Reconsidering The Writing Workshop

Gill James' essay "The Undergrad Creative Writing Workshop" offers insight into how undergrad writing workshops are typically conducted, the pros and cons of the system, and suggestions to making the model better. In my reading and notes I found that there were an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages of the writing workshop if conducted "properly." What I also found is that there is not much room for change which as a student and potential professor frightens me a lot.

True to workshop format, I'd like to start with the pros of the system. In speaking of undergrads, I think it is advantageous that students are paired at such an early stage in their careers with writers of different genres. It provides students the flexibility necessary to play within genres and work between them. It is important to be adventurous at this stage in creating and not limit the self to one specific category in writing. Hopefully students keep with them that they should not try to box their peers into genres later on as it can be limiting and could lead to stumping creativity.

Students should find it in their favor not to receive grades on their creative writing work as it allows them to focus on the feedback, and not a letter grade. The goal is to offer student the highest potential to improve with the least amount of hurt. If students take the feedback they receive from fellow students and their professor, writing workshops can be a training camp where students learn to be their best critics. "They learn when to take advice and when to leave it, when to rely on their own finely-tuned intuition and how to ask for insights...when they are too close to a text to see either its faults or its strengths." And if students are in a smaller classroom, these training camps can be extremely successful environments for students with different voices, style, and gender to get together and teach each other what writing is to them. If professors can separate students to mix up gender, style, and genre, among other things, students are afforded a classroom that is diverse where no two writers are alike and individual voices can flourish.

There are two ways to categorize the disadvantages of an undergraduate creative writing workshop. The first is what the students can do wrong inside the classroom (and out) to jeopardize their success and the success of their classmates. The second is what professors can do to jeopardize the success of the entire workshop. Students who do not observe workshop guidelines and regulations can not only disrupt the flow of the class but can also ruin the experience for themselves and others. By speaking out of turn, too often, or not enough, one student has the power to change an entire classroom. Students should not be defensive about their work during a critique because the professor should lay out rules such as the writer not being able to speak during his or her workshop until the end when he or she can ask the professor and classmates questions and clear things up. Although the guidelines are up to the professor to make, it is up to the students to follow them. Students who critique each other's work based on "what they like" and "what they don't like" aren't going about their feedback in the right way and it is up to the professors to regulate this behavior. "A critical reader can appreciate the appropriate use of skill and techniques employed in the production of texts..." It is also dangerous for students to think of their professors as psychologists. Although there is room for heavy topics and people come out with traumatizing things that have happened in the past, the student and the writing should be accepted by the professor and the class, but the student should be led to seeking professional advice, in my opinion, in these sorts of situations. This is another topic that I think should be discussed in the preliminary parts of the course so when something like that does happen everyone in the classroom is prepared and knows that help is available in the right places. Not setting up the ground rules can harm students as well as professors in the long run.

Another possible disadvantage of the writing workshop is students having less time to write due to heavy reading. This can be regulated by the professor assigning no more than 200 pages of reading per week, but it is up to their discretion. Students only getting 25 minutes to have their piece workshopped each time (usually twice as undergrads) can also be a disadvantage in that students may not feel as if they have received enough feedback or spent enough time on the piece. Another problem that students can run into is having a professor whose attitude is that they are "better" than their students. This is usually the case when over qualified writers who should not be teaching run the risk of "going above the head of the student." Unfortunately this is a problem that can only be avoided by the professor. A good professor is well-rounded, invested in their student's success, and cares about the students more than themselves.

Another potential problem students and professors face is getting stuck on a certain form or style and trying to mold everyone else's work based on those theories. Both parties must regulate that this does not happen, and discussing the issue early on will probably make it easier for everyone to distinguish if and when it starts to happen. "They may overlook the brilliant and innovative which shines out beyond any personal opinion." Furthermore, what we fear most is the "uniformity of texts which leads to the death of literature." Students can also enter the workshop at different skills levels, so some may succeed, others may flounder, but this can be difficult not only for the students but for the professor as well. Dividing up the right attention to each student and figuring out what each student personally needs to improve must be the hardest part of conducting a workshop.

If I had three suggestions to make to the workshop system it would be:

1) Spend more time writing in the classroom (creates a community, free-writing inspires good ideas and is a great outlet).

2) Spend less time categorizing student work into genres and instead encourage students to play within them.

3) Spend time looking at the process of writing (organizing ideas, using images for inspiration, fueling creativity, etc. and how to get there) and spend a little less time focusing on the final product--pages of written work.

Lastly I would like to close on the encouraging note that although all the pros and cons are still swimming in my head and I haven't decided exactly what to do with them yet, I do think the most important thing students can and for the most part do establish through the workshop is their inner critic so they can make their own judgements and guide their own work into the right direction. =) Thank you!