Objections to the Workshop Method

While the classic "writing workshop" peer-critique method is used widely and successfully, it has its detractors. Objections to this classic workshop model include those listed below:

Asking the writer to stay silent and listen during discussion of her work is a form of oppression.
Maybe that’s true. If you think so, try "reverse workshop" variations: Have the writer speak for 10 minutes about the work in question while everyone else listens. Or have everyone write out one question for the writer, hand the questions to the writer, and let her read aloud and answer the questions.

A workshop is really a kind of peer pressure for everyone to “dumb down” their writing and make it bland and politically correct.
Caving in to “peer pressure” is a choice. Those who will do it merely to get praise and acceptance are either overdependent on praise or are in the wrong workshop.

The group-workshop process homogenizes people’s writing styles, and/or destroys their originality.
You were born unique, and have unique things to say, but originality, like wisdom, develops over time, and once developed it cannot be destroyed. Associations among artists do not automatically lead to compromise. Take for example writer Gertrude Stein and her salon, or the works of painters such as Picasso, Kandinsky, or Klee, whose works became more original and radical as they matured. If in your workshop you aren’t being encouraged and challenged to do yourself one better, you are in the wrong group.

Writing workshops aren’t for everybody.
That’s true, especially for young writers, under age 18. They should avoid workshops unless they are held in a school and moderated by a helpful and sympathetic teacher. Young people’s creative experiments should be shielded from the remarks and reactions of careless peers, or adults who hold standards that are anti-creative or punishingly high.

A workshop is basically a bunch of bad writers sitting around reading each other’s bad writing. Therefore it can be of no help to anyone.
Let’s pretend that’s true. If so, the only thing a writer could ever get out of a workshop is seeing what other writers do badly. And that by itself is an absolutely priceless lesson for any writer. This “basically a bunch of bad writers” remark came from a celebrated writer famously incapable of editing his own writing. He sent editors manuscripts thousands of words longer than the editors had asked for or could possibly publish. The editors were forced to craft and finalize his manuscripts by cutting excesses and repetitions. Such extensive editing annoyed the writer, but he had never learned to see his work as a reader might see it, and therefore had to cede to editors the power he should have wielded over his own writing. The ability to assess and craft one’s own work is precisely the power that develops most rapidly in a workshop setting.

Top Ten Blogs for Writers

Thanks to Tricia Grissom over at one of my favorite blogs, Coffee and Critique, for posting the link to the megablog that has picked the Top Ten Blogs for Writers out of hundreds of nominations. The top selections focus on going for the gold -- selling freelance articles. If you have not yet learned how to write articles for a mass audience, or have never tried, you can enroll in a journalism course and learn it in a short 15 weeks. In any case, the blogs are upbeat and inspiring, and we all need that right now.

Now They Have a Name for It

On the wonderful CR WRT OPPS site there's a posting announcing a reading series by

"Post-MFA / Pre-Book Poets."

Finally we have a category! See, we M.F.A.s who had no books thought that we were merely losers, when in fact we were "pre-book."

I spent 16 years pre-book. It was like spending 16 years pre-root-canal. I'd been warned that self-publishing could destroy my career. What career? Poetry is a career? For what percentage of the population? I decided to risk the said career and get it over with.

And -- surprising me endlessly -- the results have been all to the good: much satisfaction, a small monetary return. A "legitimate" poet turned green when I flaunted my $54 check from a bookstore that sold my books on consignment; she never got a check that big for her book! She actually grabbed the check from me to ascertain that it was what I said it was! Plus, I learned that I could have kept to myself that my book was self-published because it's got an ISBN, looks professional, and has another publisher's name on it. In some quarters my baby could pass as "legitimate"!

Now, poets M.F.A. and pre-M.F.A. are beginning to routinely self-publish, saving themselves 16 years of wasted time. While some of their efforts are a bit tentative, they haven't been consigned to career hell or even been burnt. BTW, the last 12 or so poetry books I've bought have all been chapbooks. Do you think I'm going to chase down and order some $22 hardback from the Press at the University of Squat, written by somebody I don't know? LOL!

Ships Start to Come In

This week I got multiple payoffs for hard work done long ago. Book about women's health care, the anthology Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak Out About Health Care in America (Penultimate Press), including essays by myself and former writing-group buds Cathy Luh and Janet Edwards, will be published on schedule and launched at the University of Missouri - St. Louis on November 19. Editors are writers Colleen McKee and Amanda Steibel, who spent 2 years seeking a publisher.

Then comes in the mail today the contract for two poems of mine to appear in as-yet unnamed anthology of St. Louis poets, edited by Matt Freeman (author of the admirable poetry collection Desolation on Delmar).

Introduction to Creative Writing, in the Washington University night school, had its first-ever workshop session Thursday. This one treated poetry by all 8 of my students -- some of whom had never before written a poem. Successful workshop on all counts. Next week a guest poet will read for the class and speak about her work: Susan Grigsby, former student in that same class in the Fall of 1997, who went on to a career as a poet for both adults and children.

Learned a lot in my poetry group tonight. It's a group of women called Loosely Identified. I've been going to the monthly meetings for little less than a year. They passed around a photo of the group as it looked 25 years ago. Some of the same people in the photo still attend meetings!

Helped another writer polish up a grant application. Sure hope she gets the $17,000 she's aiming for!

And I hugged a writer today. If you see one, please hug one.

Editorial Ass: why you should never submit unagented to publishing companies

Editorial Ass: why you should never submit unagented to publishing companies

Plain Talk about Agents

For serious dirt on Why You Need to Have an Agent, please see above link by Editorial Ass (a recovering Editorial Assistant). It's probably all true. Repeat: Publishing is a business. If you don't do business, you won't get your books published by major houses.

The Wasted Day

Plans fell through and I was alone. Painfully disappointed I packed a picnic and camera. Drove about 10 miles and hiked for 3 hours, with lunch near the end of it. Took 98 photographs, mostly flora. Wondered why four of my closest friends, intimates, are sick, all at the same time. Decided it couldn't be me. (Could it?) Needing a guaranteed intoxicant I listened to ABBA on the drive home. Back home, listened to disco CDs. Sent 2 encouraging emails to sick intimates, attaching photos. Wondered why I don't listen to more music, even though I have terrible taste. Admired the hummingbirds sipping homemade nectar. It's not red but they like it just the same. Tinkered with non-writing hobby while watching bad TV. With relief found somebody to IM with for a while before bed.

Very slowly, in the attic of my mind, began to think again about the 2 book manuscripts I've left in the pipeline for a couple of months because I don't know what my next move should be.

Nabokov's Day Job

Today I learned that Vladimir Nabokov spent six years in the 1940s organizing the butterfly collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. He told species apart by looking at their (microscopic) genitals and wouldn't consider any other way. He collected their genitals. His books are loaded with butterfly references and inferences. In upstate New York he discovered and named the tiny Karner Blue butterfly. Apparently it doesn't hurt one's career to obsess about something in life besides writing (if, like Nabokov, you can rely on your wife to drive you everywhere and run the household -- i.e., you have "an angel in the house"). But this 3-inch beauty from Missouri I photographed today -- although it looks blue and black to me -- is in fact called a "Red-spotted Purple" butterfly -- Limenitis arthemis astyanax, as Nabokov might say.