Workshops

"What can I say, what can I do? Send your apologies to me." - Dropping Daylight, Apologies

So for a long time I've been on the fence about the efficacy of workshops. Specifically, it's difficult in a university setting to get a group of like-minded people together. You wind up thrown together with whoever is interested in "Creative Writing"--not necessarily in writing a novel, a fantasy, literary fiction, mystery, sci-fi, short stories, whatever your particular interest may be. And thus it can be difficult to get good, consistent feedback from people who are focused on the same things you are.

But when you do get good feedback it can be incredible, and one just has to look at the most successful writers to see that they often come in groups. Writing in a vacuum, in short, is the long way to getting good. A little help from some like-minded folks can go a long way.

So one of my resolutions upon graduating college was to put together a group of like-minded writers and see where it took me. This impromptu group had its first meeting last night, and it was really everything I hoped it would be---even though there were only two of us and I lost all my notes through some technical difficulties. Even when I wasn't getting great advice, I was given an opportunity to discuss out loud why I was writing the way I was, what I was trying to do in a given chapter, paragraph, sentence, etc...and saying that out loud to someone who not only understands what you're talking about but can offer advice is a really invaluable experience.

So yeah, I think workshops can be a great tool--so long as you own them and not the other way around, if that makes any sense. And it's worth the time and effort to put your own together. Just a few thoughts.

Workshopping a Novel

"We ran like vampires from a thousand burning suns, but even then we should have stayed." -Rise Against, Audience of One

I've gotten a lot of advice on workshopping a novel before, mostly as I submitted portions of my novel for workshops. They usually ran like this, "It's difficult," "It's not always a good idea," etc. etc. etc.

The rationale runs like this: first, your workshop group won't read the entire novel. Thus they won't be able to comment on whether or not the things you're setting up in the beginning work in the end. You will always be able to say, "Oh, I'll explain that in chapter 23," and there's not much they can say in return. Second, you may become discouraged by the feedback you get from your workshop and give up on the project entirely.

After my experience in workshop today, I can say that neither of those fears are very well founded. In workshopping my own novel, I ran into the first problem. There are questions being asked by some of my workshopmates that will be resolved later, and some things that are striking them as odd are meant to strike them as odd, because they're setting up later revelations.

As of now, I don't have a ton of useful feedback on those issues. But they will be workshopping more of the novel, and as they do, I'll begin to see whether these things are working or not. By coming to the workshop of each new chunk with a list of the questions they had that should have been resolved in that chunk, I should be able to tick off what is and isn't working---it just won't all happen in one workshop.

I also got a lot of useful information out of just today's workshop, about what was working in my beginning (Most of the things I had focused on---booyah) and some of the things that weren't (surprising things, like some comments that my antagonists weren't pure evil enough for people).

Either way, I think that as long as I continue to move forward in the novel and don't worry about implementing any changes they've suggested until I can work out whether or not they're warranted, the experience should only be positive.

As far as the second fear goes, I have to admit I was worried about that going into today--not for myself, but for another writer, whose work I had barely been able to get through, and had had trouble not tearing apart.

That writer's work had a lot of fans in the workshop. Whether these people read completely different than me, are interested in different things, or are simply willing to let the author get away with more than I am (my main problems were grammatical), I don't know, but it certainly wasn't the awkward, quiet, "Umm...maybe try this?" affair it would have been if there were fourteen of me critiquing it.

So don't be afraid to workshop your longer work---just remember to move forward, and only come back to the feedback on your beginning once you've finished your end.