In my post this morning I said, in part, “I think writing classes are like therapy: if you need more than twelve sessions, you are fucked. And time-wasting. And money-wasting. Because the point of therapy is to find out where you need to do the work, and then go home and do it. That is, the therapist doesn’t fix you, you fix yourself. So endless therapy is pointless. Endless writing classes are similarly pointless.”
Looking at that statement I feel rather dim. And, worse, that I’ve been careless of some readers’ feelings.
I apologise.
I meant what I said–to a degree. But good writing is all about the degree, and I made a sweeping generalisation. I went from the specific (many people I have met who have been through long-term therapy) to the general (all people who have ever been through long-term therapy) without pausing for breath. I screwed up.
So let me clarify. Yes, I have met entirely too many so-called adults who use long-term therapy as an indulgence, a way to have a captive audience for their endless self-serving maundering. But it was ridiculous to then conclude that every single person who has ever been through long-term therapy uses their therapy that way.
Today, I forgot the cardinal rule of good writing and good personship: clarity and specificity and kindness. Tomorrow, I hope to do better.
Nicola Griffith 
Just like some people are “professional students.”
I know a lady who fussed over her novel's manuscript for a dozen years!
The good news is, it's now in print, from a small press.
True – there are actually many people who do not use therapy that way. Good of you to apologize. Well done.
Class act.
I agree, good of you to apologize, but we all need to recognize that anyone's opinion of anything is just that – an opinion. We can always find a way to be offended and no one will ever truly understand our individual walk as much as we do. I would encourage anyone who was offended by what you said to look for their own truth in what was offered and forget the rest. If their experience of long term therapy was/is valid for them, then they shouldn't need you to affirm that.
shereta, I've never had long-term therapy and was not offended, but that sounds crazy to me. Opinions have power. No one outside of Nicola's life (for example) should need her to validate their experience, sure, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about *rejecting* someone's experience, and then apologizing and validating it in restitution. The act of rejection hurts, no matter how much “looking for our own truth in what was offered” we do.
Besides, there is a purpose to all that awkwardness. If everyone was silent when someone said something that didn't mesh with their experience, then we would never learn anything from each other.
Obviously, in this case, Nicola already knew that longterm therapy is important for some people, and this was more a problem of careless expression rather than careless longterm-thought. But, theoretically, what if she hadn't known that continual therapy is important for some people? Wouldn't it be a very good thing to have her opinion challenged? That's how everyone moves forward.
Being challenged is a Good Thing (which isn't to say it's a Fun Thing, sigh).
Readers always read more into a statement than is there–it's how writing works, and good writers rely upon it. (And bad writers rely upon it too much, assuming that readers will think exactly as the writers do.) That's why I should have taken more care.
No, I'm not beating myself up. It was a mistake. I've fixed it to the best of my ability. Now I'm going to go do some work.
When I was a live-with-the-parents teenager and my mom had taken to saving my soul by finding a way to make me not-lesbian, I found myself doing the serial-psychologist circuit — mom found Psychologist, I met with P, P decided I had no issues with liking women so maybe my mom should go to therapy instead of me, mom decided P didn't know his/her stuff, mom found new P. The last one I met told me: “First, let's forget about what your mother wants me to do for you and focus on your needs. Second, I don't want to see you come back more than four or five times; if I see you more than that, I'll feel that you're not doing the hard work in your life, and I'm just taking your money. You do understand that it is in your daily life where the real work and change needs to happen, not sitting here with me, right?” That was 15 years ago, and I still think of her every couple of months — as far as therapists go, she really helped me.
So I get where you were coming from with what you wrote yesterday, but I also understand why an apology was in order.
Flash therapy vs. long-term therapy is an ongoing discussion at our home. E is a firm believer in long-term therapy. When I met her, she had devoted half an hour every week during five years to her psychoanalysis sessions, along with the thousands of dollars involved. She still swears by it. As much as I like to tease E about it, if she ever decides to go back to weekly sessions, I'll support her.
Now that you've made the comparison between long-term therapy and MFAs, I can spot the parallelisms between E's reasoning of why the former works for her and my reasoning of why the latter works for some people. The process involves many levels of commitment: one must want it enough to be willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars, one must show up at least once a week during a period of at least two years ready to critique and be critiqued, one must clock enough hours of work between sessions/workshops in order to contribute new developments/stories to the process. Et cetera.
I enjoy coming here. Your posts and everyone's comments prompt me to think and see things from different perspectives.
One person's crazy is another person's bliss :)
I didn't mean to discount anyone's ability to challenge what was said. I believe a healthy debate is just that, and if anything, read too much into the reason behind the response (not the fact that there was one.)
I usually only have to issue apologies after family gatherings, particularly funerals. I've scanned a hand-written form letter and forward it accordingly, just so that it feels a little personal, but not too much.