"Workshopese"
The conundrum of creative writing workshop
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
WORKSHOPPING
Prologue
I love words. That is why I gravitated to being a writer and then a published author. Therefor, one of my favorite books is the thesaurus. I love all varieties and options presented in this book. And it helps me correct word echo problems in my drafts.
In her book Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, author Ursula K. Le Guin helps writers become published authors through understanding and recognizing the value of the creative writing workshop. It’s a good text for those seriously interested in a deeper look at workshopping literature.
While her book title is clever, it is also metaphoric in that craft is another word for boat. In the writing world, we are all in the same boat. When someone stands up in the craft and starts an exuberant, limb-flailing dance, all are in danger of going overboard where the sharks are.
Everyone on the vessel has a reason to be there. They are either a traveler, a sailor, or the captain. (Not considering stowaways for this metaphor.) Either way, proper planning is necessary so that everyone reaches the same destination at the same time without getting too wet.
Writers in workshop have a unique situation in that they are the traveler offering words to the other voyagers then they must switch hats and become the sailor helping steer the ship when called upon to offer constructive feedback to the words of their fellow adventurers. The captain is the teacher or facilitator, and that’s that. They learn a lot too.
This is a journey of self-discovery after all.
Workshop Words aka "Workshopese"
“Writing is a Communal Act” (79) says Natalie Goldberg.
It’s important to understand that workshop is the place for critique (what I like to call constructive feedback) of a piece of writing that is in progress. Criticism refers to commenting on something that has already been published.
In the writing workshop, participants have the following responsibilities:
See the piece as a work-in-progress, not a finished project
Be respectful
Offer thoughtful comments
Support your comments with something (reasoning) beyond how something makes you feel
Be willing to accept constructive feedback
Be willing to give constructive feedback
What happens in workshop stays in workshop
Words that may improve critiques include because, consider, well, and option. Writing instructor Alan Ziegler suggests “…soft words such as try, perhaps, maybe, see what happens, a bit, a tad” (128). Asking questions of the manuscript, not the author, is a good method also.
What to Do With the After-party Goodie Bags
When my children were young and attending umpteen birthday parties for their friends, we acquired quite a collection of miscellaneous small trinkets and treats brought home in the party goodie bags. Now they’re called "thank you for attending my party" gifts. I had a basket in the kitchen where my daughters dumped their parting gifts to create a community treat box that they and their friends could access. This after I culled out the partially eaten candy and the weird things like slap bracelets that typically snapped back into a child’s face.
After participating in the writing party aka the creative writing workshop, what are you supposed to do with all the exit detritus you received? In the real world of sitting down and writing your story, that is entirely up to you. As Le Guin realistically states it, “The discipline of art is freedom” (135). You have the free will to take what critique works for you and toss the rest.
What if you think you didn’t receive any useful ideas from the critique? This is the real value of workshop critique. It gives you the chance to live rent free (except for student loan debt) in a reader’s head long enough to see how your work resonates with someone else. You can’t know how everyone is going to react to your story once it’s out in the ether, but workshop is an opportunity to find out how something you wrote will land on a variety of folks in advance of publishing it. This gives you the chance to change that reaction if you want to.
It’s a work-in -progress. A WIP not an RIP because someone doesn’t have the same vision you do. Once you return to your writing cave, which can get dark and interfere with our perspective, you can revisit and reframe what you initially thought was an unproductive comment into something that may work even better just because you got to see your work through another person’s lens.
Love or hate it, writing workshop is also a place to learn how not to do something when you are in the same position down the road. The aim of workshopping is to help a piece along the road, not run it into a ditch.
Do you have any thoughts about the creative writing workshop?
Be well, write well!
~Joy
Works Cited
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Shambhala, 1986.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. First Mariner Books, 2015.
Ziegler, Alan. The Writing Workshop Notebook: Notes on Creating and Workshopping. Soft Skull Press, 2008.
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I really liked/enjoyed reading this! It was a very helpful way to look at giving and receiving feedback.
I will hunt up Le Guin's book.This is a wonderful essay on how to handle and how to give writing advice. we were all once just starting out. I try to remember that when someone queries me on something in a writer's meeting. Then I go home and send them scads of stuff to further explain.