Jonathan Moeller

27 November 2006

“It Takes a Workshop”

I originally registered for this class because it was one of the only night classes that would help me fulfill the requirements for the Literature degree.  My secondary reason was that I wanted to continue to write and it didn’t matter to me whether it was factual or creative.  Even though that was the case, I was excited to take the class.  I have never written creatively and I like to take on new challenges.  This pattern developed after taking mathematics courses at Junior College.  When I first went to college directly after high school I took college algebra and failed it twice.  When I came back to school ten years later, my attitude was different and I passed the course, from the same instructor, which a high A average.  Because of this, I wanted to continue to take on courses I was afraid of and see if I could, for lack of a better word, conquer them.

I did have some experience with creative storytelling, but in an oral tradition.  As a youth, I was in Boy Scouts and often worked the entire summer at camp.  To amuse ourselves and the campers, we would take turns telling stories or one of us would begin a story and the others would have to continue the storyline.  There was less pressure because nothing was being recorded and after the story was told, it was gone forever.  I enjoyed reading literature and when people talked about writers, the images that always came to me were of writers like Bukowski and Thompson.  Through the tough years after my initial stint in college, I had a romantic idea I would be a writer just like them.  They lived appealing lifestyles and the only writing aid they needed came out of a bottle.  Even though I wanted to be like them, I never once picked up a pen and began writing. 

Because I never tried to write coming into this class, my skill level for writing creatively was fairly low.  I found I am a very logical person and can do better with fact than I can do with emotion.  My skill level for language and grammar was fairly high and I have always done well on written assignments but this does not necessarily translate into good creative writing.  My one great fear was that I would unintentionally plagiarize something.  I did not consider myself a writer and, therefore, thought that whatever ideas I had would either be a story I once heard and then forgot about or it would be a story that had been told hundreds of times before and not be original at all.

This worried me until I got home and started thinking about what stories inspired me.  One of my favorite writers is James Baldwin and I thought about “Sonny’s Blues” which I believe is in every freshman composition textbook.  In it, the narrator says, “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.  There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”  Thinking about this quote helped me to realize that while the idea may not be new, the manner in which it is written might be, and if the same story is written a hundred different ways so that a hundred different people can hear it and understand what the author is trying to convey, it’s not plagiarism, it’s art.  To put it another way, how many images of “The Rape of Europa” are currently hanging in art galleries?

The idea of the workshop was unsettling to me.  Being a novice at writing I was uncomfortable with sharing my work with my peers.  In the end, it didn’t matter.  I was taking the course and the workshop was a requirement, so I accepted the fact I was going to have to present one of my works in front of class.  Luckily, when I told Dr. White I didn’t care if I presented poetry or fiction, he chose poetry for me.  After everyone presented, I realized poetry was easier for me to present.  We could spend so much more time on word choice and content and less time reading the actual work.

I found the workshop more helpful than the draft exchanges.  First of all, I had to read the poem out loud and other people had to listen.  Someone can read a poem aloud to themselves but, because they are biased, they don’t always hear the mistakes.  The mind tricks the writer into thinking the poem sounds like he or she thinks it should sound.  Another benefit over the draft exchange is the suggestions and comments can also be countered by others in the workshop.  In the draft exchanges, the comments are limited to only what the reader thinks and he or she does not have the benefit of listening to other peoples’ criticism. 

I was embarrassed by my participation in the class discussions, though.  I had a hard time criticizing my peers when I saw myself no better than they were.  I knew the point of the workshop was to help others make their work better by giving advice about what might make the work better but I still had a hard time doing it.  A few times I managed to comment about what I thought worked in a piece but overall, I was dissatisfied by my performance.  I was very grateful to those in the class who were not as timid as I was.  On the other hand, there were a few people in the class who were overbearing.  It seemed as though they had a comment on everything, even if it was not really relevant or helpful.  For my part, I listened to these comments and if they had no value, I thanked the classmate and promptly forgot about them.  There were very few of these as even the most insignificant comment was usually helpful. 

I think the workshop really worked.  As I was reading the final exams, I noticed that Karen Daniel also thought highly of the workshop and liked it so much she wanted to institute it in her classroom when she began to teach.  Unless she teaches Creative Writing, I feel this may be a mistake.  The workshop worked for our class because we want to learn how to write better and are mature enough to accept criticism.  A student in a regular English classroom is there because they have to be.  If we want to nurture the love of writing, I think workshopping the piece in front of classmates will only deter the student from wanting to write.  First of all, the drive might not be there to begin with and hearing their work torn apart may make them dislike writing, as opposed to just being indifferent about it. 

My solution would be to have different class periods workshop the pieces and the teacher can take notes, making sure to disregard the hurtful or ineffective comments while changing the others into something that can help the writer.  Karen Daniel also says she would prefer to workshop and revise a few assignments rather than making the students write several more.  I think at that age, they should be encouraged to write more and to apply gained knowledge from the workshop to the next assignment.  The reason we only wrote two works in this class is because we already know how to write and are primarily concerned with tweaking our writing.  Younger writers need to perfect the fundamentals before they worry about advanced writing theory.

The book was also very helpful.  I think the most helpful part of the book was the author’s story, “Sausage and Beer” and the following case history.  It is one thing to read something and then guess what the author meant and another for the author to tell you how and why he wrote the story.  This is actually similar to a workshop activity.  When trying to write my short story, I found the chart on page 180 very useful.  Originally, I was going to write something that was pure invention but could not think of anything literary, so I used this chart to think of things I have done and people I met in order to form my story.  Seeing how an author crafted a piece so similar to our assignment really helped me create mine.  It was a great example and, I think, the best part of the book. 

