What can a creative writing workshop offer?
Hi writers,
Creative writing workshops are all unique. Each instructor facilitates their workshop in a different way, and each workshop is constantly evolving depending on the individuals taking part.
I have been thinking a lot lately about all that workshops have to offer. I run my workshops in direct response to those I experienced as a student earning my MFA. Yes, I took a lot of positive perspectives and guidelines from those workshops. But I also learned about what I wanted to leave behind, what other things I wanted to emphasize, and the safe space I wanted to create that I believe is essential for bringing out creativity.
I suspect that the ways in which I view and teach a workshop will change and shift over time. Right now, after teaching in a workshop setting for many years, here’s what I believe about workshops:
A workshop is an experience – each workshop session is different, and each workshop is made for us to exist in the moment, using all of our senses, to travel through all the emotions that pop up during this time, whether that’s joy, disappointment, sadness or excitement. To have time to sit and do something just for ourselves and in service of our art. To live into the decree that no man is an island, that the old days of Hemingway crafting prose alone in a bar is not the only way to write.
A workshop is personal – each individual will come into the workshop with different needs and wants – and these might even shift over time as each person discovers more about why they love to write and share.
A workshop is a process – although each workshop begins and ends at a set time and place, the workshops will often build upon each other as familiarity and comfort grows. We must be open and adaptable to those changes, because that's where some of the learning happens.
A workshop is a practice – there’s a reason that many writers call it their writing practice instead of their writing habit. It’s a lifelong experience of practicing – sometimes toward an end goal, sometimes just to flex some writing muscles, sometimes just to figure out what it is you have to say. Being able to enjoy that practice – even when it doesn’t look how you’d like it to look – is essential and vital to a workshop
A workshop is accountability – you know your deadlines ahead of time and this encourages your writing practice.
A workshop is for the joy and commitment of community – sharing, learning together and growing closer to the writer you want to be. Sitting with people and recognizing each of their unique gifts. Paying attention to what they have come there to say. Being a conscientious literary citizen and realizing that interdependence, rather than competition, is vital to creative work.
A workshop is for sparking new perspectives and observations about your work. You might see a word or a character or a chapter differently when reflected through someone else’s eyes.
A workshop is for the thrill of having your work read by someone else – a real, live human! For some this might be the first time they are sharing their work with others. This is a big deal! This is exciting!
A workshop is hearing the music of someone else’s work when they’re reading it aloud and being transported somewhere new. Or maybe it jogs a memory of yours. Or maybe it makes you think of a piece you’ve been trying to write for a long time, and suddenly you get a new idea.
A workshop is for the challenge of putting yourself out there and doing something brave. All creative work is brave. Creative work in community is a whole new level of brave.
A workshop is for revising with intention. To recognize which feedback was helpful and which you can discard. To recognize when and how to identify helpful feedback and how to give helpful feedback.
A workshop is for the challenge of learning something new - whatever that might be.
When you’re done with the workshop you’re not done with the full experience of workshopping. You still have the opportunity to process what you’ve discovered about your work, read over the comments from your other classmates, and simply let the workshop sit. There’s no rushing this part of the process.
Now that we’ve had a moment to sit with what a workshop is, here’s what a workshop is not: a workshop is not for making something perfect right away.
It’s tempting to go into workshop thinking that you’ll leave with all the answers. That a lightbulb will go off immediately. That every question you had about your work will be unequivocally answered.
If we just ask the right questions, if we just provide exactly the right excerpt, if the piece is at the perfect spot for revision … then, with one pass at workshop, we will be able to create something perfect.
(After all, we have bared our souls in writing, to multiple people. That’s nerve wracking! We deserve to get something perfect out of it, right?)
But that’s often not the case.
Workshop is not for making something perfect because it’s about the process as much as the result.
Waiting for perfection (which doesn’t actually exist anyways) can set you up for disappointment. I’ve seen some people walk out of workshops thinking it was their fault that workshop didn’t provide all the answers. That if they’d just provided the perfect excerpt with the appropriate intro questions … that maybe if their piece was a bit further along … they’d walk away from their workshop with all the ingredients for a perfect piece of writing.
So don’t be afraid to sit with the experience. To play the long game. To be open to the feedback, if it’s helpful or if it’s not. The feedback is important, yes. Making your work better is important, yes. In fact, it is one of the main reasons we come to workshop. But if we stand single-mindedly in that goal we lose out on everything else a workshop can offer.
And just maybe, like a good kind of avalanche, the topics and issues and questions discussed in workshop will jiggle a small rock that, once moved, will sweep forward a new perspective.