Where to Workshops?
Later this year I'm teaching a Travel Writing Bootcamp. It's a slightly ridiculous name I know, but it should sound like a way to kickstart your writing while sidestepping the traditional workshop model. Not that there's anything wrong with the traditional workshop. I still have a great creative writing workshoppping group and use workshops in most of my classes. But as Louis Menand points out in the New Yorker article, Show or Tell, we've been using workshops as a method of teaching writing for more than 50 years. In all that time shouldn't we have evolved some new tools for writing?
Menand's essay tackles questions like can you teach writing succinctly ('What is usually said is that you can’t teach inspiration, but you can teach craft.') and gives a romping history of how creative programs grew up in the States throughout the 1940s and much later in the UK and Australia. Workshopping as a technique isn't really discussed in depth, but essentially it's the process of getting a class to share work with fellow students and encourage discussion around it. Some interesting variations are offered - "One of Rick Moody’s teachers at Columbia asked the class to indicate, by a show of hands, how many found Moody’s work boring." This is the kind of bloodsport feedback that most students just aren't ready for.
Feedback should be a deep engagement with the work. Friends and family may say they like a work, but a workshopper will say why they like the work, what techniques worked and suggest new directions. Poor feedback is prescriptive and pushes the work in the direction of the commenter. In a workshopping group, it's a fine line between cross-pollination and blandisation. So workshoppers need to bring work that can sustain criticism and have some idea of direction. Bringing fragments is fine, but a workshopping group isn't going to write a piece for you.
In classes, I've seen students who just want praise. And praise will encourage you to keep writing and give you a good idea of what works. But workshopping shouldn't just be about praise. The gushy soccer mom who tells you "Good job!" isn't going to improve your work and isn't really engaging with it. When someone uses flat statements about 'liking' or 'disliking' something they should be pursued by a facilitator, because people can like stories just because they include cats, fluffy bunnies or your favourite holiday destination. A workshop likes something because it's good writing even if it says things that your fellow workshoppers may not like.
There's a great response to Menand's article pointing out that creative writing programs have filled the gap left by publishing houses. Certainly great editors can push along a work, but as publishing is being pressured for the bottom line it's harder for editors to find time to develop work. The masterclass model which includes one-on-one feedback on your piece with a teacher is an attempt to fill the gap. The 'with feedback' model is popular but pricey. Plus while students love 'name writers', developing work is about good teaching as much as good writing and that name writer may have more instinct than information about writing. Worse still is the idea that name writer will hand you a golden cookie cutter so you can write just like them. Good teachers should encourage your voice which can be difficult if a teacher just wants to hear echoes of their own.
When I sign up to participate in a class I'm looking for something that will prioritise my writing and could offer new craft or technique. Prioritising is about saying saying this class will force me to devote time and brainspace to a piece of writing. That's what I want the bootcamp to do. It will be about offering techniques and throwing exercises at students that get them to examine their own way of writing. Will it be useful to use in media res or do their stories start somewhere else? Should you close where you start for an ouroboros effect or do you want some loose ends that a reader will answer?
And there needs to be writing, as well as chalk and talk. No class should be like one teacher Menand mentions whose "preferred pedagogical venue was the cocktail party, where he would station himself in the kitchen, near the ice trays, and consume vodka by the bottle while holding forth to the gathered disciples." Well, maybe the vodka would be a useful teaching aid. But a writing class should work towards workshopping. If you've pushed people to write there should be a chance for them to get a wider audience for it. And a well-run workshop should be one of the most helpful audiences your writing will get.
I'm keen to hear about what techniques have worked for you as a writer. Has there been inspirational teaching that has kicked your writing in a new direction? Has there been an evolution beyond workshopping? Why do you sign up for courses, workshops or masterclasses?
Image courtesy of Cardigan Press & the Great State of Iowa.
