After the MFA

This is the third in an occasional series called “A Small List of Things I Wish I Had Known 10 Years Ago.”

I’d like to add a disclaimer that this is not a how-to column. This column works best as point of reference, a tool by which you can stack my experiences against yours. Somewhere between the two, presumably, lay the truth.

This is After the MFA, so I thought naming this article “After the Workshop” was keeping in the spirit of things. In an effort to keep this from sounding like an advice column, I’ve done my best to switch from “you do this… you do that” to first-person writing. After all, in the end, this is just a testimonial.

After the Workshop: Data Mining, Comment Hierarchy, and Social Networking

There’s been a fair amount written about the effectiveness of the group workshop (Is it the best way to learn writing?) and also about its politics and etiquette (Is your group too nasty? Too nice?). I hope to look at a slightly less addressed topic in this entry: What do I do after the workshop is over?

I’m going to give it my best shot, and I hope that folks will chime in with their own comments.

What is the workshop format?

While I am sure that anyone who comes to this blog is already familiar with workshopping, I’ll include a brief description anyway. Basically, I am addressing the “editorial / revision” type of workshop in which a few students turn a writing sample over to their classmates. Subsequently, the class gather together and each participant offers up criticism (positive and negative) of the submitted work. The commentary is often guided by the instructor.

The main goal, in my opinion, is for us to learn from our own comments. But another goal is for the submitting writer to get a critical perspective of their work and glean comments that might help in strengthening voice, tone, plot, character etc.

Let’s assume workshops can help

For now, let’s assume that we are all MFA students enrolled in workshops with a strong instructor who can spin the workshop format into an excellent teaching vehicle.

Let’s also assume that most of our peers are neither too nasty nor too nice. Let’s assume that we have the optimal conditions for work-shopping; that we are believers in the workshop platform; that we WANT to be helped; and we are not the type of person who a) Doesn’t care what the workshop has to say or b) Only accepts comments that point out grammatical/ spelling errors.

So I just finished my workshop

One of the most difficult parts of being a student in a workshop is that I walk out with a lot of noise in my head. There were twelve other people and each one had a different opinion about what should be done with my work. Not only that, but on some points, there was utter contradiction. Maybe half the workshop wanted me to make clear very early on that Carl was Leona’s father, while the other thought that revealing the information on the last page was the way to go. Not only that, but there was that one person who thought that it would be more effective if Carl was not Leona’s father at all. Furthermore, who cares what all these people think? It’s not their story, it’s mine.

So what do I do? My reaction to work shops is typically a three step process. First I mine the data and notes that I have- so I can find “hot spots” within the story that need work. Then I create a hierarchy of comments. In this case, I want to filter out commentary that I consider less weighty (lets call this noise) and retain commentary that I feel will help me strengthen my story (let’s call this signal). The third step is to start creating a social network of writers with whom I can correspond.

Coming up next: data mining