Most of my writing classes were crit groups that didn't even get as far as talking about submitting things for publication. Out of the four different teachers I had, two were fabulous. Of the two that weren't, neither were awful. One facilitated the crit group, but I honestly can't remember a thing the man said. Another was a brilliant writer herself, but I got a feeling that she preferred the students who wrote in a style or on subjects that were close to her own writing.

Of the two very good ones, one had a way of pointing out the "badfic" aspects of our writing honestly, but in a way that wasn't hurtful (and was often very funny). The other was very good at sussing out what her students were trying to achieve in their writing and helping them to see what was working and what wasn't.

I never really took any writing courses that focused on structure. I picked up some in my literature classes, but that was about it. I also like reading what other writers have to say about the writing process and how they construct plots, pace things out, etc. It's fascinating to see how different writers come up with very different ways of going about their craft.

I haven't read Derrida either. My writing classes were like Susan W.'sThey did force me to finish stuff once a week, though.

Oh, I'm all about writers support groups and crit groups, Am. Love 'em. We have one now. But the main motto is, Thou Shalt Not Trash Anyone Else's Work.

Ever read Ngaio Marsh's autobiography? She talks about pretty much every aspect of her life, travels and theatre and colonialism, and you keep waiting for a mention of how she came up with stuff, and there's almost nothing, and you get to the end and WHAM, you suddenly realise, she's handed the basis for her worldview and how and why she created Roderick and Troy Alleyn, all there in where she'd been.

No, I didn't know there was one. Cool. I did read Christie's though, at one time.

(and I lurve Diana Gabaldon's stuff, but I haven't read "Fiery Cross" yet)

I've never been into literary criticism, per se. I always get lost in the abstruse terminology and navel-gazing of it all. I don't care if it's self-referential or building off the post-modernists (whoever the hell they are, I've never understood the Schools of Thought thing), just--does the thing tell a good story? Does it illuminate some facet of life? Heck, if nothing else, did it move you to some authentic emotion--even if it was just being so mortally offended that you threw it across the room?

(I thought Fiery Cross was her best book since Dragonfly in Amber. She actually succeeded in making me like Brianna and Roger almost as much as Jamie and Claire.)

does the thing tell a good story? Does it illuminate some facet of life? Heck, if nothing else, did it move you to some authentic emotion--even if it was just being so mortally offended that you threw it across the room?

YES.

And there's that mention of instinct again, oblique. At what point, between the litcrit and the fifty navel-gazing reference books and the professor who wrote a delicate little novel in which he almost managed to sustain his own interest for a hundred and eighteen pages and is still bitter because no one wanted to review it in a university article, do we, not only as writers but as readers, begin to trust our own reactions without the whole "you must do it this way or you are invalid" crap?

begin to trust our own reactions without the whole "you must do it this way or you are invalid" crap?

Oh, gosh, that's the hard one. People get trained to believe that their opinions will be given to them, and too many people bow to a stronger personality. If that person is on TV or is speaking from the pages of a book, then that person must, somehow, have higher status and therefore be followed. The "Yeah, it worked for you, but you're special" thing. I dislike the whole "building self-esteem" thing you see in schools, but it's needed in some areas.

I honestly believe that there are forces in society that like people to not trust their own opinions, to accept what they are told. People trusting their own voices leads to people questioning what's going on around them. An educated, eloquent populace is a threat to entrenched power.

Connie, that last post of yours should damned well be framed and hung over most university lecterns.

And that's one of the main things I was getting at about the One True Way stuff. It's Cult of Personality crap, and the major danger of Cult of Personality stuff, whether it's a question of charisma taking over or whether it's a carefully engineered effort for mass mind stuff, is the destruction of the individual reaction and the individual belief that they can do what they feel inclined to do without that specific set of parameters.

People get trained to believe that their opinions will be given to them

And that's what I mean by feeling like a Martian. I was very specifically trained to believe that if I took my opinions from other people, I was a moron. So, well - Martian.