I received a gratifying email from a former Columbia MFA student—now a creative writing teacher—about a chapter in my book The Writing Workshop Note Book (Soft Skull / Counterpoint). I am reprinting the note, followed by an adapted excerpt from the chapter. At my former student’s request, I have removed details that might identify the school and am withholding her name.
Hello Professor Ziegler,
Our seminar-style classes have students of mixed grade levels—freshmen through senior. Recently, the returning students staged a bit of a mutiny. Three pulled me aside and complained about a lack of “professionalism” in the workshopping abilities of the several new students. Apparently, they felt that their own writing, comments, and insights were much more sophisticated than those of the younger students, and that they, the “experienced” workshoppers, took the process much more seriously, which had led to a desperate crisis.
I heard them out and asked them what they thought we could do. They wanted to have an in-class discussion in which they could air their concerns (and, of course, also assert their perceived superiority, I knew).
So, for our next class I handed out your first chapter in “Part Two: Notes on Workshopping.” We went around the room, each student taking a turn reading a paragraph or two aloud. Beforehand, I asked them while reading to make note of those sections that rang true to them or felt most meaningful or helped them discover something they didn’t know or felt they could use.
(Worth noting: as soon as we finished reading, one of the discontented three closed her packet dramatically and exclaimed, “That was great!”)
Afterward I asked each student to share what they learned they might be able to think about or do differently to get the most out of the workshop. We spent 1 1/2 hours of our 3-hour class reading and discussing your chapter, and each student (even those poor terrified freshmen) shared their feelings about their work and experience, ranging from fear of speaking because of feelings of intimidation (without mentioning any names or making eye content) and fear of “not being right” to acknowledgment of tendencies to dominate the conversation (one of those three upperclassman, remarkably). The effects were quite wonderful, and the group left class in bright spirits.
So, thank you.
I wanted to let you know what had happened so you could add this small moment to what I am sure is a long and continually growing list of success stories directly linked to your approach to teaching writing and to your invaluable notebook, which you so generously shared with all of us. Little did I know at the time how helpful both would be.
With my thanks and best regards,
(name withheld)
Workshop Do’s and Don’ts (adapted from The Writing Workshop Note Book)
DO be there. If you are absent you cannot “make up” the work any more than athletes in team sports can make up games they miss. Even if the teacher allows one or two absences, don’t take them as a matter of entitlement; classes should not be cut like excess verbiage. If you are in an academic program, don’t tell the instructor that you had to miss class because a history paper was due (unless you would tell your history professor that you missed class because you were writing a poem).
DON’T try to establish yourself as the alpha writer. It is not good for you, and it is not good for the workshop. A friend told me that in her first term in a graduate writing program, several students submitted their “greatest hits” for critique, more concerned with establishing themselves as workshop stars than with transforming their writing. They left the workshop with pretty much what they had brought to it. My friend, on the other hand, brought in raw material and left with a chunk of her first novel.
DO be on time. Being late for a literature class is disruptive, but Balzac or any Bronte will not suffer. If you are late for a writing workshop, a very alive writer could be hurt if a critique is in progress. Chronic lateness can be infectious, causing critique time to be truncated.
DON’T try to establish yourself as the alpha critic. Witty, scathing critiques should be saved for reviews of books by authors making tons of undeserved money. One student was told in class that his writing was “an affront to literature.” The workshop is not the guardian of literature; we are door-openers, not gatekeepers.
DO be helpful to the teacher in giving everyone an opportunity to speak. In some workshops, a few students tend to dominate the discussions. If you are one of the talkers, you can help by hanging back occasionally. Think of it as being selfish—receiving rather than dispensing wisdom.
DON’T think: What kind of person would write such a thing? The only transgressions you should hold authors responsible for are their characters’ unmotivated words and deeds.
DO be a nurturer.
DON’T be a coddler.
DO be patient and don’t make snap judgments about the effectiveness of a teacher or workshop. If you feel frustrated, don’t let it hamper your full and open participation; it is hard to learn from inside a shell. The wisdom derived from a class may not take full effect immediately. You may find yourself internalizing a teacher’s voice years down the road. This is not to say that the workshop should create a posthypnotic state, where you blindly repeat what you were told, but if you ingest as much as possible during the term, you have a good shot at reaping benefits long after the workshop is over. And even what appear to be irreconcilable differences can have a felicitous effect on your work, just as irritants induce oysters to make pearls.
DON’T be too jealous of any successes by others in the workshop; success can be contagious. You never know where your classmates will wind up, and what they might be able to do for you. This doesn’t mean that you won’t ever experience an inkling of what Gore Vidal was referring to when he revealed, “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” If this schadenfreude-in-reverse happens, just shrug and think, Oh, you again, and offer congratulations. Think: "I am literally in the same class as this genius!"
