What Are Writing Workshops Really Like? (Part 2)

Last week, I wrote about what in-person writing workshops are really like. This week, I’ll talk about my experiences with online workshops. A lot of what I wrote about last week also applies to online writing workshops, so please check out that post. These are just my experiences. Yours might be different.

The Format

Online writing workshops vary a lot in how they’re run. Sometimes you post your writing on a website and wait until somebody critiques it. Sometimes your writing is emailed to the workshop members, and the critiques are emailed to you. The number of critiques that you’re required to write totally depends on the workshop.

My Experience

One of the best decisions that I made in my life was joining an adult online writing workshop when I was a teenager. I was just starting to get serious about writing. Almost all of the writers in the workshop were much better and more experienced than me. Most of them were extremely kind, patient, and helpful. They corrected all of my beginner mistakes. I learned so much from them that when I started taking beginner writing workshops in college, I felt like I was ahead of the other students. I already knew what the professors were teaching because I’d already learned it in the online writing workshop. It definitely made me more comfortable in the college-level workshops. I also probably got better grades than I would have if I hadn’t been in the online workshop for years before I started college. The online workshop was great for a beginner like me. For a writing workshop, it was also very inexpensive. I think it was $47 a year back in the early 2000s.

It’s difficult to find a good online writing workshop that doesn’t cost a ton of money, especially if you’re an experienced writer. Most of the free workshops that I’ve come across are made up of inexperienced writers who are just starting their writing careers. These free workshops might be great for beginners, but they might not give experienced writers the help they need. I’ve seen a lot of critiques of experienced writers that say, “This is a great story. There isn’t anything wrong with it.” That always makes me wonder if the person giving the critique isn’t experienced enough with writing to see the problems. That kind of critique also isn’t helpful for the writer. I ended up quitting the writing workshop that I joined as a teenager because as I became a better writer, the critiques became less and less helpful. I still wasn’t a good writer, so if I wanted to keep getting better, I needed to find a different writing workshop.

I tried a few other inexpensive online writing workshops, but I still wasn’t getting the help I needed. For every great critique, I was getting two or three that just said, “This is a good story.” Writing workshops can be time consuming. You have to write and revise your own writing as well as critique other people’s writing. There are often strict due dates. I did learn a lot from critiquing other people’s writing, but the critiques that I was getting weren’t worth the work that it took to participate in the workshop.

By far the best online workshops that I’ve done were run by colleges. A lot of colleges offer online classes, including writing workshops. The workshops are led by professors. The workshop members are taught how to write good critiques, and the critiques are often graded, so there is incentive for the workshop members to do a good job on them. I almost always got helpful critiques from college online writing workshops. The only drawback to these workshops is the cost. They’re usually several hundred dollars. You might also have to apply and be accepted to the college before you’re allowed to take them.  

The moral of the story: if you find an online workshop that fits your needs and gives quality critiques, then join it. Good online workshops seem to be rare beasts.

The Trolls

A lot of online writing workshops don’t have a workshop leader who keeps tight control over what’s happening. In many cases, anyone can join an online workshop, and the workshop leader doesn’t read the critiques unless somebody complains about something. There are often trolls in these workshops who join just to cause trouble, give cruel critiques, and upset people. Be prepared to get a few troll critiques in an online workshop. Either ignore them or report them to the workshop leader.

The strangest thing that ever happened to me in an online workshop? Nothing too bad has ever happened. I once got a religious sermon instead of a critique. The person who gave me the sermon then flooded my inbox with Bible quotes. When I was a teenager, I got a very detailed critique that compared my writing style to cat food. According to the critique, my writing style was chunky, unappealing, and not something that you want to look at very closely or for very long.

So, that’s online writing workshops for you.

What Are Writing Workshops Really Like? (Part 1)

I think it was Stephen King who said that a bad writing workshop does more harm than good.

That’s totally true. I’ve been in writing workshops at several different schools, at a nonprofit adult-education organization, and online. I’ve been in good workshops and bad workshops. This blog post is just about my experience. Yours might be different. I’ll talk about online workshops next week. This week’s post is about in-person workshops.

The Format

At an in-person workshop, the members’ written pieces are distributed a few days or weeks before the workshop. Before the workshop, every person writes a critique of the piece being workshopped that day and puts notes in the piece’s margins. Most workshops have rules about the length of the critique: I’ve written critiques that were anywhere from a paragraph long to several pages long.

On the day of the workshop, bring your critique and your copy of the piece with the margin notes. Usually, everybody sits in a circle or at a long table so that you can all see each other. The author is then asked to read part of the piece out loud. After that, the author isn’t allowed to speak anymore. The author sits silently and takes notes during the workshop. The author isn’t allowed to explain or defend their work. The workshop itself is just a conversation about the author’s work. What’s good about it? What isn’t working? What’s confusing? There is often disagreement in workshops, so the author has to decide which comments to listen to and which to ignore. Usually, if more than one person brings up the same issue, then the author should listen to them.

