I like writing a blog because it will never get "workshopped" on a Wednesday night. Those who have taken a college writing class likely know about "workshop." Everyone sits around a big table so they can look into each other's eyes. This eyeball-to-eyeball perspective presumably creates the intimacy and trust necessary for thoughtful dissection of, and commentary on, each other's work.
That's the theory.
That's the theory.
I've spent years among the critiquers and critiqued, mostly in graduate-level poetry workshops. I've even been "The Leader" of writing workshops. Whatever my role, I'd leave in one of three states: satisfied, sickened or surrendered.
You might think that when my work was praised, I was satisfied. And that when I received criticism, I was sickened. The calculus was never that simple. "Surrendered" was how I most often felt.
I can't remember much of the writing advice I received, though some of it was certainly useful. Stephen King exhorted me to banish every unnecessary word. Though he told me in an audiobook, I took his advice to heart.
Walking to my car post-workshop, I'd begin the pep talk I needed to return, smiling, in seven days. I carried a heavy packet of to-be-commented upon poems. The heaviness wasn't in the weight of the paper, but in the expectations between the lines.
My own expectations were carried off in backpacks and notebooks.
Workshop: inevitable collisions of ego, misinterpretations of metaphor, glances at watches. Phrases and images still linger in the periphery of my imagination.
Sometimes I dream green ink on a wordless manuscript: question marks, arrows, exclamation points. Invisible words underlined once, twice, three times.
But I no longer dream in verse.
You might think that when my work was praised, I was satisfied. And that when I received criticism, I was sickened. The calculus was never that simple. "Surrendered" was how I most often felt.
I can't remember much of the writing advice I received, though some of it was certainly useful. Stephen King exhorted me to banish every unnecessary word. Though he told me in an audiobook, I took his advice to heart.
Walking to my car post-workshop, I'd begin the pep talk I needed to return, smiling, in seven days. I carried a heavy packet of to-be-commented upon poems. The heaviness wasn't in the weight of the paper, but in the expectations between the lines.
My own expectations were carried off in backpacks and notebooks.
Workshop: inevitable collisions of ego, misinterpretations of metaphor, glances at watches. Phrases and images still linger in the periphery of my imagination.
Sometimes I dream green ink on a wordless manuscript: question marks, arrows, exclamation points. Invisible words underlined once, twice, three times.
But I no longer dream in verse.
