Why take a writing class?
I don't think anyone needs to take a writing class, which is possibly the wrong sort of thing to be saying when one teaches such things. But it's the truth, and honesty is a good policy: it is possible to write, and to write well, without ever having taken a writing class in your life.
So why bother, then? First off is why anyone takes any kind of class - because it's motivation to do the work that you could do on your own, but would tend to put off if you didn't have a class to go to. For the majority of people who want to write, there is always something more immediate, more pressing, than writing. Their full-time job. Their families. Housework. Social life. For the majority of people, especially when starting off and not at the stage of publishers' deadlines, they only have to answer to themselves when it comes to their writing and getting it done.
Having a class helps. It means people work instead of not working. It means there's a structure to it, it means getting to meet other people who are facing the same problems you are - the balance between life and work and writing - and finding ways to deal with them. It means productivity, first and foremost.
That's before the help that constructive criticism, especially from a practicing writer or experienced facilitator, can provide, not to mention comments from your peers. Before getting a kind of structure that might be useful in working on larger projects or in new genres or fields.
But for now I'm curious, and opening this up to whoever might stumble across this - what experiences, good and bad, have you had in writing classes or workshops? If you write but have never taken a class, why not? For both: is there any kind of class you wish was out there, but doesn't seem to be?
(I came across a thing that combines yoga and writing recently, which seems quite cool and would be the sort of thing that would be amazing to run if one were both a writer and yoga teacher. Oh, these multi-talented folk.)
So why bother, then? First off is why anyone takes any kind of class - because it's motivation to do the work that you could do on your own, but would tend to put off if you didn't have a class to go to. For the majority of people who want to write, there is always something more immediate, more pressing, than writing. Their full-time job. Their families. Housework. Social life. For the majority of people, especially when starting off and not at the stage of publishers' deadlines, they only have to answer to themselves when it comes to their writing and getting it done.
Having a class helps. It means people work instead of not working. It means there's a structure to it, it means getting to meet other people who are facing the same problems you are - the balance between life and work and writing - and finding ways to deal with them. It means productivity, first and foremost.
That's before the help that constructive criticism, especially from a practicing writer or experienced facilitator, can provide, not to mention comments from your peers. Before getting a kind of structure that might be useful in working on larger projects or in new genres or fields.
But for now I'm curious, and opening this up to whoever might stumble across this - what experiences, good and bad, have you had in writing classes or workshops? If you write but have never taken a class, why not? For both: is there any kind of class you wish was out there, but doesn't seem to be?
(I came across a thing that combines yoga and writing recently, which seems quite cool and would be the sort of thing that would be amazing to run if one were both a writer and yoga teacher. Oh, these multi-talented folk.)
posted by Claire at
14:36
4 Comments:
I've taken two classes: Intro to Creative Writing during my semester in Boston University, and Intermediate Creative Writing in the IWC with Heidi Lynn Staples over the winter.
Both classes were great in getting me to knuckle down. Workshops are incredibly important, but in both classes I felt the workshops kind of overwhelmed the class time, which is maybe inevitable.
One thing I loved about the BU class was that it was very short story-orientated, and every week we had reading assignments from an anthology of classic writers, and in-class discussions about them. I loved this because reading classic stories really gives you a grasp of the structure of the short story, how it's a very particular thing and not just a mini-novel. Also, people were very honest and forthright about their opinions on the classic stories, which sparked great discussion, whereas in workshops people were trying to be tactful.
We didn't have reading assignments in the Heidi class, which I missed. There were weekly writing assignments though, with famous pieces as prompts, which I found very helpful as my biggest problem is often plot. It was a more general course than the BU one - most of the people there were poets, but there were also playwrights, story writers and a few multi-disciplinarians. Though it was nice to have variety when workshopping, ultimately I'd rather be in a class that's tailored towards the form I'm writing in.
Oh yeah - and both classes involved on-the-spot writing exercises, which then had to be shared. I hated this at first, and was terrified at having to read aloud something so raw and unpolished, but got used to it as the weeks went by, and ended up really appreciating it - the sense of pressure, that you CAN just sit down and produce something, even if you're not feeling particularly inspired.