At the end of the workshop, the author is sometimes given a few minutes to ask for clarification about anything that was brought up during the workshop. All of the workshop members give their critiques and notes to the author. And that’s the end.

The Critique

A lot of workshops have strict rules about how critiques need to be written. Be nice. Always explain why you like or don’t like something about a piece. Some workshops allow you to point out problems in a piece but not make suggestions about how to fix the problem. Critiques are written in “compliment sandwich” form. Start and end the critique by praising something in the piece. Keep the criticism in the middle and try to layer praise and criticism.

Your Writing

What type of piece should you submit to the workshop? Something that fits the guidelines of the workshop (most of them have page limits and genre requirements). Pick something that you’re open to having criticized. If you pick a piece that you’re really attached to, you might get your feelings hurt. The piece is going to be criticized. It’s probably going to be criticized a lot. It’s usually helpful to pick something that has problems that you don’t know how to fix. The workshop can help you sort out the problems.

The Nerves

Will you be nervous on the day that your piece is workshopped? Yes. Is there anything that you can do to be less nervous? Probably not.

The Good Workshop

Good workshops are amazing. They’re probably one of the most helpful things that you can do for your writing. If you’re stuck on a piece, a good workshop will get you unstuck. You’ll leave a good workshop feeling great in an “I can totally handle this” type of way.

In a good workshop, everybody is respectful. They understand that the pieces are works-in-progress and not finished pieces. A lot depends on the workshop leader. The leader should keep everything under control and know when to change the subject so that everybody doesn’t start harping on the same point. It can get annoying for the author when everybody keeps pointing out the same problem over and over.

The Mental Hunger Games

Bad workshops are very, very bad. I’ve seen people cry during workshop. I’ve seen people storm out of the room during workshop. I’ve seen heated arguments. I’ve seen a workshop leader scream at the workshop participants. I’ve heard stories of walls being punched, objects being thrown, desks being tipped over.

I quit writing for almost a year after a bad workshop. I was discouraged and no longer interested in anything that had to do with writing. The workshop was so stressful that I felt physically sick on workshop days. I couldn’t get out of the workshop because I needed the college credits.

The biggest problem with this particular workshop was the competitiveness. I’m not competitive at all. Being “the best” is nice, but I’m at a writing workshop to learn and get help. Writing workshops can breed competitiveness because you get to see everybody’s work. Sometimes you can’t help comparing it to your own. At this workshop, some people were tearing down other people to make themselves feel better. Someone called a story “Stupid shit” in front of the author and everyone else. Someone tried to spread a rumor that one of the women in the workshop was a prostitute. There was a lot of trash-talking in the hallway before and after workshop. There was a lot of crying. People were terrified to submit work to the workshop because it was all criticism and very little praise. Some workshop members would praise your story to your face before workshop and then say horrible things about it during workshop. It was all very childish and exhausting. The workshop leader yelled at us but didn’t do much to stop it.

The strangest thing that happened to me during that workshop? I was on Yahoo! in the middle of the night, and an IM popped up. It was from one of my male classmates. It said, “You’re a horrible writer, but at least you have a damn fine ass.”

So, that’s writing workshops for you.

Best Books of April

Here are the best books that I read this month. The summaries come from Goodreads; the reviews are mine.

The Spectacular Now – Tim Tharp

Sutter Keely. He’s the guy you want at your party. He’ll get everyone dancing. He’ll get everyone in your parents’ pool. Okay, so he’s not exactly a shining academic star. He has no plans for college and will probably end up folding men’s shirts for a living. But there are plenty of ladies in town, and with the help of Dean Martin and Seagram’s V.O., life’s pretty fabuloso, actually. 

Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee. Aimee’s clueless. Aimee is a social disaster. Aimee needs help, and it’s up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go forth and prosper. But Aimee’s not like other girls, and before long he’s in way over his head. For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone else’s life—or ruin it forever.

Review: I have no idea how to review this book. I considered not doing it because I don't know what to say, but I'm going to give it a try.

This is one of the most honest and realistic books that I've read in a long time. I know that a lot of people hate the ending, but I thought that the book ended in the most realistic way that it could. I would have been disappointed if it had ended in a morality-tale kind of way. Alcoholics don't just stop being alcoholics.

The dialogue is amazing. Sutter is very funny, and he always knows what to say. I like that he's an unreliable narrator who is incapable of seeing himself clearly. I like the glimpses of him that we get through how the other characters react to him. I like that he truly cares about people and wants to protect them or make their lives better. He can save everybody but himself.

