Every four weeks my two workshop friends and I meet at a local eatery for food, wine and writers’ talk. It’s one of my favourite dates of the month.
The benefits of workshopping your creative writing are numerous. For starters, if you get your group dynamics right, you have access to insightful feedback and valuable encouragement for free. When you’re writing in isolation, it’s possible to become so close to a piece that you simply lose the ability to judge it with impartiality. And asking your spouse/siblings/parents/best friends isn’t always the answer, as they’re often apt to tell you everything’s great, just to spare your feelings. A literary agent once told me, “I get no end of manuscripts from writers telling me that all their friends and family think their novel could be a best seller. I really couldn”t care what their biased great aunt thinks – the work has stand alone as an exemplary piece of writing in its own right.”
An independent set of eyes can pick out inconsistencies, wonderful details and potential improvements which you might miss – the things that can transform a good piece of writing into a great piece of writing.
I’m not going to spend time repeating all the usual advice about treating each other with respect, sandwiching negative comments between positive ones or timing your feedback so you all get equal share . . . these things are fairly obvious. Instead, I’ll tell you what has worked for me:
- Choose your workshop partners carefully. Three years ago, at the start of my Creative Writing MA I was lucky enough to meet two talented and generous writers, whose work I admired greatly, and whose company I enjoyed enormously. If you don’t respect the writing of a workshop partner, it’s never going to work. You should never feel an inner groan as you move on to someone else’s piece – that’s a sure sign that you’ve got your group all wrong.
- Keep it small. I’m in a group of three, which is plenty big enough for me. I wouldn’t really go over four, just because it means that the workshops are either very long and drawn out, or each feedback session is cut short. Small is beautiful.
- Separate your feedback into ‘big stuff’ and ‘small stuff’. The big stuff can be the over-arching comments, such as, “I loved the dialogue, but more physical description throughout would bring it to life.” The small stuff is, “You’ve repeated the word ‘cavernous’ three times in the same paragraph.”
- Talk – a lot. Some workshop advice tells you to observe silence whilst others deliver their feedback. Personally, I think this is hogwash. We tried it once in an early MA workshop and I nearly fainted with frustration. When you’re given feedback, you need to question it, understand it, agree with it, disagree with it, laugh about it. In this instance, silence is not golden.
- Choose a venue to suit you all. We go to the same pasta restaurant every time, not because we are desperately lacking in imagination, but because the staff there are courteous and patient, and we’re able to workshop and eat at the same time, without being hassled to hurry up and get out. I think they’ve even got a special table set aside for us now, where our laughter won’t distract the other diners too much . . .
- Enjoy it. I’m a naturally solitary person – I love to be alone. My workshop nights not only give me a firm target to write for, but they also encourage me to raise my head every once in a while and get out. Jane and Juliet have become great and trusted friends, and our workshops have undoubtedly helped to shape and challenge our writing in all sorts of different ways.
Good luck with your own writing . . .
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