Charlottesville Words

Kirsten Ogden at KR Blog asks, “What do writers do in Writing Workshops, and how do writers know how to do it?”

Good question! Ogden describes several different workshops she’s been part of, good and bad, and shares some resources she’s found. Such as:

I did find a few helpful essays inside of books, such as Sands Hall’s article “Making Workshops Work” in Writer’s Workshop in a Book. Hall shares a succinct overview of what the workshop is. The definition: “A workshop consists of a group of people, each of whom brings some literary understanding to the table, gathered to tell each other what is working and what is not in some pages of their writing, and in the process to explore, uncover, and discuss aspects of writer’s craft.” This seemed like a good definition, but it does have the assumption of “literary understanding” coming to the table. When is this learned?

I thoroughly enjoyed scanning The Writing Workshop Notebook: Notes on creating and workshopping” by Alan Ziegler. He spends Part I of his book discussing the creation of drafts, but Part II is magic, and goes through what happens once the draft is done and ready to be critiqued. Here is his definition:

“The aim of the workshop is to move the writing along, mostly by means of group critiques. Time may also be devoted to: discussing the work of published writers, presenting writing assignments talking about craft issues, and occasionally whining and commiserating.”

Don’t discount the whining and commiserating part! I think every critique session should allow a few minutes for whining and commiserating, maybe 5 minutes. Then on with the work!