Survival Tips for the Creative Writing Workshop

Congratulations!  You’ve completed your first short story and isn’t it just perfect?  The characters are fully realized; the language is lyrical, but not overbearingly so; the plot is engaging and yet subtle enough to merit a second read through (who wouldn’t want to read it twice?).  You’ve created life out of nothing and now know the meaning of motherly love.  What, you might ask, could possibly ruin this fluttery feeling?

The writers workshop, that’s what. 

The life cycle of your story will be a harrowing one. The first test is the workshop, a place you take your stories to get analyzed, dissected, and misunderstood by an audience.  You sit front and center, watching as your peers pull apart everything you so carefully put together.

This process can be tough for those new to workshops, but it gets easier.  Here are just a few survival tips:  

1.      Don’t Take It Personally

When you put a lot of time and energy into creating something original and representative of your best work, it’s hard not to take things personally.  Try to remember that the criticism is meant to be constructive.  Look at the workshop as an opportunity to grow as an artist.  Most creative types have an ego.  Leave yours at the door.

2.      Keep Your Mouth Shut

This can be a difficult task.  The desire to interject will come when they interpret your story wrong, but you absolutely must keep your mouth shut.  It’s important for students to talk openly.  As soon as you interrupt the process to explain your creative choices, you put up a wall.  People will be afraid to offend you and you won’t get an honest critique.

3.      Be Selective

Everyone has something beneficial to offer, right?  Wrong.  There will always be students in your class who just do not get it.  You have to learn to filter the good advice from the bad.  We all bring our own tastes into the workshop and typically these tastes affect our choices in technique.  What works for you might not work for the next guy over.  That being said, you should listen to what everyone has to say. Sometimes it just takes a shift in perspective for everything to click.

4.      Come Prepared to Ask Questions

At the end of the critique, you might be allowed to ask a few questions.  Do not miss out on the opportunity!  This is when you get to dictate the course of the workshop.  Come with a list of questions designed to help you develop the story in a way you that works for you. 

So you’ve made it through your first workshop and the story you started out with is in tatters.  Your ego is bruised and you’re wondering why you ever decided to be a writer.  Quitting would be the easiest choice at this point, but you’re better than that, aren’t you?  You can see where the story needs to be tweaked: the weak dialogue, inappropriate setting, inconsistent voice.  Maybe it wasn’t all working before.  What was that about motherly love?  How quickly the feeling changes to disappointment. 

But it’s not over yet.  Everything can be stitched back together and better than before.  By the next workshop, your peers will finally understand what you meant to say all along.  If not, the cycle repeats.  And that’s just the way of creative writing. 

Two Tips for Giving Peer Feedback

Maybe you're part of a writing group, a student in a creative writing workshop, or just peer-editing a friend's paper. No matter your situation, we at the Writing Center know how complicated it can be to give honest, helpful feedback.

These two tips should help you to be help others--without making enemies.

1. Set Feedback Rules

For beginning writers especially, good taste in writing comes easier than actually being able to create good writing. It means you probably won't like each other's work the way you like other things you've read. Discussing problems with a story may become easier than discussing strengths.

But as long as you know each other's boundaries, you can navigate this terrain. Ask each member if they want both positive and negative feedback. If they are ready for negative feedback, ask them if they prefer observations or advice. Trying to prescribe solutions may take away the fun and independence of writing from the writer.

I, for example, have never once used the solution that someone else came up with. Now, I don't know if that's because of pride or because others simply can't rewrite your story the way that you can, but it doesn't matter. Advice works better when it's invited.

Also, be sure to consider how your discussions begin and end. Would you rather dig into the opportunities for improvement first or after a little buffer of praise? The sandwich method (praise, problems, praise) may sound good, but it can be hard to pay attention to encouragement after your peers have pointed out a weak spot in the writing. That said, who wants to end on a bad note?

2. Believe in Your Peers

In writing groups, what I worry about is not taking a risk and failing. After about six workshops, I've come to accept that a lot of my risks will fail. What I worry about is the way people in workshops take the group setting as permission to turn off their trusting side.

