14

The Power of Writing Communities

The fiction that artistic labor happens in isolation, and that artistic accomplishment is exclusively the provenance of individual talents, is politically charged and, in my case at least, repudiated by the facts. While the primary labor on Angels [in America] has been mine, more than two dozen people have contributed words, ideas and structures to these plays.

—TONY KUSHNER

In graduate school, I had the dream writing group: friends who made me laugh and who were also careful and attentive readers. We met in a quirky little room at a local tavern, a room decorated with Moët and Chandon champagne posters. Before settling into our work, we shared what we’d all been doing that week, in the areas of writing, submitting, and acceptance or rejection. Nothing seemed so terrible once we laughed about it, sometimes passing around our form rejection slips (these were the days of paper submissions!).

One evening during our critique session, my friend Dan pointed out to me something I had not noticed in my work and that I needed to know: I tended to end every poem I wrote with an apostrophe, a direct address to the reader. Once I heard that, I looked my poems over and realized Dan was absolutely right. I hated writing endings, and I had developed this literary tic of speaking out of the page to make them easier. Read five poems of mine in a row, and the reader might feel shouted at! I needed to get out of this habit.

A strong writing group provides much more than feedback on your individual pieces (though that is a gift). Group members become one another’s cheerleaders, informal literary agents, even cocreators. They stay alert for the journals and presses suited to each other’s work. And they notice strengths, and also those weaknesses—those tics, those unconscious repetitions—that build up in everyone’s work over time. A good group also helps us internalize the ability to read our own work with a critical eye. Decades later, I still scan my work for the kinds of strengths and problems my groupmates pointed out to me under the champagne signs.

—SUZANNE

The Need for Feedback

Tony Kushner, in the quote introducing this chapter, states the case strongly but not, we think, too strongly. Writers need feedback. The myth of writers as loners who follow their vision and remain true to their inner muse, bucking rather than embracing outside help, is very much a myth. It was created largely by the writers of the British Romantic period, whose artistic mythologies we still cling to, though those writers themselves used one another unceasingly as idea sources and sounding boards. Virtually all writers do.

The modern writing workshop or writing group is not an innovation but a form of learning that can be traced back as long as literature and the arts have flourished. You can use this chapter to find ways to create your own workshop group—one with members you trust, who can grow with you and your work—or to get the most productive working relationship you can out of a classroom workshop or an established writing group.

Setting Guidelines for Discussion: A Practice Approach

In the following section on learning to give useful responses, we will provide very specific suggestions for shaping workshop discussion. You may use or adapt these as your group sees fit. For now, it is a good idea to have a preliminary talk with your peers about what does or does not work for you as a group in receiving feedback. You can and should discuss the entire practice of workshopping, come up with a procedure, and devise your own workshop etiquette—a collective sense of what is OK and not OK in talking about your writing. Logistical questions to discuss include how far in advance you will share your work, whether you will read pieces aloud at any point, and whether you want to include written comments or limit yourself to oral critique. If you are doing this as a workshop leader or teacher, consider having the group create a specific “contract” that you will all try to follow.

It is essential to find a method of discussion with which the group feels safe and comfortable; don’t flounder around trying to shape your valuable writing without first defining what helps you. To guide this process, find an essay, perhaps from a literary magazine, for practice. Read the piece and offer comments as you would in a workshop setting, and together monitor the discussion for responses that seem diminishing, unconstructive, or unhelpful.

Safety to speak and inclusion should be your priorities, so listen carefully and be sure everyone in your group articulates their needs and their experience of what is said, and how it is said. The writer Beth Nguyen writes of her writing workshop experience, including the rule of author silence during discussion, as creating a “forceful imbalance of power.” Talk openly about what makes us feel comfortable or uncomfortable as writers and workshop citizens, particularly for writers of marginalized identities.

Helpful Language

You may want to ask the group to rule out feedback based on “I like, I don’t like” formulas. These are by their very nature subjective comments and hard to use in the revision process. One way to train ourselves out of the “I like, I don’t like” reflex is to begin the discussion by using the phrase “I notice” instead. For example, “I notice the image of the maple tree recurs three times in the essay,” or “I notice the strong connection between the dog and the woman,” or “I notice the momentum of your sentences.” By noticing, instead of judging right away, the reader allows the writer to hear what stands out in the piece, and to hear it in a way that does not automatically flatter or degrade the writer. It takes away some of the emotional energy—both positive and negative—that can get in the way of a writer really absorbing what the reader sees in his or her piece. Once several readers have “noticed” what is happening in your piece, you will get an in-depth sense of what stands out and what has not yet emerged. Your respondents can then go on to explicate the meaning or theme they see developing in the things they noticed, and how these images or scenes or sentences can lead to fruitful revisions.

