Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Apparently there was a recent fracas of sorts at the Odyssey Fantasy Writers Workshop recently: fantasist and SF-writer extraordinaire Gene Wolfe apparently gave some fairly caustic criticism to a few stories, and the resulting brouhaha led to Wolfe's bowing out of the workshop. Wolfe wrote his side of the story in LOCUS Magazine, and John Scalzi has a long missive on the subject on his blog.

I've never even considered going to Clarion or Odyssey or anything like it. Not because I'm arrogant and think I have nothing to learn; were that the truth, I'd have something other than a drawer full of rejections to show for my efforts. And not because I'm timid about my writing; I send it out, after all, and occasionally I post pieces of my fiction here, if I decide they've "expired" (i.e., I've decided that they're simply not salable, and I don't just want them sitting in a drawer with their rejections). I don't do the writers' group/workshop thing because they strike me as fairly neurotic. I decided a long time ago that the main way I would measure myself as a writer was by selling my work, and not by seeking camaraderie with other unpublished writers. I guess that, for some, this could mean that I'm a shill who's only in it for the money. So be it, really. Time spent sitting around talking sagely about someone else's stories is time I'm not spending writing my own stories (blog posts and GMR reviews aside), but that's not even the main problem. For me, the weight of producing something on a deadline simply so it can be criticized by a bunch of peers would be the death-knell for my writing. I don't need that. I've got death-knells aplenty, thank you very much.

It's not that I'm afraid of being told that my work is crap, because it seems to me that any writer of any worth at all will be convinced, all on his own, that his work is crap. I don't need someone else to confirm that for me.

As for Mr. Wolfe, I've only read a few of his stories and I am now working my way through the first novel of his I've ever read (Latro in the Mist, actually two novels bound as one). But I know that he is held in very high regard in literary circles and that he has years of teaching experience. A Usenet poster today said, "If Gene Wolfe told me a story of mine was crap, I'd say, 'Thank you sir! May I have another'?" I'm inclined to agree, although if Mr. Wolfe told me he didn't understand my story and I was feeling mischievous, I'd say, "Back at ya, pal."

(And in case there's any doubt that these students could have encountered someone meaner than Mr. Wolfe, there's always Harlan Ellison. Yow!)