As I mentioned before, I was very frightened of creating something that had already been done or was overdone.  Luckily, Minot lists pitfalls for both poetry and fiction.  On page 52, he lists the “seven deadly sins of poetry.”  I kept all of them in mind as I was writing my poem but don’t think it would have used any of them because I was striving for the density he speaks of in the first chapter.  Minot also has “seven deadly sins of fiction” on page 156.   I was more tempted to use parts of these but, keeping in mind this was an assignment, I did my best to create a short story based on the structure suggested in the book.  The book had a lot of examples and has all of the basics one needs to write a poem or short story.  The book contained the basic building blocks and the workshop showed us how to put them together.  By reading and critiquing others’ works, we saw Minot’s rules in action and the combination of the two really helped me create my poem and short story.

Throughout the book, Minot talks about simple versus sophisticated writing.  He discusses the poetic difference on page 7 and the fiction difference on page 147.  It is basically the difference between commercial and literary writing.  Literary writing is denser and makes use of literary devices to further theme and character development.  Commercial writing in pretty or entertaining but does not have much depth.  I noticed that several members of the class complained about Minot’s preference of sophisticated writing and contended that any poetry or writing that comes from the heart is good.  I think some people have come to use this as a crutch.  They discount Minot’s opinion because he prefers sophisticated writing.  I agree that if commercial writing is entertaining, it makes people happy and has a purpose.  However, the purpose of this class is to learn to write the best creative works we can, and Minot’s opinions in this case are valid.  If we learn to write well using Minot’s outlines, we will be able to write literary works as well as simple works.  I think this metaphor may be a little goofy but Minot is teaching us how to drive a vehicle with a standard transmission, which means we should be able to drive an automatic as well.

I also liked the examples Minot used in the book.  Most of the poetry and all of the fiction was written by lesser known authors.  Because of this, the readers aren’t comparing themselves to Faulkner or Hemingway and can feel better about their own fiction.  The stories in the book are adequate but some of them flawed.  For example, in the first awkward sentence of Sharon Solwitz’s “Obst Vw,” she exposes too much information and resolves any conflict by starting off by saying everything turned out okay.  I lost interest immediately.  Such problems in the examples give hope to the beginning writer.

I was disappointed we were not able to do the drama section of the class but am now content.  In a class of this size, I think it is more important to learn two genres well than three superficially.

As I mentioned before, I presented my poem in front of the class.  I created my poem knowing that I wanted to use the sonnet form, so I kept that in mind but did not try to force it as I wrote it.  Using the form was very helpful for me because I could use it as a map to help me create the poem.  It was like solving a puzzle.  Plus, it was actually really fun to create.  I tried to add as much density as I could through the use of metaphor, imagery and sound.  I think the workshop really helped me refine the poem.  Several people commented on word choice and helped me work out some trouble I was having with an awkward second stanza.

The end result was a poem much better than I could have crafted by myself.  I was amazed at the difference.  I think the thing that really helped me is I had the class workshop two versions of the same poem.  I only used one for my final submission but was able to use suggestions for both.  I did get a few suggestions that I wished I could have taken but most of them suggested I add lines.  I wanted to do a sonnet and the form necessitated that I had a limited number of lines, so I could not use a few suggestions.  Again, I really liked using the sonnet form.  I always saw poetry as kind of sappy but the poem I created was not and it was really fun to pack as much as I could into those fourteen lines.  I used Minot’s book like a treasure map to see all what I could fit into the poem.  I might continue to write them just for fun.

I created the fiction piece pretty close to the deadline.  I had a difficult time thinking of a subject to write about.  For a while I thought about writing something about zombies, but taking them out of their natural horror genre.  That would keep the story from being of the “Vampires Resurrected” type Minot speaks of on page 158.  However, to be able to create a zombie story and not have it be cliché requires much more skill than I think I am capable of.  I eventually turned back to Minot’s chart on page 180, from it, I was able to make a list of personal observations and create characters and setting out of that.  I was not as happy with it as I was with the poem but feel I sufficiently incorporated plot, setting, metaphor, and character development.  I tried to do most of it through dialogue.  I found the draft exchanges were not as helpful as the workshop.  As I said before, the person reviewing the story only has their ideas to drive them.  In the workshop, ideas build on top of each other to create powerful suggestions.  I’m not saying the suggestions I got were not good, but I know I would have a lot more information if I had been able to workshop the short story.

I enjoyed the class.  My perception of writers changed slightly.  I still think Bukowski and Thompson were bizarre, romantic characters but I also saw that I had the ability to write and I didn’t have to be like them to do it.  I’m very fortunate that I fell into this class.  I’m still shocked that I can write creatively.  I’m very happy about that.  I think the workshop really helped further my development as a writer.  However, I noticed that in the fiction section of the class, there was less time to discuss the pieces because it took so long to read them.

My suggestion is that perhaps the story could be required reading before the class.  The problem with that is that some problems in the story are more obvious when it is read out loud and not reading the story in class may do a disservice to the presenter.  The comments taken up after the workshop were very helpful in revising the paper; it might be a good idea to require it.  I also think that using a round or horseshoe table set-up will be more conducive to discussion, which was one of the main problems with the class, of which I am partly at fault.  Another idea that might help discussion come more easily is to use a team building exercise the first day of class.  If the participants are more familiar with each other and hold some kind of bond, perhaps the will be more likely to talk.