All of you together can watch out for unhelpful critical language—“stinks,” “lame,” “one cliché after another.” Of course, we don’t advocate only praise; those words probably do hold suggestions for revisions that need to be made. What’s important is that you work together as a group to find more constructive approaches. “This doesn’t come up to the level of the rest of the essay,” “I’m not seeing this scene yet,” or “The language here could be more original” might be suitable comments to replace the offending ones.

Even when you hear responses that feel appropriate, use this practice session to sharpen them. If someone says he or she can’t quite get a feel for a character, question why that is and try to formulate the most specific response possible. “I can’t quite see David because he’s never described and never speaks until you find him crying in the kitchen.” Try reformulating your feedback comments two and three times to make them as specific as possible. Practice together until you feel good about one another’s feedback style and the comments feel supportive, encouraging, and full of ideas to take back to your writing desk.

The Agenting Approach

One workshop strategy we have had great success with is the agenting approach. It is a role-play method. All the members of the writing group agree to function as one another’s literary agents for the duration of the group.

Literary agents take on their author-clients because they believe in them. Agents feel certain they can sell their clients’ essays and books. They derive their income from sales of their authors’ work, so their faith in their authors is concrete and tangible. At the same time, agents become valuable critics and editors. They must bring their clients’ work to the publishing market in its finest possible form.

As an agent your comments are always couched in terms like, “I think this will really work once the dialogue feels more authentic/Jack has a fuller character/we know where Luke ended up.” Like an agent, you will always begin your responses by citing what does work, and, where appropriate, providing ideas for transferring that success to less polished parts of the essay.

When beginning this approach, it can help to write out comments in the form of letters—the type of communication you’d likely get from a literary agent. These letters will begin with an affirmation of your faith in your client; a summary of what works well in the piece; and a careful, detailed listing of what needs to be addressed before the piece is finally ready. These letters can be used to fuel discussion and passed to the author at the end of a workshop session. A wonderful side benefit of the agenting approach can be, when you reach a phase in your group relationship where lots of revision has taken place, you can decide to devote an hour or two to browsing at the periodical section of a bookstore or a library or looking online to find suitable publication venues for one another’s work. (See Chapter 15, “Publishing Your Creative Nonfiction.”)

Here are a few more guidelines to consider.

•   Don’t be subjective or start talking about your own experience unless there’s a specific reason to, such as an expert knowledge you can add to the work at hand. (“I’ve worked at an emergency room and I don’t think it would be painted bright pink,” not “I’ve worked at an emergency room; isn’t it weird?”)

•   When you give praise, see if you can add even more to your comment by suggesting another place where the same writing tactics can help the essay. Do provide revision suggestions freely, along with support and encouragement. The other side of the workshop coin from the pick-it-all-apart session is the lovefest, which ultimately disrespects your peers’ ability to bring their work to a higher level, and does them no good.

Remember always that as you give to others in your group, you will get back. You have a deep commitment to their growth as writers and to the productive workings of the group as a whole, so always act accordingly. Also, we often learn the most about our own writing while listening carefully to critiques about someone else’s work. What is true for that person struggling with a satisfying ending is probably true for you as well. Don’t assume that the only time you learn anything is when your own piece is up for discussion.

Some Useful Workshop Guidelines

Here are a few tips for making the group work.

•   Agree to distribute copies of writing to be workshopped no less than forty-eight hours in advance of your meeting. Agree beforehand whether emailed copies are acceptable, or whether your group would prefer printed copies, or an online group document program such as Dropbox. Agree on whether or not you will write comments directly into the document, or save all comments for discussion. Make sure your essay is carefully proofread. Some readers will also appreciate being able to make typed comments directly on the manuscript.

•   Set an amount of time you will spend on each essay, with a five- or ten-minute degree of flexibility. Twenty minutes to half an hour usually works.