When we read published writers, we often accept that our confusion may be our own fault. Now, you may not be in a group of published writers, but that shouldn't stop you from reading with belief in every writer's abilities.

I know it's easier to read a peer's work with probably too much awareness that the author is in a group designed for writers who want to improve. Yes, pointing out issues can help the writer, but confusing sections may smooth themselves out, given enough time.

It's a good reading practice to suspend your disbelief the first time you read a piece. Be a believer. Trust the writer. Then reread the document with a more critical eye.

In my first workshop, I fell victim to that kind of doubt in myself and everyone else. "It's not like any of us are one of the greats," I thought. So why should any of us get a free pass?

But who needs that attitude?

Tell yourself that the writer did everything for a reason. Respect the writer's authority, just as you would want them to respect yours. For the first reading at least, treat them like a prophet with a direct line to Truth. Treat 'em like one of the greats.

Ever since I started reading this way, I write better feedback. My peers seem happier. And best of all, every time I go to a workshop, I get to surround myself with prophets, with the greats.

Looking Back at Lions in Winter Again: Edward Kelsey Moore & Character

A couple weeks ago, Nathan took us back to Lions in Winter, filling us in on Stephen Graham Jones’s lecture on “info dumping” and hook lines. A second fiction writer, Edward Kelsey Moore, gave a lecture as well. After discussing some of his work in class and even hearing him read one of his stories online, I was eager to sit down, shut up, and soak in what he had to say about creating characters.

Moore began by talking about how well you should know your characters. But how do you do that? Practice. Moore had us write, starting with a simple scene of a single character doing the mundane. As usual, I wrote about myself, using another name.

He must have known I’d do this, because his next prompt suggested that we get out of ourselves by giving the character some quality, possession, or characteristic that would make this character different. This makes enough sense. To get into one head, we need to get out of another.

What’s next? Remove yourself even further. His next prompt asked us to think about what would naturally come next--and just ignore it. If your character is putting away groceries, and the next step would be to start cooking dinner, don’t let her cook dinner. This boring step could lead to more unimportant events, leaving you and readers with filler that’s not worth reading.

Make the character forget something at the store. Imagine that the cooking appliances won't turn on. Your character might see a dolphin jumping out of the backyard swimming pool and forget about dinner. Whatever it is, change the pace.

Moore’s lecture helped me understand some things. One is that I love the unexpected. Unfortunately, another realization is that I don’t get to read a lot of creative writing in the Writing Center. Yes, I love reading academic papers, personal statements, and resumes. But I’d also love to read some Moore-inspired, unexpected creativity too.  

So if you are taking a creative writing class, surprise us by bringing that work to the Writing Center!

Creative (Pre)Writing for Non-Creative Writers

I am not a creative writer.

I mean, I'm creative. I went to a youth conservatory for visual arts in high school. I can play "Colors of the Wind" on the piano. I'm crafty-as-all-get-out.

And since having children, I've gotten pretty good at making terrifying sea monsters with Play-Doh:

ARE YOU NOT AMAZED?

But I am not a creative writer. Poetry. Fiction. Novels. It's all magic and wonder to me. It is something I simply can. not. do.

Well, that's not entirely true. I do it a lot, but not for an outside audience. Instead, I dabble in creative writing to get my mind ready to tackle other tasks. Playing with creative writing prompts for 15 or 20 minutes helps me transition from the chaos that is my real life (have you ever tried to write a conference proposal with a 4 year old in the room? Don't) so that I can actually think. I can also use silly prompts as a way to motivate myself when I face a writing task I'm not looking forward to; I'll avoid things I dislike like the plague, but I can usually convince myself to write about silly things for a few minutes. Once I've started writing (even though it's not serious), transitioning to the writing I really need to do isn't as difficult.

