What do writers do in Writing Workshops, and how do writers know how to do it? That was the question I blurted out to some colleagues recently as we were discussing what, exactly, it was that we taught in the undergraduate and graduate writing workshop. Do we, educators, simply facilitate students talking to each other about their work? Are we assuming some sort of prior knowledge? In this era of “academic” creative writing, what concepts are we teaching, and how are we assessing?
This isn’t a new topic on the KR Blog, but it’s worthy of continued discussion as hundreds of high school, college, and budding writers set off for summer writing workshops or prepare themselves for entry into the academic workshop in September. I was trying to think back to my own “workshop” experiences in my undergraduate and graduate education. I vaguely remember that my introductory and advanced creative writing classes in my undergraduate years had some workshopping ‘units’, but it was less about receiving useful feedback and was mostly an exercise in giving feedback based on our personal tastes. The workshop experience felt similar in graduate school–less a course in which we learn the many ways we can give feedback, the many types of feedback we can give, and our tastes as readers, and more of just “here’s what I think of your piece.” Occasionally someone said something useful and helpful to the writer, but mostly it felt like an exercise in egos: “here’s what I think. Live with it.” I remember it as a pretty disheartening experience, actually, and was deemed “over-sensitive” by some peers.
When I took a local, community workshop with Jack Grapes, LA Writing Guru of The Method, I liked the way that we focused on a writing concept each week, and then practiced it, and then read it out loud for the group to critique based on the critique parameters of whether we were successful or not in practicing the weekly concept.
David Baker‘s poetry workshop was extremely instructive in learning the kind of reader we were, what our sensibilities were, and then using that as part of our strength in critiquing the work of others. He also moved through some poetry concepts–compression, for instance, which helped us revise our own work individually, but also gave us a ‘crib sheet’ for responding to the work of others. Our discussions never turned into “what I like” and “what I don’t like” but were rooted in the why’s of such questions–a focus on what the genre desired and needed, and how we, readers, could help the writer shape the piece according to his or her goals for the piece.
I used to not let my undergraduate writers talk during our workshop sessions; young writers tend to want to defend their work if someone “doesn’t get it” instead of going back to the piece to see it from a different perspective. After Rosanna Warren‘s adult workshop, however, I got a sense of how important it was for readers–seasoned or not– to hear the writer’s goals for a piece of work and then to approach critique through that lens. Instead of sharing whether we liked the piece or the style, we learned instead how to apply our skills as readers to help the other writer develop her vision for a poem.
I realize, though, that adult workshops absent of the “academic” setting, such as that of Rosanna Warren’s, may differ from the constraints placed upon teachers and writers in the high school, college, and university. In the liberal arts university, usually anyone can pop in to learn creative writing (except for that occasional university that requires a writing sample for admission into a course). So, with undergraduate writers who have limited exposure to reading, writing, revising, and critiquing, what are the goals for the teacher in such a class?
Years ago I had a good pal who was my writing buddy. We would meet every week to discuss each other’s work, and it was great. What a gem she was. I moved off and we lost touch, but somehow we managed to know just what the other needed, in terms of feedback, and also managed to know how tough or gentle the language of delivery needed to be. I wrote my first screenplay with her, and it received honorable mention in a well-known competition, mostly thanks to her diligent editorial companionship. But, if I hadn’t had this writing pal (and I don’t have one now) what to do? And, how did I learn these skills? How do I teach them? How do I keep applying them consistently to my own work and to the work of others?
Perusing the book aisles, there are hardly any “writing workshop” books. There are “get writing!” books and “get published!” books, but not a lot on revision. (They’re out there, I know, but they’re less common than the “get published” books). 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.”
He also goes over types of feedback, from “classified comments” to “collaborative comments,” and includes sample critique commentary from students. All of his information felt like an argument for the writing workshop as the most important experience a writer could have–as long as writers left their egos outside, teachers prepped as hard as writers, and a process for improving the work was being taught and practiced. Unfortunately, I’ve talked to too many colleagues, and have observed too many workshops, in which the teacher sits and listens while the class goes from student to student listening to repetitive likes and dislikes, with the occasional comment from the instructor, and no real focus. Like everything, some workshops are great, and some really stink. The good writer is able to weed through the commentary and get to something worthwhile.
Perhaps more important than the workshop itself–which purports to help writers “fix” or “improve” their pieces, is the understanding that writing is a process, and workshop critique is one small part of that process. There are skills involved in writing, and it’s up to each of us, individually, to ‘work the program’ as it were–to revisit our own work or the work of others not with the goal of fixing or correcting or bettering even, but with the goal to observe, note, and become aware of what is at work in the piece. Whether we’re practicing writing in a workshop setting, or with a buddy writer, or with a group of strangers, or with a group who have a common interest and theme, or by ourselves, the goal isn’t simply getting the writing to a particular place, since we all know we could keep working on pieces forever (and some of us do). Instead, the goal is to write–and whether that writing is “good” or not by our own standards, not by some arbitrary set of standards that changes through time according to who’s publishing, who’s writing, or who’s winning all the accolades. Good writing, and the workshopping of it, has to be about what we want the piece to be.
How to teach this in the academic setting, with all of the required grades and assessments and feelings at stake? Let me know when you figure it out.