panel response

Stacy Wyatt December 2, 2003 Friday Forum Response “You really can put the cattle prod to the butt of the muse.” –David Groff The discussion panel, ‘Publishing Your First Book (and Staging a One-Person Show)’ primary point seemed to be to emphasize the value of having a community of fellow artist—particularly other writers—and the necessity of perseverance in order to succeed. These points were repeated many times and through various examples that were sometimes reassuring and sometimes somewhat gut-wrenching. One instance they spoke of that fulfilled both was of an author (I can’t recall her name) who sent out the same book for some seventeen years, while continuing to write. It is an instance that I think will stick with me for some time. It forced me as a writer to think about if I can develop enough confidence in a piece to continue to send it out after it has been rejected time and again, and also if I have enough confidence in myself to continue to produce work while a piece I believe in is being so constnatly rejected over a period of many years. The gravity of the situation is only escalated by my youth. I’m nineteen years old, seventeen years is more of my life than I can consciously remember. I only have one or two ideas that have stayed with me and that I still hold to be true to me over the last ten years, and none of those are personal creations of my own. To someone older, seventeen years, although still a long time, is not a lifetime. The idea of a writing community was an idea that seemed to have most of it’s support with the moderator, Elaine Sexton, with some back-up from David Groff. Sexton talked about her group of poet friends meeting together roughly monthly to read their poems to each other. Groff admitted to having friends read his work and the nessesity of getting honest, possibly harsh feedback. The latter seemed more to my taste, rather than having a large set of people as an audience. The audience-reader setting doesn’t appeal to me as a way to get feedback on an unfinished piece if I do not know the audience, all of it’s members, reasonably well, well enough that is to know what I think of their own writing, personality, and thought process. It comes down to this: it makes no sense to me to take advice from someone who you feel is unqualified to give it. I have a hard time accepting advice on my writing from people whose writing I don’t like, even more so if I dislike the writers they admire, while on the other hand I am always willing to listen to, and give thought to, critisism from persons who do not consider themselves to be writers if they have a literary taste that I agree with or at least have respect for. For the most part I found the panel interesting and informative. It was particularly intriguing to hear the different opinions of various author when faced with a given topic and also to see how those authors interacted with each other.