All my experiences with formal writing classes were as an undergrad, which makes things a bit different -- it feels like work that you do for any class, only it's creative writing, so there's never really any element of "Ooh, I could slack off on this instead." (Well, I'm sure there is for some people, but there never was for me.)
I had the same prof for two classes, another for the third, and then did an independent study with my advisor my senior year. Strangely enough, they were all men, and I generally write about women. I was always a little sad that I didn't take a class with the female lecturer who writes mysteries -- the second prof writes literary fiction about Haiti, and he's a great guy, but a different perspective might have been nice.
The IS aside, my workshops generally consisted of doing some formal reading on writing techniques, and possibly some short assignments/exercises at the very beginning of the semester, before the schedule kicked in. Then we'd sign up for weeks, and about four or five people would have stories do those weeks, and then we'd discuss them the next week. Generally we had to write three stories in a semester. My first two classes (with the same guy), they were required to be standalone works, but my third class, Madison let us submit either complete short stories or ongoing parts of a longer work. The only thing he ever really cracked down on was this guy in my class who kept writing short stories about the same situation/characters/etc., and it got old after a while. Usually we had to write up some kind of critique for each story we'd read that week -- summarize the plot, list x number of things that were good, x number of things that were bad, etc.
So most of what I remember about those classes is a lot of practical commentary. We did very little reading outside of each other's stories (no wait, that might be a lie. I had to read this really annoying book for Madison's class, by the visiting scholar from that year). We talked technique or literary devices or whatever, but it was almost always in the context of a story that one of us had written, not a professional piece that had been published already. I think that was generally good, and of course it was always nice to get a varied perspective on what you'd written, but now that I look back, I think it might have been better to have smaller groups and more time for in-depth discussion. Or maybe break the class into sections and allow people to discuss as a whole class, but also get spent part of the time in their small groups. I see why it wasn't that way, since creative writing classes tended to fill up. But getting 18 critiques that start with "This story was about a family whose grandfather comes to live with them ..." is not so helpful, and the time your classmates spent writing those could probably have been better spent doing something else. Also, my school was very very small, so you had a good chance of knowing most of the people in your class from other things on campus, and I guess that might have added to the weirdness. It's hard to be critical when you're likely to bump into the person peeing next to you in the bathroom.
There were also times when I wished we didn't spend all our time workshopping each other's pieces -- that the class included something else. But I can't imagine what it would be -- in a lot of ways I'm really glad we didn't do lots of background reading or looking at great works -- so I guess I can't complain about that. Maybe three semesters (not consecutively) were just a little too much of the same thing. The IS I did with my advisor my senior year was set up totally differently and that was probably good, even though I got less done when I didn't have 17 other people nudging me.
Eimear: loving these thoughts. Because, yes, yay workshops, but at the same time depending on what you need/want to get out of a class they're not always what is best for students all the time or even most of the time.
Also nice point re: tact - always easier to criticise work when the writer isn't sitting next to you and you're not going to be going out for a pint later or whatever. I've felt in a couple of classes that I'm the 'bad guy', which in a sense works because I'm allowed to be if I'm teaching the class, but getting to that being able to give and accept 100% honest criticism without being asshole-ish is really tricky for everyone involved.
Elizabeth: really appreciate these thoughts, especially coming from, as I think I've said to you before, the land where fancy colleges leave creative writing as an extra-curricular activity until postgrad. Written critiques sound time-consuming, but I guess it's a different situation in college where one is presumed to be a 'full time student' as opposed to part-time learning.
*musing, musing*
Hi Claire,
I'm happy to have found your blog because I've been contemplating taking a writing class for some time now. I have a blog sight
dene-lifeshappenings.blogspot.com, which is different fascist of my life mixed with thoughts of fantasy and reality. Those who read it, advise I should write a book. So lately I've found myself in book stores reading similar books and/or styles such as mine.
I'd appreciate and welcome any professional feedback, comments or advice you could leave on my sight, in terms of my writing.
Best Regards,
Meagan
Life’s Happenings
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