Here are a few of my favorite creative writing prompts

• Making Mythology: Explain why some aspect of everyday life is the way it is in the style of a myth, fable or creation story. How did the rock get to look like an elephant? Why do strawberries have seeds? What mystical Armenian immortals birthed the forefathers of the Kardashian clan?
• Man Up!: Most of the time, manifestos are serious documents that declare a person's (or people's) views or intentions. There's Mina Loy's feminist manifestos (and Valerie Solanis' even more radical S.C.U.M. Manifesto). There's the Communist Manifesto of Engels and Marx. One of the great things about manifestos is how much they push and play with language and hyperbole; if Solanis' manifesto is an indicator, the more over the top the manifesto, the better. I give myself 15 minutes to write passionate, exaggerated treatises on tiny things that don't matter: turn signals, how to sit on a couch, what color highlighter to choose.
• Rewriting History (with Zombies): self explanatory.
• Limited Letters: Decide how do limit your letters (no Ws? Only words that start with consonants?), then describe a person, place or moment following the limit.
• Writing Wikipedia:  Choose a random article on Wikipedia. Read the title (nothing else!) and write an encyclopedia entry for it. (caveat: with this prompt, there's the risk of falling into a wikipedia hole and spending 2 hours reading about obscure animals--oh hai, Jamaican Coney).

So, what about you? Do you incorporate creative writing in your writing routine? Got any prompts I can add to my arsenal?

Exclamation Point - Is there a place for you anymore?

Recently, I was told that I use too many exclamation points in my emails. Pssh.

It is an email. Who cares?

But then the author of the email, my grandma of the punctuation police, told me that it appears as if I am shouting at her when I use it.

!!!

Well, first of all there is some truth in that because my grandma is 87 years old and I do shout when talking to her. But I have to admit that shouting was not my intended tone. Instead, I wanted to convey how excited I was to be having lunch with her that day.

This is what my sentence looked like: "Grandma, today is going to be great! I'll meet you at Monicals at about 11. Save a spot for me?!!! Violet has been super cranky, and I can't seem to get moving on time today. Ugh!"

This is how my grandma corrected my sentence: " Grandma, today is going to be great. I will meet you at Monicals at 11. Will you save a seat for me? Violet has been cranky all morning, and I am not keeping good time today."

Then after that correction lashing, my grandma said, "Kelly. I know you are fun and sweet. I should be able to tell that with your words, not your punctuation."

And suddenly I was whiplashed viciously into grad school. All the memos that I had written, all the papers, all the emails to professors, all were heavily laden with exclamation points. It was almost like I had looked back on my life through slow motion, all this time, and no one had told me. Why no intervention? I feel that blame should be placed on everyone else for this....

So then what do you do when you realize that you have a problem and need to fix it? Google. Yep. I started searching for reasons why the exclamation point is so vehemently hated, and I found the following statements:

"The exclamation point is like the horn in your car—use it only when you have to. A chorus of exclamation points says two things about your writing: First, you're not confident that what you're saying is important, so you need bells and whistles to get attention. Second, you don't know a really startling idea when you see one." (Patricia O'Connor - Woe is I)

"I can sum up the problem that most people have with the exclamation point in one short sentence: They use them. That's right. That's the problem. Most often when an exclamation point is used, it is unnecessary. In an academic paper, exclamation points are inappropriate. In fact, in most writing, even in personal letters, one almost never needs an exclamation point. The exclamation point means that you are extremely excited and maybe even shouting. If people talked like they write, with all of the exclamation points, they'd be out of breath and have a sore throat"
(Dr. Rick Walston)

AND

Apparently F. Scott Fitzgerald likened using exclamation marks to laughing at your own jokes (guilty as charged).

Ouch. But don't worry. I did find a positive:

"The use of exclamation marks is appropriate in creative writing. Sometimes they accompany interjections (e.g., ouch, oh, wow), but most times, exclamation marks are used to convey a strong emotion or surprise. However, Even though exclamation marks are accepted in creative writing, the danger is that they can promote lazy “telling” and not vivid “showing” writing. By overusing them, authors are relying on a piece of punctuation as a shortcut for exposition" (Scribendi.com)

Even the positive comes with a warning though.

