Letting go of the reins.

This semester we have a visiting professor for my workshop. Her methods are different—she doesn’t expect completed stories or chapters, nor does she expect a lot of pages. She actually prefers us to bring in our beginnings and expects that what we’ve written be as polished as it can be, sentence by sentence, and that when we’re workshopped we take what’s been said in critique and use it to develop the story further.

That’s great, and it probably works for a lot of people, but as someone who needs to know where her story is going before she can write where it’s coming from, I don’t know how this method is going to work for me. I was nearly driven crazy during my last workshop of the previous semester, when people started going off topic and drawing out ridiculous situations that my character could find herself in that had absolutely nothing to do with where I wanted to bring the story. Not being able to talk while discussions about the piece were going on, I was so grateful when a classmate finally piped up and suggested that they were all trying too much to change the story to their own tastes.

I don’t think that workshopping should be about trying to change the plot of the story being discussed. I think it’s about taking in what the author is trying to do and suggesting ways that may help them to better develop it. To know what that is, what they’re trying to do, or what I’m trying to do, I need to have an ending in mind. I also don’t want to be worrying about my sentence structure—yet. That’s the habit that I’m actually trying to get out of, that worrying that what I’ve already written be perfect before I’ve even finished. I don’t like the idea of going to class with three pages of material that, rather than spending time figuring out where I want that material to go, I’ve gone through with a fine tooth comb. If I don’t know where the story is going, there’s a very good chance that those sentences and paragraphs that I’ve just perfected are going to get trashed. And then that’s time wasted.

I get the point. What if we go in with a completed story, and it turns out that the plot line and ending don’t really work together, and then it’s harder to go back and reconstruct it. But that’s how I function!

Okay, I admit it: I’m a control-freak. I get it from my mother. And it’s something that I know I need to let go of when it comes to my writing; my characters and plots are going to do what they want to do, and if I try to stop it then the process will (and has in the past) come to a grinding halt. But to have a workshop on this unfinished piece and have to listen to where my classmates think it should go instead of letting them know where I want it to go, that is going to drive me crazy. It’s my story. I value the opinions of my classmates, and I take what advice I’m given into serious consideration. But as the author, if I want to ignore said advice, I have the right to. Why should my grade depend on whether or not I’ve used it?

I’m over-thinking this—I do that—and worrying too much over something that in the end won’t be nearly as a big a deal as I’m making it. I know, too, that a different method will probably be very good for me to try–especially since I can’t discipline myself into my current method. But it’s the beginning of the semester, and if I had nothing to worry about it just wouldn’t feel right.

How do you all work? Do you prefer to get a full draft out before you start worrying about the writing itself? Or do you edit sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph?