Workshop thoughts

So, first things first; I want to say thanks to everyone who gave me such wonderful feedback on my story! I hope that I was even half as helpful to you as everyone was to me.

Moving on… so, this week represented our first writer’s workshop, and, now that I have had my piece work-shopped, I must say that I have slightly mixed feelings about the whole process (definitely mostly positive, but still mixed).

On the one hand I know that I received some excellent feed-back, and I cannot wait to implement some of the ideas that I gained today. On the other hand, though, I really think that overall the workshop format is not necessarily terribly productive. Sure feedback was received and given, but one of the things that I noticed right off-the-bat on Monday was that often, when we were in the first part of the discussion (before the author could speak), the readers would have very different ideas about what was good, and what was bad, in a piece. Though this conflict in and of itself is hardly bad, what got tedious was when the critics would argue back-and-forth, enforce each of their points. Though I admit that I was certainly guilty of this, I feel that, rather than allowing differing points to be heard and evaluated by the author him/herself, the discussions at times turned into contests between the critics, which wasted quite a bit of time. This didn’t happen all of the time, or even necessarily most of the time, but it did happen.

Though the overall workshop was productive, I feel that it might run even better if each critic were allowed, say, a minute to say what they wanted about a piece, and then that they have to be quiet and let other critics speak. After everyone has said their piece, then everyone could talk again.

Again, in the end I defiantly feel that the workshops were fairly successful in providing feedback, I just wonder if they couldn’t be made even more efficient and even more successful. I also think that allowing the author more time to speak and ask questions would be beneficial, as I felt sometimes that being able to ask a critic why, say, they did or did not like a part of a story would have served the whole workshop much better.

In the end, though, the workshops went pretty well, and I did get some really great suggestions (and if anyone would be willing to proof-read a later version of my tale, that would be awesome!)

Thanks Guys!