It may hurt me exponentially, but these are indeed very good points. Is the exclamation point the sign of a nervous or self-conscious writer? Maybe.

I would most definitely fit into that category, and admit that I have fought the urge to have them all over this post. I think the problem I have and maybe other writers have is that we wonder if the correct emotion is conveyed without the use of the exclamation point.

Can my reader understand how important the phrase I'm writing is without the EP? Or how happy I am to be writing to them? I think that, "Hi! How are you!?" is perfectly fine. To me, it reflects the fact that I am indeed very happy to talk to the reader of my note, but in retrospect this does appear to be shouting.

I guess this is what Facebook, Twitter, and texting have done to us although my exclamation point love most definitely originated before the social networks. Alas, it is a hard habit to break, but do I have to break it?

Yes. Sigh.

Exclamation points should be used sparingly in academic writing because the words you choose to write should be strong enough to not need an exclamation point. There are instances where they are acceptable, and that decision has to be made by you. You have to remember your audience. Would I use an exclamation point in a 16 page essay regarding Peter Elbow? (well, man...yeah. Who wouldn't?) Probably not as much as I desperately want to do it.

I would be afraid that my professor wouldn't take me as seriously if I emphasized my all important point with ! UNLESS I had come up with something so ground breaking and so amazing that I decided this one time, this one perfect time, this serendipitous place where my point is going to be absolutely off the charts remarkable is perfectly suited for the EP. Perhaps a sentence like this, "I have found the lost island of Atlantis!"

Now that I know that I have a problem will I stop using the EP so much?

Yes, grumble grumble. I'm even going to go as far as to try and stop using it in my Facebook status updates and my texts. Will people still understand my excitement?

Probably. At least I hope so.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. Anyone else ready to put that life of exclamation points behind you?

My name is Kelly, and I'm addicted to Exclamation Points.

Shew.

National Novel Writing Month

November means three things to a student: papers, Thanksgiving, and avoiding papers until after Thanksgiving. But to some of us, it means one additional thing: National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. If you've ever taken a creative writing class comprised of some of the "hardcore" folks who actually enjoy writing, you've surely heard the phrase. While I personally disdain the phrase in its abbreviated form (it sounds like a technology from a pulpy science fiction series), I've always been attracted to the idea behind it as a creative writer. I must confess I've never actually made an attempt to participate.

The goal is simple. You have thirty days beginning on November 1st at midnight and ending on November 30th at 11:59 PM to write 50,000 words. Say you have about 250 words to the page. Do the math and you'll find that it comes out to be, like, a 1000 pages. Or something. I may carried a number wrong, but math is not my strong point. In any case, assuming you fire off the necessary amount of words by the end of the month, you'll have yourself a beautiful novel.

Then again, it may not be that pretty. Part of the fun/torture of NaNoWriMo (there I go, doing it myself) is taking no time to edit and focusing on pure, nasty generation. According to the website, it's "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing," which translates into, "you'll probably hate what you wrote when you read it later." They even have the good hear to warn you that "you will be writing a lot of crap." But they insist "that's a good thing." And I'm inclined to agree with them.

As writers, we want to edit as we go, often causing problems for us as we compose. Our internal editor is shouting away at us in our minds, reminding us that "that's crap" we just smeared on the screen/page/napkin. But with NaNoWriMo (ugh) we accept it, nay, we embrace it!

So why do it? The official website offers a few reasons ("To stop being one of those people who say, 'I've always wanted to write a novel,'" or "To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties") and though they may not seem the most productive reasons, I assure you there is something to get out of it aside from a bunch of pages of a mess. By participating in NaNoWriMo, you're pushing yourself to become a more dedicated writer. You set goals for yourself (write 1,600 words a night, 12,500 a week, etc.). The most beneficial thing about National Novel Writing Month (haha!) is that you get to gag that internal editor and stuff him in the trunk until he learns to play nice. Or until you're done with your novel.

