The Awesomeness of Workshops

In case you’re new to writing, or you don’t write but I guilted you into reading my blog, I wanted to talk about the awesomeness of workshops.

In education, workshops often refer to a training session where you learn about something new or get to understand something at a deeper level.  However, in writing circles and programs, it refers to something different.  It is where you bring a passage you wrote to share with others who will read very carefully and critique it.  It goes beyond people saying that they liked what you wrote and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of what you wrote.  In turn, you do the same for the others.

The first time one participates in a workshop, it can be very scary.  You are taking your work that you put so much blood, sweat and tears (well, hopefully not that much blood…) into writing and you are letting people criticize it.   I’ve had workshops from one to forty pages and everywhere in between.  They’ve all proven useful.  (I’ve blogged separately about the one-on-one session where my whole book was read…loved that…but not what I’m talking about here.)

I went to a couple workshops at conferences several years ago where 15 people and two agents listened to my first two pages.  After hearing the agents’ comments, I was ready to curl up into a fetal position in my hotel closet.  However, that experience helped me to figure out how to make my opening stronger. 

Subsequent workshops I’ve done have been online.  I really like the time that particular approach gives to digest the feedback before responding.  Some of the harsher sounding feedback I received has been the most helpful…although it took a few days of pouting for me to appreciate it.

By having multiple people reading and commenting on your passage, you can get a feel for how others would read and interpret what you wrote.  I looked at each person in my workshop cohorts as representing ten people each that might read my story – kind of like how the Nelson ratings have representative people that determine how well a TV show is doing.   

Why have one person represent 10 views? For me, it helped to realize that the one person I could have thought was crazy for thinking about something in my book would not be the only one to think that if my book made it to the general public.  Otherwise, it might be too easy to dismiss a comment from a lone individual.

On the other hand, if one person out of 15 says one thing and the rest say something completely different, then perhaps you need to listen to the majority and how to tweak something.  The real challenge occurs when the group is split evenly about an issue in the passage.

The main challenge with workshops is that the readers are only seeing a limited portion of the book.  As a result, when my whole book was read, there were repetitive sections, there were repetitive sections, and there were repetitive sections due to each chunk having received separate feedback.  ;)  Keep an eye out for that issue so you don’t fall victim to it. 

Otherwise, remember – Workshops are Awesome!