The pleasures and pains of a writing workshop
Rebecca Ford describes her experience with a writing workshop in this article from More Intelligent Life:
I’m getting very good at finding the positive in otherwise painful stories. I’m in a ten-week writing workshop with ten other amateur aspirants. The other students in my class are writing their way through ugly divorces, premature babies, the death of the their parents and the general loneliness of New York City. Their stories are often ambitious, heavy and not very good.
I’m here for the deadlines. Ten weeks ago I signed up for this workshop because I found that I wasn’t writing. Besides e-mails and blog posts and the occasional rant to the cable company, I wasn’t really writing for myself. It turns out it’s difficult to call yourself a writer without actually writing a story here and there.
I’m like that, too. I need deadlines. I need an excuse to set aside time to write. A paid-for excuse.
Ford finds disappointment in her workshop, but also self-knowledge. I agree that sometimes the best workshop sessions are the ones in which you don’t hear what you expected or hoped to hear about your work. After all, praise for what you already do well doesn’t help you grow.
Are you ready to dip your toe into a writing workshop? Charlottesville’s new writing community, WriterHouse, will be offering classes, workshops, and other events this summer. I hope to see you there.
Filed under: charlottesville, virginia, workshops & classes, writing | Tagged: More Intelligent Life, Rebecca Ford, writing workshops
Elizabeth: I have to admit, I’m not fan of writing workshops or creative writing classes. I wrote about this on my blog, a post called “Writing 101″, so I won’t belabor the point, merely say that most creative writing instructors (and I was one) are doing it for the simple, mercenary motive of making money. Few, if any, believe their classes will produce a better quality writer and the honest ones will confess to feeling some guilt for making a dime off people when they know writing can’t be taught. Real writers write regardless of the circumstances and you can’t teach discipline and perseverance. Thanks for this…
Hi, Cliff, good to hear from you again!
I always flinch a bit at any description of “real” writers because the definitions provided almost always classify me as “unreal.”
Some things can be taught — grammar, the proper use of technique, the literary tradition (i.e., The Canon), how to critique your own and other’s writing. Some things perhaps cannot. An ear for language, a sense of the telling detail or the apt metaphor — perhaps they cannot be taught.
Discipline and perseverance — I’d put them in a grey area. I think they can be encouraged, if not taught.
I don’t think workshops can make a good writer great, but they can make good writers better, and give good writers a forum and structure for their work. I wouldn’t be involved with WriterHouse if I didn’t believe that.
Here’s Cliff’s Writing 101 post: http://cliffjburns.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/writing-101/. It’s harsh, but there’s some good advice in it.
I haven’t yet read Cliff Burns’s post, but I will. In general, though, I disagree about workshops and creative writing classes. The desire can’t be learned, and perhaps the artistry can’t either. But writing also about craft and there clearly are techniques that one can learn in a class. A writer might be able to deduce these techniques by reading great books–not a bad idea–but classes can distill the principles and save a writer time. I know I’ve learned from the classes I’ve taken.
It’s a good subject for debate. But I’ve had extended conversations with a number of very good writers who use creative writing classes to supplement their income and they were unanimous in their contention that workshops might provide some sense of community, belongingness, but as to actually producing good writers, forget it. And some of these folks have been teaching/leading workshops for many years. Authors have to make a dime to pay the rent and often workshop gigs are the best thing available. Sad but true…
I’ve had those conversations as well, and I know there are those who don’t believe in what they’re doing, but I know that there are many who have the opposite outlook. And I don’t know about producing “good writers”–that seems like a tough standard to measure–but I’m certain a workshop can produce better writers.
In the end, as you say, it’s a good subject for debate!
I’m not sure that any type of class produces good practitioners of the subject studied–I wouldn’t classify myself as *good* at yoga, tae kwon do, private investigation–but I’ve enjoyed and benefited from the classes I’ve taken in these areas, and I’m certainly better at them than I was before the classes.
As far as writing workshops go, I was lucky to have a leader who *does* believe in what she’s doing, and I certainly benefited from readers who let me know what I needed to get out of my head and onto paper to make my fiction better.