Now, off to write 1,600 words of garbage.

Voice: Across the Curriculum

The writing process is different for everyone, but writing for a particular class can evoke a different voice or tone that’s present. Regardless of the writing itself, whether it’s creative, research, synthesis or any other style, your voice is present within the paper.

When writing a creative piece (fiction, play, poem, or essay based on personal experience), the voice of the writer can be examined insofar as the point of view of the characters or the type of creative piece overall. For example, the sentence, “I went home this past weekend for my brother’s birthday,” is a sentence in first person. Most of the time this is acceptable when writing creative pieces unless the assignment calls for something different. Also, when creating stories, having a steady narrator will allow for an avenue for readers to identify with the characters. While composing, the author has to make sure to maintain the voice in style and point of view in order to create cohesion of the piece itself.

In contrast to personal and creative writing, when writing research papers a lot of people don’t think their voices can be heard amongst the research. Sometimes this process causes difficulties for writers because they are struggling to make their voice heard since the use of “I,” “you,” and “we” are less common when composing a research paper. When writing a research-based paper, students should be composing mostly in third person, such as the use of “a lot of people” in the first sentence of this paragraph. Some commonly used phrases in research papers are “one,” “the results show…,” and “the conclusions are…” in contrast to pronouns such as “I” and “we.” For example, though this post doesn’t contain any pronoun indicators of being in first person, my voice shows by how my point is presented as well as by the tone of my post.

Being conscious of the assignment and what type of writing is required for a paper can help you use strategies to make sure your voice is present within a paper.

Writing Really is Everywhere!

Papers, papers, papers. They come in all different forms and styles, especially while you’re in your undergrad program at EIU. I remember thinking that just English majors wrote papers, and everyone else was home free, but I was very wrong. So I wanted to make sure that everyone realized how important the skill of writing is to your future career.

Regardless of your major the Writing Center here at EIU is here to help!

We don’t edit papers, but rather those of us that work in the Writing Center want to help writer’s gain skills that will help them create skills to help with other classes and the careers that you so choose. Because regardless of the place of employment that you end up in, writing will be an aspect of your job, even if it’s engineering or working maintenance.

At the Writing Center we will help you with any assignment that you may have that’s writing related. Here are some examples of the array of things we can help students with.

Narratives

Lesson Plans

Case Studys

Research Papers in any area

Business Proposals

Aspects of writhing a thesis in a masters program

Grad School Application Essays

Essays for scholarship

Lab Reports

APA, MLA, Chicago citations

These are just few of the many areas of writing that you can get help with at the Writing Center.

So don’t be afraid or scared if you hear you have a lot of writing to do in a science class or any other class. Lab reports also require a lot of writing and analysis, and people at the Writing Center can help if you get confused on format or citing or just figuring out where to begin! The biggest help at times may be to also know that you aren’t alone. There are many other students out there who need help on their writing.

Putting Yourself on the Page: How to End Your Writing with Applause, Not Snores

For some, the most difficult part about the writing process is getting started. If you find that you struggle with where to begin, there are a few things that you can do in order to have a smoother take-off and a more exciting writing process.


1. Writing what you know plays a big role in the writing process. Even though many papers we write will be discovery drafts, starting with what you know is an excellent way to get your ideas brewing. Let's say, for instance, you are a trapeze artist who wants to write a letter to the manufacturer of ladders. Although there has to be a certain amount audience awareness, the content of the letter is equally important. Tell the manufacturers your story. Why is the quality of this ladder so important to you and your career? Give specifics. If you are climbing up the ladder and it breaks, your act is in jeopardy. So give a detailed account of your situation. Make yourself stand out. Tell the story about how you've practiced since you were five. Make them laugh. Make them cry.