DO be attentive to your classmates’ work. Read with care and concern.
DON’T belabor a point once it’s been made and remade. I was on a jury when an attorney kept hammering home the same nail, until the judge said, “Noted, now move on.”
DO be communicative with your teacher if you have any significant problems with your writing or with the class.
DON’T be intimidated by what your classmates write. There’s a chance you may be doing something they can’t do. The story goes that a marathon champion met someone at a party who had just run a marathon. The champion asked what the fellow’s time was, and the guy sheepishly confessed that he hadn’t even broken five hours. The champion replied with admiration, “I can’t imagine running for five hours straight.”
DO be generous to your classmates by giving thoughtful comments. A workshop’s success is dependent not only on the openness of students to take criticism, but also on their willingness to give it. Some students don’t want to say anything they are not absolutely sure of, so they don’t say anything. Keep in mind that responses are as much works-in-progress as the pieces under consideration, and our ideas can crystallize through talking. As Gracie Allen said to George Burns, “Do you know that almost everything I know today I learned by listening to myself talk about something I didn’t understand.”
DON’T try to get even. The following comment by a student evinced an audible reaction from several others when I read it to the class: “I often feel guarded with my criticism of others’ work, for fear that anything too harsh (honest?) might result in a reciprocal attack on my work.” Such retaliation is rare, but it can be like a chloroform-dipped rag on the life-breath of the class. Fortunately, the workshop process has a self-regulating feature: other voices are there to dilute the poison. If you do feel attacked, don’t react hostilely. Break a pencil point if you want to channel your anger (don’t do it with a fountain pen), and try to recast the comment into something useful. If the irritation persists, talk to your classmate or the teacher (but do it outside of class)—or make a pearl out of it.
DO be a good sport. If a classmate gets knocked down with criticism, extend a hand rather than pile on. (Perhaps the teacher should carry a penalty flag; anyone piling on has to move five yards away from the table for the next comment.)
DON’T keep score. A student came to my office, concerned that I often praised others whose work she considered to be weaker than hers; she feared that it devalued the praise I gave her. I asked her if my being harsher on the work of others would make her feel better. She replied, somewhat embarrassed, that her real concern was whether my praise for her work was sincere. I suggested that if she listened carefully to my comments, she could detect different levels of praise. But, more important, my comments are not only pitched to the general level of the class, but also to the level of each individual, so I might be singing praise in different keys.
DO be attentive when your work is being critiqued, and make note of everything said. Follow up on any points that might need clarification or elaboration. The more you sow during the critique, the more you reap when you rewrite.
DON’T repeat to outsiders what you hear and read in the workshop; assume that all information is confidential and all pieces are restricted to workshop members unless otherwise stated. This is especially important with material that may refer to the authors’ friends and families. (Don’t go to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a classmate and say, “Oh, Aunt Bess, I’m so sorry about the typo on your Elvis tattoo, and does it still hurt to sit down?”) I once received a phone call from the father of an upset student. His daughter had never taken a writing class, but her former boyfriend had workshopped a story about their breakup, which was being passed around the dorm.
DO be courteous with how you dress your manuscript for school. Unless instructed otherwise: Double-space (except for poetry); leave wide margins (top, bottom, right, left) for notes; run spell-checker, then proofread the old-fashioned way; place commas and periods inside the closing quotation mark; semicolons and colons, outside; indent new paragraphs (if you do not indent, insert a blank line between paragraphs); number pages (the computer will do this for you, but you must issue the order); don’t play with typography—just use a basic font (this is a draft, not a brochure); put your name, the title, and the date on the front page, along with an indication if the piece is in response to an assignment or is a revision of something previously turned in; fasten with a staple or clip.
DON’T let outside relationships enter the workshop. If you know any of your classmates in other contexts, try to neutralize whatever affection or animosity you may have for them.
DO be open. Not everything presented by your classmates will be your cup of tea, but your job is to sip from whatever is served. It is often a good thing for a writer to go through a literary-ideological phase, such as eschewing all first-person or present-tense narratives, or declaring “realism rules” or “surrealism is the only response to the wacky world.” When the writer’s and the respondent’s ideologies clash, the critiquer should be receptive. If you do make a comment colored by, say, an aversion to minimalist fiction or anything resembling science fiction, make your comment in the spirit of “This is what I would do if I were you,” rather than “This is what you would do if you were me.” The workshop puts a solitary act into public scrutiny, turning a solo effort into a group cause. We must not homogenize the individual voices in the room by maneuvering critiques toward a common vision. Rome may have been designed with all roads leading to it, but the workshop is more like an expanded version of Frost’s yellow wood, with roads diverging in many directions. Follow your classmates down the roads they choose; you may discover places to explore on your own.