•   Have one of you agree to facilitate the discussion. Facilitating means making sure the conversation stays within or lasts until the assigned period. Facilitators can also throw out topics or questions as necessary (each piece under discussion can have a different facilitator). We remember one poorly run graduate workshop in which the instructor simply allowed the group to go on as little or as long as it liked, leading to discussions that ranged anywhere from five minutes to an hour. That’s a frustrating, insulting experience for an author, so agree in advance to monitor your time and keep comments on track. If you are the facilitator of the group, you can decide whether to guide each discussion or to assign others to lead for one another.

One method we’ve found useful for some mature groups is to have the teacher or leader hold off on making comments on the manuscript itself or during the workshop, but instead take on the role of “scribe,” writing down as much as possible during the discussion, being the impartial observer on behalf of the writer. Then, after the workshop, leaders can write up a summary of what they heard, as well as revision suggestions based on the group’s comments and their own opinion. For example, they can couch responses with phrases such as, “I heard many voices saying _______, while others disagreed and felt the most important part of the essay was ________. You have a few choices here in how to revise.” In this way, the writer—who is often too nervous or overwhelmed to clearly hear what is being said—can relax, knowing another is listening carefully. This technique also models how to begin sifting through comments and dealing with contrary opinions, understanding that there is always more than one way to approach revision. Writers must learn how to both trust their own intuitions and take guidance from others.

This method also gives teachers or leaders a chance to think about their own responses in light of the group’s feedback, and by doing so validates the democratic nature of group discussion. The leader is often a privileged responder, which can make the group members lax in their own feedback; by sitting back and taking on the role of invested listener, facilitators empower the group process itself and may also hear responses that shift their own perception of the piece.

Small-Group Versus Large-Group Workshops

The workshop approach we have described works well in a group of eight to fourteen people; often, at the college level—or in a larger community group—your class sizes are likely to be larger. You can still choose to do a whole-class workshop, but one way to help modulate the responses is to have every other person in the circle respond directly to the writer (it is helpful to structure the discussion loosely on the “Workshop Checklist” later in this chapter), varying the order for different questions.

Another way to approach discussion is to break the group down into smaller workshop circles. The advantage to this method is that all participants will be heard and will feel freer to speak; the writers all gain a certain amount of trust and understanding with one another over time. The disadvantage, of course, is that the leader cannot oversee each discussion group. Leaders can offset this by handing out workshop guidelines ahead of time and by assigning each person in the group to be the “advocate” for one other person in the group. This advocate is responsible for ensuring that the discussion stays on track, that the group answers the writer’s questions, and that a positive, helpful atmosphere takes precedence. Leaders might consider varying small-group with large-group workshops to provide a variety of responses.

A Workshop Checklist

In addition to the general suggestions outlined earlier, here is one intuitive way to read an essay to be discussed. We suggest you use the following questions when you read, picking and choosing as seems appropriate, rather than marching through them one by one in the group. Facilitators can also keep this checklist handy as a way of sparking conversation when it begins to lag.

1.   Jot down the scenes, descriptions, and images that stick with you: the “Velcro words and phrases,” as writer and teacher Sheila Bender puts it. Put the essay down and make note of the first thing you remember about it. Generally these passages are the ones that not only are the best written, but the most key to what the essay is doing at a deep level.

2.   Identify the emotional tones of the essay and its prose. You may sense the pleasure of a friend’s visit, of a hike, the anxiety of sentences that all begin with “I think” or “I believe.” Do you get the sense of over-formality in a phrase like “I am perturbed”? Do you wonder why the author calls her mother by the definite article, “the mother”? Does it feel somewhat chilly? In all cases, are these feelings ones the author intended to convey, or do they seem unintentional and perhaps working against the movement of the essay?

3.   Identify your curiosity. Make note of where specifically you want to know more. “I want to know more about that distant definite-article mother,” “about that feeling of perturbation in the pit of the stomach,” “about the author’s uncertainty,” “about the rest of the family,” and so forth. Which locations and characters would benefit from more description? Which characters’ voices do you want to hear? Where do you want to know more about the author’s responses and feelings? These curiosities help locate places for expansion.

If you need help going deeper with your comments, here are some content questions to consider:

•   What is the organizing force of the essay, and does it sustain the piece? If this essay has a clear narrative (a story to tell), is the story clear? If it is a lyric essay organized around images, do the images keep it going?

•   Are characters effectively presented and fully developed?

•   Is dialogue believable, important to the overall essay, and used where it needs to be? Does it help shape character?

