you are not in a metropolitan area or even a small town that offers opportunities to meet up with other writers, then you may want to investigate online writing workshops. In the back of this book is a reference list of some of the best online groups.
The advantage of an online group is that many online writing workshop teachers and facilitators run their classes with Skype or Facetime so writers have a chance to have a rigorous experience.
Some workshops require writers to submit work to the group prior to the meetings, while others read the work for the first time at the meeting.
Personal chemistry will impact your experience of the workshop. Do you like your fellow writers and trust them enough to read, and ultimately judge, your work? Do you like their work? Are you working at a similar level of expertise?
The good news:
A well-run workshop, especially for writers just starting out, can be substantially supportive and inspiring. The chance to hear new voices and a wide range of writing styles can help a new writer ascertain where their work falls on the scale of accomplishment.
It can also help to get those pages finished. Knowing that, every second Wednesday (or every Saturday, or Thursday), you will be required to read pages can help to motivate even the most procrastinating of writers. If you like your fellow workshop participants, even more so. Now you are part of a group. You want to show them what you can do, and you go home inspired to write by your fellow writers who are moving along at a steady clip.
However, workshops can be frightening if you’ve never shared your work in public. To that end, you might want to interview the instructor, sit in on a class or check reviews of the teachers.
Many independently run workshops require an application. The instructor might inquire into your background and goals. Also they will ask to see at least ten to twenty pages of your recent work. If this is the case, then you can safely assume that the level of writing will be above average.
Workshops that do not require an application will be open to writers at all levels. In these classes, you could very well be joined with degreed writers, prize winners, published writers and newbies.
A lively writing workshop can provide a stimulating environment as well as a networking opportunity. Fraternizing with others who are pursuing their dream of writing can help you feel part of a community. And, of course, a good writing instructor can provide just the encouragement you need to keep going. Because if you are working on a long project, doubt will rear its ugly head.
I would never have written my first novel if my gentle and compassionate teacher, Sandy Boucher, had not encouraged me to “just keep going.” I went to her workshop with a sketch of a story that she could see as a book-length piece. I just kept going as she advised, and in two years I had a novel. Left to my own devices, I would never have had the confidence to declare myself fit to write a novel!
Here is a beautiful example of a writer nurturing other writers along the path by creating a conscious support group:
Every writer benefits from the promise and support of a writing community. A feedback forum helps cultivate self-editing mastery, deepen craft, and provide confidence to follow through with the next draft. I created the Writer’s Tribe to offer up a space for writers to give and receive feedback in the spirit of generosity. In community, we polish our manuscripts in a safe, highly interactive space built on respect, clarity, and honesty. We support and guide each other through a powerful revision process. Writers learn from the comments, notes, and editing suggestions from their fellow participants. These invaluable critiques of our works-in-progress provide a road map and help the group form bonds for the writing process through to the book launch. I’ve been honored to shepherd new writers who are unable to quiet their inner critics and are afraid to read their work aloud into a community of powerful, successful and confident authors.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
•In the manuscript margins, make comments and suggestions.
•Identify the writer’s strengths, interesting subject matter, pleasing shape of the text, and examples of vivid detail.
•During the discussion, read a sentence or craft element you love.
Tips on How to Receive Feedback
•Take every suggestion IN with receptivity and a deep breath.
•Do not defend the text.
•What you resist may be what you most need to hear.
•Ask yourself if the reader’s comments are irrelevant or destructive to your process.
•All feedback is golden.
With a writing teacher and the support of writing communities, many students have been launched onto the path of publishing and confidence.
The point is, it is not easy, this “starting out” process.
Jonathan Franzen muses: “When I was writing my first book, I hated going to parties. No matter what the reason for the party, the topic would invariably turn to:
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a writer,’ I would say.
‘Oh? What have you published?’
‘Nothing.’ ”
To avoid this socially awkward encounter, many writers work in stealth mode! They don’t tell anyone what they are working on, nor do they mention that they are writing. It’s a personal decision to be sure!
The Bad News about Workshops
The bad news is that many independently run workshops should be advertised with warning label: “This workshop may be harmful to your self-esteem.”
I had an experience with an editor that set me back in a big way.
I was revising my first novel when I began to feel adrift. I’d left my corporate job based on a note from a NY agent: “You are clearly very talented. This book is compelling and interesting. The second half falls down. Please let us know what you decide to do.”
“I’ll have this book finished in a few months,” I promised myself. But after a few months of revising, I wasn’t confident that I was on the right track. At that time, I saw an ad for a pricey writing workshop. I would have dismissed it, but the leaders were a well-known New York editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.
Writers were invited to apply. I spoke with the editor, sent in pages, and was allowed to join.
I was not only hoping to get the direction I needed to fix my novel for the New York agent, but secretly hoping to make a connection to people in the literary world.
The workshop, run in a chilly meeting room of Fort Mason, the large warehouse complex in San Francisco waterfront, was filled with accomplished writers; journalists from big-name newspapers and MFA grads.
The critiquing style of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist/teacher was brutal. “God doesn’t even care about that goat as much as you do,” she chastised one of my fellow writers.
Another bad workshop story, albeit with a happy ending, is the story of Lolly Winston. Winston, the author of the New York Times bestselling