2. Try to avoid using generic words. People love Cocoa Puffs for a reason. They are the non-generic brand. They have a cute little bird named Sonny and a catch phrase. They aren't just "Chocolate Puffs" with a brown box and a promise of good cereal. The two cereals may be the same, but only one of them makes you go "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

3. Write what you love. Chances are, when you are writing about something that you truly care about, the reader will be more likely to acknowledge your integrity. Although sometimes we have to write about things that we don't particularly enjoy writing about, there is always a way to turn it into something you care about. Say, for instance, that I have to write about two poems that I don't particularly like, or that I didn't get. Try to find something in the poem that you enjoy: the image of a chicken, the subject of love or family, the time period it was written in, nature, Anything! There are infinite ways of exploring a poem and there is bound to be a way that suits you. Writing can always be one-size-fits-all. You can always connect to it because it is your creation. You are the one who gets to choose if your writing is as exciting as the return of your favorite TV show, or as dull as a plastic spoon.

Do the Genre Swap

Well, summer is just a week away, and you all know what that means! Time to write! That’s right. Summer is the perfect time to write and try new things. Besides, it’s always good to write over the summer so you don’t get rusty. Writing is a skill that you need to keep practicing, and if you go all summer without writing, the fall semester will start a little rough. Now, I’m not saying go write a research paper or anything like that. I’m saying go have some fun with writing. So what I’m here to do is to suggest a writing exercise that is usually found in creative writing workshops. It’s called the Genre Swap and this is how it goes:

Take a genre you love. For me, I say the zombie genre. I love everything zombie. Then take that genre and list 3 reasons why you love it. Here’s my list:

1. The implications of a society/culture destroying itself.

2. The fact that the humans are typically the real villains/monsters of a zombie story.

3. The pattern of survivors found in almost every zombie story.

Now that you have the genre you love, name a genre you hate. For me, I would say the romance genre. Ughh, every time I see or hear “romance genre” I think Fever Pitch (what an awful movie). Okay, so once you name a genre you hate, go ahead and list 3 reasons why you hate it. Here’s my list for the romance genre:

1. The ridiculous back and forth: I love you. I hate you. I love you. Uhh, just decide already!

2. The minuscule reasons the couple will break up for: Oh you love the Red Sox? I’m leaving you.

3. The lack of deeper meaning within the majority of the genre.

Okay, so now is the time to do the genre swap. Write a story that falls under the genre you hate, but while doing that, swap your lists and write the genre you hate with the elements of the genre you love. I know what you’re thinking: “Chris, your example means a zombie romance story. That doesn’t make sense.” Oh really? I point you to Shaun of the Dead or Fido. It can be done and this exercise can be a lot of fun. This is just something to try and have fun with. So when you are looking for something to do this summer, pick up a pen and paper and write a little. You won’t regret it.

Creative Writing in the Classroom

Many people balk at creative writing. They see it as having few practical applications in the real world. Certainly, this stereotype is a by-product of creative writers themselves (and I am one of them), who talk about "art" more than they do "practice" or "practicality."

But creative writing can be used elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to mentor teach in a literature classroom, where creative writing featured prominently. The professor, Dr. Letitia Moffitt, used creative writing assignments to help students understand Shakespeare plays. These students were, for the most part, non-English majors, mostly sophomores, who had little previous experience with the Bard. By creating their own scenarios based off the plays (sometimes rooted in popular culture, such as The Lion King, Jersey Shore, and other programs), students were able to grasp the underlying thematic concepts inherent in the plays.

But creative writing can extend beyond English courses. In a mathematics course I had freshman year, our professor encouraged creative thinking in understanding advanced probability theorems. There was little of what we would traditionally call "writing" going on, but the process was still there; the idea was sound, and it helped us non-math students grasp these principles.

The same idea could easily be applied to other courses. Don't let the writing itself get in the way; often, it's the thought process behind the writing that is most useful. Use creative scenarios to get around difficult concepts. If students can be shown how abstract or difficult subjects relate to some aspect of their own life, they will better understand both the subject and why it's worth learning.

If you have any specific ideas or suggestions, please post them in the "Comments" section.