Lisbeth Salander and Mermaid ...

Sorry to have been missing for two weeks.  Blame it on Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of Stieg Larsson's books.

I'm not really a big fan of thriller and crime fictions, but enjoy them in movies!  (Weird right?)

So when "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" movie was released a few weeks ago in Australia, I went for it.  I had no idea I was in for some really disturbing scenes. Probably because of this, I still haven't made up my mind if I like or dislike the film. But one thing for sure, Lisbeth Salander had made a huge impression on me.

A week after the movie, I downloaded the ebook version and started reading it.  I wouldn't say it is well-written and while I still remembered most of the storyline from the movie, the plot remained riveting.  I actually had a hard time to tear myself away from it.

(Mind you that the original version was written in Swedish and the only Swedish word I know is IKEA.  Hmm ... not even sure if IKEA is a Swedish word?  So obviously, the one I read was an English translation from original.)

After the first one, naturally, I had to read the 2nd one - "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and I'm about to finish the 3rd one, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest".  Unfortunately, due to the untimely death of the author, there won't be any more of Salander's stories.  I can say that I'm already missing Lisbeth.

Aside from this fantastic distraction, I had several "crash and burn" experience with painting my girls.  As disheartened as it was, I accepted it as part of the learning process.  This also made me realize that I need some professional help.  Hence, I have joined Suzi Blu's Mixed Media Mermaids Online Workshop, which was highly recommended by fellow blogger & creative, Lisa.

Though the class is focused on mermaids and my girls are without fish tails ;) , I'm sure the workshop would help me greatly with my own drawing, painting and art making skills.

So hang in there, my fellow bloggers / creatives ... there will be new drawings & painting upload soon.

Til then, have a nice week ahead!

Workshop

A few things I thought about workshop ...

- Writing is such a lonely endeavour that a writer needs some company to share the passion as well as the angst of writing.

- A writer could get so close and deep into h/her own creation that h/she is unable to see the flaws. There comes a time when you need second opinion.

- To provide critique is a skill: I once sent off a 500 words flash fiction to a writing friend for critique. I thought she would be coming back with a few lines of comments. To my greatest surprise, she wrote me a whole page of comments. It included comments on overall narrative, structure, pacing, characterisation and dialogue etc. For those areas which I was sloppy or not up to it, she provided a few “fixer”.

- But on the same token, the friend who critiqued my work was also an unpublished writer. Though obviously, from her comments, she was a far more competent writer than I was. And I did improve my writing skill and the story to a large extent from her critique. There was no doubt about it. However, the critique could only get me so far, beyond that …

- A Big fish in a small pond and a tiny fish in a Big pond: Back to my uni days, we had a very talented classmate who blew us away every time with her writing. But I observed that she was very frustrated with our critique as we (the mediocre) were unable to offer her any insight which could help her to improve her writing.

When I was doing the year long course at Victorian Writers’ Centre, I was fortunate (unfortunate) to join a group which most of the members had already written at least a full manuscript of their first novel. Not only I haven’t got a manuscript, I was still struggling with the narrative. When came time to critique each other’s work, I was so out of depth that I had nothing to contribute to the group.

- Too soon to have a piece of writing for critique will kill the piece as well as the writer!

- Workshop becomes the crutch of the writer. The writer keeps sending the story for critique and never finished it.

So what am I saying?

The comradeship and support a writer could get from the workshop group is invaluable to the creative journey. Workshop is an important tool for writers to gauge their skill and growth. But a writer should always be aware of the pitfalls of workshop. Also from my personal experience, the right workshop group could make or break a writer.

What do you think?

My Workshop Experience

Workshop as a feedback system is one which (I presume) most creative people opt for. From my own experience, workshop has its benefits as well as its drawback.

I had my first writing workshop when I was studying creative writing at uni. It was a traumatic experience to me. Not only because it was my first formal workshop, it’s also because I had an inexperience young tutor whose first love was English language, not creative writing. I ended up having English grammar lesson instead of workshop. My confidence in my own writing was totally shattered at the end of the semester.

During the 2nd and 3rd year at uni, I had a wonderful tutor who was encouraging and supportive. As I knew some of the workshop group members from 1st year at uni, we had built up trust to each other. It made us feel safe and free to offer comments as well as accepting critique. My writing confidence soared and as a result of that, my writing improved. It also made the writing process a lot more fun.

The latest workshop I had was through a year long course I did at Victorian Writer’s Centre. I didn’t enjoy it for a very simple reason. I was at the wrong group. Majority of participants were writing literary fiction, including the tutor. There were only three others (including myself) who were working on (loosely speaking) genre type writing. You could tell the interest level the group had on my strange tales from the frown on the tutor’s and some of the participants' foreheads. While the group would spend hours on discussion about the literary fiction genre, there was no mention of other genre.

However, one good thing did come out from this year long course. I made friend with one of the participants after the course finished. Every now and then, we critique each other’s stories. I had learnt how to do proper critique from her. This had greatly improved my writing skill. But due to each other’s schedule and our varied writing interests, we did not continued.

Since then, I’m working on my own.

Overall, my workshop expereince was of average. But it doesn’t mean that I’m against workshop or writing group.

Writing is a solitary activity and writers require a lot of alone time to create. But too much alone writing time can lead to an imbalance view of one’s work. Workshop at its core could provide an objective view of a participant’s work. And at its best, it could help to improve the participant’s skill and the work. Overall, I believe it is more about the kind of workshop and workshop group which one picks. In the coming weeks, I’ll be following up with more posts on workshop and writing group.

Alright, so far is my limited view on workshop. What do you think?

(The post is inspired and served as my respond to Sophie's post on "Workshopping" .)