Sam or the others in the class are mean, but it’s definitely not a course for the faint-of-heart. In fact, I don’t think any critiquing class is.

For those who may not be familiar with a critiquing course, the process is fairly simple. You bring in a piece of a certain size, share it with the class by reading it aloud and then sit back while the class picks your work apart. The critiquing at times can be gruelling; being told your favourite scene is actually flat and does nothing to move the story along—well that sometimes hurts.

On the flip side you can also be told there was one phrase or sentence that really stuck with them, or that one of your scenes was gripping from start to finish. Those are the moments that make your heart sing, or at least that’s the case with me.

My goals or what I hope to gain from my writing courses now are completely different then what they were when I first started writing. My goals in the beginning were simple and truth be told very vain. I wanted to be told I was a good writer and that what I was writing was brilliant. Now whenever I want this to happen I ask my mom for her opinion! She is by far my biggest cheerleader and in the writing world it’s important to have cheerleaders!

I like to think I’ve matured, if only just a little! So my goals have shifted a bit. Now I want to know if my characters are likeable.  Does their story arc follow them from beginning to end? Is my voice, or rather the voice of my character clear? What is my pacing like? Is it too fast, too slow? Is my POV consistent? Am I showing and not telling?

Sam’s class is probably the fifth critiquing course I’ve taken over my career thus far. At the end of this course I hope to have a finished piece that is publishing-worthy. In most other critiquing courses this would be a lofty goal, but Sam’s class is different and I write for children. (This comment is only made in regards to children’s books generally having less words. The argument about which genre is more challenging to write is a whole article in itself.)

In other critiquing courses I’ve taken you share your work twice, perhaps three times, over a twelve week period, depending how many people are in the class. In Sam’s class there are only six of us and each week we are required to bring up to twenty new pages. This is a fast pace but it helps keep me on track. The other benefit is the other members in the class get to know my story and characters more intimately resulting in a better overall critique.

What is extremely important to remember is what others say about your work is their opinion and an opinion doesn’t make it right. In most cases if the critique pertains to the character arc, the flow or change in POV, then the advice is worth listening to, but even then not all the time.

There is a fine balance to knowing what to listen to and what to shut out. This process is much easier to do when you have a strong idea of the story itself. The less sure you are about the outline of your story the more difficult it is to distinguish helpful from harmful.

The critiquing classes I’ve taken have far out-weighed the monetary costs. I’ve learned, stretched and grown as a writer. Rules of thumb I’ve gathered over time; be honest but show respect, critiques should be constructive not cruel, and most importantly, if ever there’s a disagreement tie goes to the writer.