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Let's examine some of the myths commonly presented about creative writing workshops, shall we? Please feel free to respond to any of this or add something new to the discussion.



"If you have guidelines for or restrictions placed upon your work, you're being creatively stifled and wasting your time."


Wrong. Duh. Creative writing courses are not sit around and keep your thumb in its usual place in your a*****e courses. This argument usually appears from those who write genre material or "emo" poetry, because such work is often considered to be inferior to literary fiction and poetry. Whether these are actually inferior or not is for another discussion, but consider this: In my years spent in creative writing workshops and theory classes (and in speaking with countless professors of creative writing and literature about the subject), I've found the overwhelming majority of such pieces to focus entirely too much on the conventions of their respective genre, to the point that the basic fundamentals of writing--plot, voice, setting, the tension of characters and situation, metaphor, imagery--are completely ignored. Often times, professors seek to put you outside your comfort area for one simple reason: You're in a creative writing class to learn. You aren't there to do just any-old-thing you want. You're there to learn to manipulate words in a way that aesthetically honors the traditions of literature and expounds upon them. As one who thought he was awesome as s**t when he was a teenager, please allow me to assure you: You aren't as awesome as you think you are. You need to learn, and you learn--or should learn--with every word you write.



"If you have a less-than-adequate teacher, you can't learn anything and are wasting your time."


Wrong. Life doesn't always hand us a bag of happy rabbit treats, and sometimes you're going to have teachers you don't particularly like--be it personal differences, differing focus on certain elements of writing, or even the teacher's inability to meet your needs. This doesn't mean, however, that you can't learn from the teacher--and your peers in the class. Everyone is going to let at least some little nugget of brilliance slip at some point, and it's your job to pick it all up. Remember, though, that nine times out of ten, you can learn a whole hell of a lot from your teacher. Put aside your personal feelings and approach your writing class as art education and your professor as any other teacher--try thinking math to get this concept arranged in your head--and you’ll probably be surprised just how much you’ll learn.



"The success of a workshop depends on your classmates' willingness to critique your work--and they're rarely any help."


Wrong. With all due respect to Mr. King (if he did indeed express this sentiment, as I'm told), this is only partially true--at best. Help received from your classmates can be a wonderful thing. True, the other writers care more about their own work than they do yours. The workshops in which I've participated, however, have in no way suffered from this fact. A workshop is a community, and the writers participating generally know this. Granted, there are going to be some peers who are of little help--be it because they don’t care to help or because they are--quite literally--incapable of helping, but I’ve always been able to find at least a person or two who are willing and able to help. Those who give you valuable, useful feedback--and there’s always going to be someone--are absolutely invaluable. It is important, of course, that you always serve the same role for your peers--you quickly learn who fully participates in a workshop, and so does everyone else. Plus, you learn a lot about writing from critiquing the work of others--true story! Maximize on the good instead of focusing on the unhelpful. Only you can ruin the workshop experience for yourself.

personally people need to stop whining... restrictions are in place to teach. that's what the class is for.

You teacher sounds messed up.

I'm planning to take creative writing next year at my school. A friend of mine is already taking it, and he says that the teacher's the bomb. I so can't wait. whee

Your logic is nonexistent, here. Arguing personal opinion with me isn’t going to get you very far--and claiming that a brief, non-specific portion of my text is strengthening the opposing claim won’t get you anywhere.

As I stated in my original post, you can learn something from everyone. While your speaking of books by authors and grabbing teachers after class is cute (I assume you’re in high school, where this sort of thing with teachers is more feasible), you need to realize that these do not, in any way, simulate the same effect of the workshop. I maintain--as do my friends, my peers, my mentors, and countless of the great poets of the last half-century--that the workshop provides an excellent resource when it is available. My saying that people naturally care more about their own work than that of others was not some sort of concession to the o-so-ebil forces of self-centeredness but was instead designed to show precisely why the workshop works: It brings people into a community where improving one’s own work is entirely dependent on maintaining the good will of others by helping them improve their work, in turn.

Furthermore, we should recognize that, in the creative writing workshop, not everyone will be at the same level as we are. Your unspoken but implied assumptions that poor critiques are a direct result of laziness and that such occurrences devalue the workshop system are terribly unfair to the greater good to be found. Your voiced assumption that I’ve received fewer ineffective critiques than you is painfully inaccurate, I’m sure; I’ve had my fair share of didn’t-read-its, kind-of-got-losts, and you-should-get-this-publisheds. Many people simply aren’t prepared for the writing workshop and need to be taught how to critique--just like they need to be taught how to shape their creative output (the New Critical school of criticism often held that a critique should be a work of art in and of itself). While I maintain that there is always going to be decent to impressive help from at least one or two people in such a class and little things from almost every single person--which makes the class worthwhile, in my opinion--the opposite side of the superior/less experienced student-of-writing coin is yet another reason the workshop is worthwhile: the chance to mentor your peers. If you’re getting shoddy critique, it probably means--almost every single time--that the person providing it also needs a lot of help with writing. The chance to work with others in this situation is especially gratifying and useful to the workshop student. You’ll learn as much or more in this fashion as you’ll ever learn in any way.





First of all, please allow me to remind you that you aren’t the only person on the Internet whose comments inspired this thread (since I assume you’re the kid who was mentioning Stephen King, earlier) and that “useless” or “waste of time” sentiments have been expressed plenty of times to warrant their use here. Secondly, let’s not debate semantics. It’s pretty lame when without real purpose.

Next, let’s point out that neither the average student of creative writing nor the average student of algebra, without association by a scholastic course, does not have this easy access to experts in either field which you seem to assume they have. In high school--maybe, but even then there is the lack of what really counts in the workshop setting: people talking about a piece. It can be simulated via books and Gaia, sure. We’ve got exercises and criticism, and books have advice and theory--but none of these have the same system of interaction to be found in the classroom. None have the immediacy of both peers (which I think both you and King extremely undervalue) and teachers brought together. The result is something that cannot be replicated outside the workshop scenario and, as such, is something that is worthwhile, at least once in a writer’s life.

I’m not following. The analogy assumes the physics student does know basic algebra. Nevertheless, he will, like teachers do when they work a course over for several years, learn more stuff if he takes the class again.



The stuff I’m told about college by a friend of mine who’s working on her creative writing minor suggests quite the opposite. She’s given her personal stuff to two different college professors and several other students outside of class. Low and behold, they were happy to critique it for her. I’ve also come across several college websites that claim to have a library-like room in which several writing teachers stand at the ready to offer advice and resources to students in need of help.

In any case, I will concede that writing classes certainly can be valuable when you have students who care. It would be dishonest of me to say I’ve never been decently critiqued in class; even those who had an obvious lack of experience in a college prep writing class had something useful to offer. I’m willing to bet creative writing classes at college almost always are superior to those at my high school for the simple fact that not just anyone can get into a college. In addition, people who are paying money to take a class like creative writing obviously want to be there.

Honestly, the biggest problem I've had with my creative writing class so far is that when we discuss our work we aren't given very much class time, so we need to have short pieces. I've tried, but so far failed to write a story in less than a page.

This isn't so much a problem with the class as it is a problem with me. I have a problem thinking of small enough ideas.