Even though I can see the good in Sutter, and his jokes are hilarious, I dislike him. He's an arrogant, self-centered, attention whore. I probably would have been one of the people yelling, "Sit down!" when he started singing at prom. I think it's irritating when someone needs to be the center of attention all the time. I spent the whole book going back and forth between hating him and feeling sorry for him. I think I mostly hated him for his attempt to "fix" Aimee. He decided that something was wrong with her and that he would be the one to fix it. Even if he did end up making her life better, his behavior seems very presumptuous. He probably could have gotten the same results if he'd just been a good, honest friend to her and treated her nicely. 

Usually, I try to be more objective about the books I read, but I guess this one hit too close to home for me. I know people like Sutter. Reading it made me uncomfortable. I liked the book a lot, but it was also like watching a slow-motion train wreck. My brain is still processing it. I think my brain will be processing it for a long time.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. 

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive. 

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Review: This is a peculiar book. I was intrigued by the combination of fiction and vintage photographs, but it didn't work as well as I'd hoped. The writing is beautiful, and the photographs are beautiful, but they went together a little awkwardly. Some of the photographs seem like they were forced into the story. The story includes a few pointless details to accommodate the photographs. The plot is slightly convoluted because it has to explain the pictures. However, this is a very unique idea, and I will happily read the sequel. It took an amazing imagination to write this book.

The best part of the book is the imagery. There are some awesome scenes. My favorites are the peculiar children raising the dead and Jacob and Emma visiting the shipwreck for the first time. The monsters are also vividly described and creepy. I got a good sense of the island, its history, and its people. I liked that a lot.

Some elements of the plot are predictable. As soon as Jacob saw his first monster, I knew where the story was going, but I liked the ending. The identity of the monster was a surprise to me. The loops could have used more explanation. I don't think I totally understand how or why they work.

Unlike the peculiar children, Jacob is forgettable. He's bland and ordinary, which was probably intentional, but I like narrators with a little more personality. I finished the book yesterday, and I've already forgotten pretty much everything about him. The only thing that I remember clearly is his creepy relationship with Emma. Emma is 80-something-years-old. Jacob is 16. Emma dated Jacob's grandfather. Jacob is in love with her. Yuck. Just, yuck. (By the way, I had this exact same yuck problem with Twilight.) Age is much more than just how you look.

Aside from the romance, this book is unique, mysterious, and captivating. If you're looking for an out-of-the-box YA book, I'd recommend this one.

Warm Bodies – Isaac Marion

'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead. 

Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can't understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins. 

This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won't be changed without a fight...

Review: This is a retelling of R(omeo) and Julie(t) . . . with zombies. A zombie, R, falls in love with a human teenager, Julie, and they might have accidentally figured out a way to end the zombie apocalypse.

The beginning of this book was the best part. It's kind of funny, and zombie "culture" was interesting. The zombie marriage and the sudden appearance of children was amusing. I didn't love R, but he was entertaining enough to keep me reading. Julie kicked ass. She was a little angsty, but she was my favorite character because she was never a damsel in distress. She was calm, independent, and in control. I liked that. The love story in this book was both disgusting and sweet. I didn't know that was possible.

I didn't think that the rest of the book was as strong as the beginning. Some parts felt a little preachy. I didn't think that the Julie/Perry relationship was handled very well. Julie's current boyfriend, R, killed and ate her former boyfriend, Perry, and she didn't seem to mind. That bothered me a lot. Everyone forgave R way too easily. The excuses that were given were "R is a monster and couldn't help it," and "Perry didn't want to be alive, anyway." Julie was upset about the deaths of other people in her life. Why wasn't she upset about this? The value of Perry's life and his relationship with Julie were downplayed so that the reader didn't lose sympathy for R. That felt cheap to me. Even if R couldn't help being a monster, he should still have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

This book is a quick and entertaining read. It's not a typical zombie novel. I appreciate that it is different and unusual.

~*~

All The Things = 19 books.

I’m currently reading: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami 

My Critical Essay

Last week I promised that I’d post the critical essay that I used to apply (and get accepted) to graduate school for Writing for Children and Young Adults. The entire essay is below. As you will see, it’s not a spectacular piece of essay writing.

~*~

Artwork as Foreshadowing in Bridge to Terabithia

Even though Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia was published in 1977, ten years before I was born, it was one of the books that I could relate to most easily when I was a child. Like the characters in the book, I lived in a small farming and ranching community on the outskirts of a large city that my father worked in every day, but I had never visited. Like the characters in the book, my friends and I spent a lot of time sitting in overcrowded classrooms and running around in cow fields. We also loved to play in the forest of giant cottonwoods down by the creek. Katherine Paterson got the details of rural life—right down to the underfunded schools, the overworked parents, and the community’s reluctance to embrace change—so correct that I was immediately drawn into the story. As a child, I had never read about characters who were so similar to me. Bridge to Terabithia remains one of my favorite books to this day.