•   Are there places where exposition should be replaced by scene for greater reader involvement or scene replaced by exposition for greater compression?

•   Is the point of view working well? Would it help to try another point of view, for example, substitute first person for second?

•   If this is a meditation or essay of ideas, is there an ideology behind it? Is it presented clearly? Is it presented in a way that respects the reader, rather than becoming preachy or heavy-handed?

•   Are the images fresh and interesting? Do they work together in a way that supports the essay?

•   Is the language strong throughout, avoiding sentimentality and cliché?

Here are some form questions to keep in mind:

•   Does the form of the essay add to or enhance its content?

•   Is the organization effective? Look closely at elements such as collaging, the use of white space “jumps” between material, and whether the piece’s organization is purely chronological, following the order in which events happened, or something else.

•   Does the piece begin and end in a way that feels satisfying? Note that “satisfying” does not necessarily mean providing closure or full answers to any questions it might raise. Does the essay open in a way that makes you want to keep reading, and end in a way that provides some sort of aesthetic stopping point?

These samples will help you with diction questions:

•   Does the language seem appropriate to the subject? Is it at times overly fussy or formal or overly slangy and flip?

•   Does the essay contain any archaic or outmoded language—a trap we all fall into in literary writing—that doesn’t belong?

•   Are the sentence structures and rhythms appealing and effective?

You might also look back to Chapter 13, “The Writing Process and Revision,” and think about feedback in terms of “global” versus “local” responses. Train yourself to begin with “big picture” responses: What is the piece really about for you? What theme or idea seems interesting, ripe for future development? What connections are being made in an original way? What one image really stood out for you? Why? Then shift your group’s feedback to more “local” concerns, looking at what can be cut, what can be modified, what can be added, and what can be moved around.

Creating Your Own Writing Group

The veteran publisher Stanley Colbert wrote, “Your journey to the bestseller list begins with a single reader.” All of the people you come in contact with who share your interest in writing and literature are resources for forming a writing group. Even if you are writing in a creative writing classroom, an out-of-class group with compatible peers will help you generate much more work, and receive feedback on it.

Who are your friends or acquaintances who love to write? If you’ve never talked with them about forming a response group, try it. Most writers spend their lonely writing time dreaming of an audience of enthusiastic readers—chances are, you will be proposing something they’ll regard as a dream come true. If you’re shy about your writing and find it hard to think about sharing it with your cat, let alone a group, try this: Look at the first few questions in the workshop checklist, given previously in this chapter. Now think of a piece of your writing and imagine answers to those questions. Chances are the thought of hearing a list of your Velcro scenes and images, the places you’ve made a reader curious, will actually seem pretty pleasant.

The fact is, when we worry about sharing our work, we imagine ourselves handing an essay to someone and saying, “What do you think?” and standing, knees trembling, for the final judgment. Well, first of all, no one has the all-knowing literary judgment to do that (J. K. Rowling got dozens of rejections, some quite “rude,” in her words, for the first Harry Potter novel). Second of all, delivery of verdicts is not what writing groups are for, and you should never let yours drift into that destructive habit. Remember, you can and should exert control about the feedback process, and talk about it as a group until you get it right.

Kate Trueblood, an author and teacher of writing, formed a group with three other writers she knew who seemed compatible. Though the group was friendly and supportive, the workshop did spend a few meetings having to fine-tune their discussion style. “At first it was a little jumbled and unfocused, and feelings were hurt,” Kate remembers. The group communally generated a list of rules that’s kept them going successfully for many years now. “We talk about what’s successful first, then acknowledge amongst ourselves when we’re moving to critique. We work from global issues to smaller issues. And each time we pass out a manuscript we designate what kind of feedback we want, and what stage the work is in.”

If you don’t know anyone interested enough or compatible enough to form a workshop group with you, you still have another excellent resource—your local bookstore. Many bookstores have active writing groups that meet regularly and often welcome new members.

If you find your bookstore(s) does not have a workshop group, start one. Ask to speak to the store manager of a bookstore you like, or in a larger store, the community relations coordinator. These folks will generally help you, by posting signs and advertising in store newsletters and calendars, to find other folks in your community interested in sharing their writing. From the interviews we’ve done with bookstore personnel, the response will almost certainly be strong: there are a lot of writers seeking readers out there. From the bookstore’s point of view, it’s a way to lure literature lovers into their store on a regular basis. From your point of view, it’s heaven: a group of peer reviewers, and a comfy place to meet.

