Letters to the Editor
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My dad is a writer -- a very, very bad writer!
So is Cary!
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Is your dad Kilgore Trout?
I don't know, there's something attractive about the notion of spending my retirement engaging hopelessly awful artistic endeavors, thus allowing myself the vanity of believing that I am a genius misunderstood by great unwashed, only to be appreciated after my death.
Roll with it! The questions he asks you are hilarious, you should write essays for each one. Make them really elaborate and wordy, like your most pretentious college-era Shit Crit class.
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So many ways to say "no"
Google for "ways to say no". Pick your favorite techniques and use them. Keep breathing through the fallout. Your dad will survive.
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Miguel Cervantes totally sucked...
...until the very end of his career, and life.
Then he wrote Don Quixote...
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The one thing succesful writers have in common
The Paris Review ran a series of interviews with successful writers. The one thing they had in common was a fixed, immutable writing schedule. One impervious to deaths of family members (some will take offense to this, but writers aren't necessarily nice people--I grew up with one). The LW's father does not appear to have this businesslike attitude.
Another trait is independence. In view of the number of rejections most authors face, a certain independence is needed. The need for constant approval and reassurance is antithetical to the writer's sanity.
Finally, it takes 10 to 15 years to find a voice, on the average. But the most important variable in all of this is a fixed writing schedule.
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Sounds like the plot of a charming and sad little movie
that I'd be happy to pay to see.
My first reaction was Kilgore Trout, too, as the poster above mentioned.
Maybe your dad is on to something...
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Tell him you're not a professional
Next time he asks for feedback, tell him it appears the years of feedback from you and your siblings appear to have been wrong, as it's resulted in no bites from publishers, and tell him you'll be happy to pass along his questions and his manuscript to an editor of a major publishing house. That way you've satisfied his request for input without having to agonize over your own creative writing (coming up with new ways to critique his work in a positive manner). Yes, he may balk - you did write that he won't join writers' groups or take writing classes because the instructors and other writers aren't expert enough ... so why would he think you NON-writers are?
Of course, that's exactly why he asks you family members, and not outside, impartial readers. The man is clearly afraid of rejection, and at age 65 is in desperate need of talk therapy. Perhaps you could convince him he could write out his issues and make double use of his creative outlet needs?
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The Brood Meridian
NCFOM, what you are doing is unhealthy. You have to ditch your Daddy on this critic thing. He doesn't really want a critic. He doesn't want a cheerleader. He wants everyone to feel tortured.
I believe you when you say your father cannot write. You told me the one most important thing that I needed to know to understand that your father will never be a good writer. He doesn't read. Those nuts and bolts books he is undoubtedly reading to make himself a better writer will do him no good in the face of this one, overwhelming fault. In fact, they make him worse. Some of the worst writing is that which shows all the bare bones of the struggle. I might add that some of it gets published. Miracles are always possible.
For Christmas, get him a copy of "Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers" by John C. Gardner. He will complain he is not young, but incribe it "to someone who is ever youthfully hopeful." The book is difficult. He probably won't finish it. On New Year's Day, you write him a short note telling him that you will not longer help him with his critiques on the advice of a therapist. You can actually go to one if you want or you can just lie. If he pushes you or ridicules you for going to a therapist, bluntly tell him that you felt that you needed the help to explore dysfunction in your family of origin. Tell him you may write a book about the experience. Tell him you love him but now that you are contemplating this nonfiction, you will be filled with angst and despair over your own work. Actually, if you only write a few pages, you will be filled with angst and despair so you won't need to lie.
Also, be glad he is only writing. My own father took up buying racehorses in his retirement years. No, he knew nothing about racehorses, but it was certainly a good way to destroy his financial security.
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A little re-channeling
Your dad sounds like one of the more colorful (and relatively benign) eccentrics in the annals of fatherdom. Steer him toward writing his autobiography. THAT's the interesting stuff. I bet you wouldn't even mind reading it. Hey, I'd read it myself.
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Murder He Wrote
It was a long a boring life. The hours passed as a snail -- except in bits encouraged on by sex and fun, addling the noodle and alleviating the soul.
Otherwise: the scratch of the pencil to parchment, the click of the typewriter key on its arm, the brush of the paint brush on canvas... the mourning of a dead soul crying out for release, however it may come.. even by.... MURDER.
For a soul can only drift for so long... seeking, wishing for experience. From this soul's corporeal hands, nothing of merit shall spill. For there is no, essence... no being... no merit nor mind of wit or fear. He may not feel mirth, 'less it be bestowed on him. He may not love, 'less it be showered on him, and he may not feel suspense, less it be inflicted on him.... by... MURDER!
In that last, gory eye, as you quiver above him, blade glimmering.... only then will he see:
... he should have used fewer adjectives. Adjectives for....BLOODY MURDER.
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Cary's right
It's not about art...it's about control. You'd probably be just as miserable if he was talented and/or successful.
Your father is lonely. Your siblings and your mother constitute his entire life. Your approval and enthusiastic participation in his life are the cornerstones of his happiness.
He's afraid of other people. He's afraid of disapproval. He's afraid of not being the expert. So he's limiting his emotional engagement with humanity to those people who he feels OWE him moral support: his wife and offspring.
Failure to provide it will read to him as lack of love. Hence the hypersensitivity to criticism. He doesn't ask for serious feedback. He just wants you to recognize the complexity and the value of what he's doing and to admire him for his efforts.
You have to say "no." But, when looking for "no," look for a loving "no."
I'm not sure what that is, but it's some form of offering to participate in his life in such a way that he can get some real fulfillment...from something outside his family.