Bridge to Terabithia is about two ten-year-old friends, Jesse Aarons and Leslie Burke, who create Terabithia, an imaginary kingdom in the woods that they rule as king and queen. The only way to enter Terabithia is to swing across the creek using an old rope hanging from the branch of a crabapple tree. At the end of the book, while Jesse is on his first-ever trip to Washington D.C., Leslie tries to swing into Terabithia alone. The rope breaks, she falls, hits her head on a rock, and drowns in the creek. As a child who had not read many novels, Leslie’s death completely blindsided me. As an adult with much more reading experience, I am impressed with the massive amount of subtle foreshadowing that the book contains. One of the most interesting ways that Leslie’s death is foreshadowed is by references to two pieces of artwork.

The first piece of artwork is described right before Jesse meets his new neighbor, Leslie. One of Jesse’s hobbies is drawing funny pictures of animals in strange predicaments. Minutes before he meets Leslie, he draws this:

“This one was a hippopotamus just leaving the edge of a cliff, turning over and over—you could tell by the curving lines—in the air toward the sea below where surprised fish were leaping goggle-eyed out of the water. There was a balloon over the hippopotamus—where his head should have been but his bottom actually was—‘Oh!’ it was saying. ‘I seem to have forgot my glasses’” (Paterson 10).  

The image of the drawing is still in the mind of the reader when Jesse meets Leslie. It stays in the back of the reader’s mind all through the book because Leslie is one of the few people who support Jesse’s love of drawing. Jesse’s hippopotamus drawing is evoked again at the end of the book when he is visiting the art museum in Washington D.C. without Leslie:

“There they came upon a display case holding a miniature scene of Indians disguised in buffalo skins scaring a herd of buffalo into stampeding over a cliff to their death with more Indians waiting below to butcher and skin them. It was a three-dimensional nightmare version of some of his own drawings. He felt a frightening sense of kinship with it . . . . To himself he said, I don’t think I like it, but he could hardly pull himself away” (Paterson 100).

This passage about the buffalo hunt artwork increases the tension in the story and darkens the mood. Jesse is having fun before this passage. When he sees the buffalo hunt, he becomes uneasy, which makes the reader uneasy. Leslie dies while Jesse is visiting the art museum, but neither Jesse nor the reader learn about her death until he gets home. Several times during his trip to the museum, he wishes that he had invited Leslie to come with him because she loves art as much as he does. He cannot wait to get home and tell her about everything he saw. The increased tension caused by this passage very subtly lets the reader know that something bad is about to happen, and it will probably involve falling and death.

Jesse’s reaction to the buffalo hunt artwork is similar to his reaction to Leslie the first time he meets her. He feels a sense of kinship with her because her individuality makes her an outsider in the community. Jesse’s love of drawing makes him an outsider in his no-nonsense family. This kinship keeps pulling Jesse to Leslie despite the fact that he originally does not like her because she is the fastest runner in the fifth grade—a title that Jesse trained all summer to earn. Like Leslie herself, Jesse’s drawing of the hippo is imaginative and light-hearted. Like Leslie’s death, the buffalo hunt was a real event. After seeing the buffalo hunt, the reader knows that Jesse and Leslie are not in their imaginary Terabithia anymore. They are in the real world, and scary things are not as easily dealt with in the real world as they are in Terabithia. Because Jesse is drawn to artwork that involves falling, it is as if he feels such a strong kinship to Leslie that he is able to subconsciously predict that this imaginative girl will fall to her death.

    

It is not a coincidence that Jesse draws a hippo—a water creature—falling into the sea. Leslie’s death is also foreshadowed with dozens of references to falling, water, death, bad luck, the breakup of relationships and kingdoms, religion and spirituality, fear and fearlessness, and Jesse’s sense that his entire life “was delicate as a dandelion” (Paterson 77). I was most impressed by Katherine Paterson using artwork to foreshadow Leslie’s death because it fits with the book’s message about the importance of imagination. Before Jesse met Leslie, he had been “a nothing—a stupid, weird little kid who drew funny pictures and chased around a cow field trying to act big” (Paterson 126). Leslie had “tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world . . . . It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned to him in vision and strength” (Paterson 126). Jesse learns that his imagination and silly drawings are valuable, even if his family and classmates do not see the value in them. Leslie taught him that he can use his creativity to make the world a better place. Using artwork to foreshadow Leslie’s death is perfect because imagination is such an important part of the characters’ lives and the message of the story.

Works Cited

Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia. First Harper Trophy Edition. New York, New York:

 HarperCollins Children's Books, 1977. Print.