On Workshops
The Workshop Collection
If you’ve read my lil chat about the necessity of edits, then you’re in the right place for what comes next.
Because, my darlings, it’s time to summon those demons I keep talking about. In this case, it’s Critique we’ll call forth, but let me tell you, that B can vaporize an ego in one finely-tuned query on the wisdom of a gerrund.
Every story we scribe we must shove at an editor, probably while muttering about how it isn’t really done yet. These editors will want us to change things about our work, and it’s going to hurt and be hard and confusing. And it’s going to be transcendent and transformative and purifying. Sometimes all at once. Hurray.
People will tell you to divorce yourself from the process, and that it’s not about you, it’s about the writing. This is a filthy lie. All your writing connects to you, and is an effort to connect to others. Why else would you write it? But here’s the deal. If someone in the editor’s chair dislikes a truth that is yours, they’re not the editor for you. If, however, they help you tell that truth in a more honest and understandable way, then give me their number. I will bake you cookies and send them to you and only eat half of them myself.
The question is where to find editors. In theory, you can pay for them, but we’re writers; we have no money. You can find beta readers through your friends or that dreamland/horrorscape online. But. Friends. Enemies. Battlers against people who don’t like libraries. Have you considered writing workshops?
They’re terrifying. I love them.
The majority of my classes in grad school have a workshop component.
Through peer and professor critiques and discussions, I’ve pinpointed areas of strength to wield as I write. I’ve become aware of skills I need to strengthen. As I edit and write forward I can engage these mental muscles and make future work better at earlier stages.
The thing is that workshops aren’t just awesome and empowering. They’re really freaking hard, and I had to learn how to benefit from them and how to give the best of myself to them. In future posts, I’ll tell you what I mean. Those posts will be:
Receiving critiques: The good, the bad, and the people who honestly have nothing in common with you, but, bless them, they tried
Critiquing your peers: Learning from teaching
Those times when you thought you really had something, then you get comments back, and you end up sobbing on the phone to your sister.
Workshops! Those classes where we all carve out pieces of our works in progress (WIPs), and lob them, raw and screaming (we’re the ones screaming), into the world so people can look at their nakedness with cold analytical eyes and tell us their flaws. Here we go.