For many writers, an online writing group works very well, too, as it can bring in people who don’t live in your area, as well as be adapted to everyone’s schedule. This could be a generative writing group, where you give each other writing prompts (perhaps from this very book!) and deadlines, or it could be focused on providing feedback on work written on your own. If it is a generative writing group, you might want to stay focused simply on “Velcro” phrases and images, speaking back to the writer the areas that seem rich with meaning and beauty. You might want to rotate the duties of facilitator so that there can be some order and cohesion in how you function together.

The Writing Group as Writing Practice

Throughout history, writers have depended on their artist friends to help generate new and fresh ideas. During the Romantic period, four writers—Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori—challenged one another to write a ghost story. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, the start of reams of vampire literature. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, one of history’s most renowned novels. Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes created constant writing assignments for themselves, many based on what they could see from their home—a full moon in a yew tree’s branches, an ancient elm.

Writing groups can commit to generating new writing together in addition to providing critique, or they can simply exist as generative groups. When we write with others, we feed off one another’s energy and focus. We’re accountable to stay on task for the allotted time, and we have a reason to be writing. This type of generative writing group doesn’t have to be large (even one other person can be plenty!), and it’s probably best to keep it fairly small to nurture the focus and camaraderie necessary to this endeavor—fewer than ten members (though some of us thrive in larger groups). Like critique groups, generative groups can work beautifully together online. Large or small generative groups are also a powerful addition to a creative writing classroom.

Writing Contracts and Challenges

Sometimes it helps to have a formal “contract” to get your writing done. In such a document, you would set forth your goals for a time period: say, a week, a month, or a summer. These goals can be anything: writing for a certain amount of time per day; writing a certain number of words per day; writing a certain number of pages a week; completing a certain number of short pieces or a long essay; submitting work to journals; and so on. You can create a contract with just one other person, or with a group of friends.

This next part is key: you must have either rewards or consequences for fulfilling or not fulfilling your end of the bargain. One writer we know allows herself a piece of high-quality chocolate when she finishes her daily goal. Another writer agrees to clean her friend’s oven if she doesn’t fulfill the contractual obligation (that’s a powerful motivator). You get the idea. By making yourself accountable in a concrete way, you may have more motivation to make your writing life a priority.

Like a contract, a writing challenge can take place over a specified time period, and usually involves much more intensive, daily work, with a wider literary community. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of programs such as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November, and National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) in April. Recently, November also became National Memoir Writing Month (NaMeWriMo). If you join in one of these national challenges online, you’ll often receive a daily prompt for your writing and a way to share that writing with others. You can adapt the format of one of these challenges for your own writing group.

TRY IT

1.   It is so simple, and yet so wildly creative, to create writing challenges for a group. Bring this book to your group meetings, with everyone choosing a favorite Try It. Then riff on these: you can select a formal structure, like a hermit crab, for all of you. If you meet in person, pick an element of your surroundings to write about, as Plath does in her poem “Elm” (you may want to bring this poem to read). Borrow from Michel de Montaigne and choose an innocuous body part to write about, as he does in “Of Thumbs,” or a sense to explore, as he does in “Of Smells” (see Anthology). It can be helpful to share your pieces as you go, possibly by reading aloud, but without critique.

2.   Each group will have its own character and working style, of course, but we can offer you some suggestions for how to use the time effectively. Groups that can’t or would rather not meet in person can follow the same procedures, using a video calling/conferencing program, or whatever system works for your group.

•   Begin with a timed writing (about five to ten minutes). You can choose a word at random to start the writing, or a phrase from a book you have handy.

•   Decide whether you want to share this writing. If sharing, do not give feedback. Simply listen.

•   Each person can be responsible for bringing a writing prompt for the meeting. This prompt can be from a text such as this one or a prompt the writer devises. You can each write to this prompt for a specified period, between fifteen minutes to an hour, or whatever works for your group.

•   Or: You can work on individual projects for a specified time, such as forty-five minutes to an hour.

•   Share what you did at the end of the time. Again, no feedback, to keep this space purely generative and judgment-free.

FOR FURTHER READING

Resources Available Online

•   “Unsilencing the Workshop” by Beth Nguyen

•   “Towards a Better Nonfiction Workshop” by Will Slattery