The Kitchenette Writers' Collective

 

A friend of mine once said that most people want to be something, but are not interested in becoming something.  I have a list of wants along those lines.  Everyone does.   For example, I want to be an engineer.  I like their mindset.  I like the idea of suspending actual bridges, not just crafting fictional ones out of sentences.  It would be great, for a day or two, to look at the world through an engineer’s eyes.  I once dated an engineer.  We went to the Phoenix Art Museum, and he spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how a wooden sculpture was fastened together.  For those 15 minutes, I wondered what it would be like, taking a work of art and disassembling it in my mind, sizing it up, running my hands along its lines, with all those numbers in my head, all those bolt sizes and potential tools.  But that want only lasted those 15 minutes, because I don’t want to take all the required math classes, and the writer in me was more interested in the old couple arguing underneath an abstract painting.

    

“What I would say is this:  writing poems doesn’t make you a poet…It is only with poetry, for some reason, that everyone wants to believe they can try their hand at it once in a while and be considered, can call themselves a poet…And I explained very clearly my opinion of what I think a poet, an artist is.  Someone who puts this thing [poetry] first.”—Franz Wright

                “What I would say is this:  writing poems doesn’t make you a poet.”  Wright is sometimes criticized because of his attitude towards MFAs and workshops.  I don’t always agree with his views, but I agree with him on this topic.  Being a poet or a writer is more than just dabbling with words in a journal.  Writing is a craft, and if you want to be a poet or a playwright or a songwriter or a memoirist or a novelist, you have to work (I think Wright would use the word toil) to become one. 

There is a transformative element to this, and there are many ways to earn the change.  A man or woman can sit at a desk, typing or printing three pages, ten pages, no pages a night, learning to say what they must.  A young kid can take a workshop and then another.  A woman can join a critique group or she can write and send out submissions and hope an editor is kind enough to send critique and learn from here rejections.  The journey is a must, but the way we travel is up to us.

Here is my new path.  I have started a collective with other like-minded writers, and it’s called the Kitchenette Writers’ Collective.  And it’s my hope and my wish that as a group we can explore new ways to become writers together.

In upcoming blogs, I will discuss how the group ties in to what I am exploring in this blog.  The blog and the group are connected, by the questions I have been asking in this blog and in my writing life.  What can a workshop be?  What is necessary to foster creativity and experimentation in a workshop?  Is there a better way to run a workshop? 

In the meantime, check us out at:

Meetup.com:  http://www.meetup.com/kitchenette-writers-collective/

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/kitchenettewriter

Website:  http://thekitchenettewriterscollective.weebly.com/

What is a Workshop?

If you ask me, I’ll tell you that I think a writer is someone who writes.  More to the point, a writer is someone who is compelled to write, who wants to write, who loves it more than any other activity. 

Of course that definition is deceptively simple.  How many things, activities, and people do we love and yet never can seem to pay enough attention to them, maintain our relationship to them?  No matter how much you love writing, you may not have the time to write.  You may not write every day, you may not write for months or years.  Consider this poem by Tess Gallagher:

I Stop Writing the Poem
by Tess Gallagher

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

There is always something pulling us away from the poem or the story we are obsessing over.  That’s one of the many reasons we join workshops.  It forces us to write.  So what if there was a work shop devoted solely to the creation of poetry or stories? 

Imagine a group of writers who gather once a month, maybe once a week, to free write, to attempt poetry prompts, to work on that story idea that’s been following them around.  What if there is no critique?  What if no one shared a single word, but they all sat at the coffee house table or in the living room where they all meet in silence, no sound except the scratching of pens?  What if the only requirement here is to write? 

Can this be called a workshop or is it something else?

I was a TWWAT

Why do we choose to go to workshops?  Choose is the right verb here.  There is nothing stating that workshops are the only way to learn how to write or share your poetry/fiction.  In fact, workshops (as we know them) came into existence only within the last century and didn’t gain national popularity until the 1970s.  We, who have attended and/or taught workshops, chose to participate.  Why?  The most common answer was community, a chance to spend an hour or two with people who understand what it feels like to wake up in the middle of night with an idea that needs to be explored right then, a chance to sit across from someone who knows the silliness of red or who also thinks the foam on the lip of an iced tea glass is worth a second, third, fourth look (maybe even an ode). 

Lately, I have been wondering about this need for company and how it eventually affects who we are as writers.  My college journals are filled with wishes for my very own crowd of Beats, my own seat at the Algonquin Table.  In 2008, I began my own writing group.  We called ourselves the TWWATs (Yes, it is pronounced exactly the way you think it is and no, what the acronym stands for is not as important as the acronym itself, but just in case you're curious--Tenacious Women Writers Association of Tempe), and we met once a week, sometimes in restaurants, sometimes in cafés.  This group was my answer to another workshop issue: cost.  It was free and, so long as you enjoyed dirty humor, had a pair of breasts, and were a skillful writer, you could join us and share your work without tuition. 

I needed the group then.  I was a beginning writer, unsure of myself, and painfully self-conscious.  I wanted to write more than anything.  I would spend whole afternoons, some evenings, sitting in the Mesa Community College library, composing lists of the things I wanted to write about.  I saw writing as a way out of some very tough situations.  It was my salvation, but, like most people, I was afraid to say what was on my mind—family secrets, sex, gender, race, all the things we’re supposed to keep to ourselves.  I needed a group of like-minded writers to experiment on, to show poems that made me sick to death, and so I sought out people who had their own blisters and who were brave enough to expose them. 

If I had never had my experience with the TWWATs, I would not be the writer/person I am today.  Would I be worse?  Better?  Who knows?  But the poetry I write now and the stories I write now have been affected by the influence, advice, guidance of these women.  I think that’s why writers like Kay Ryan and Franz Wright flip out about the idea of workshops and MFAs in general.  They believe a writer (poet or otherwise) should be alone, that every poet should seek out the “difficult, long and solitary struggle… to learn how to write” (Laban).  In other words, before we go out and join up, we need to learn how to create without interference from others opinions/perspectives/prejudices.  In that way, after years of working away on a few poems in a basement office, when we finally head out into the world, we might know what we’re talking about if we do decide to take a workshop, but by that time we won’t need it because we’ll know who we are as writers.

Call it whatever you want:  finding your voice, realizing the writer within, growing a pair.  Every writer has to find a way to be comfortable with him/herself and has to be able to present their version of the world without fear.  Can you do that in a workshop/group?  Yes and no.  In terms of facing your fears, a workshop forces you to confront your critics, because your critics are your classmates, and not just in the sense that they are the ones who are commenting on your work, but in the sense that most of you have nothing in common except a desire to write (if that).  There is always a motley crew of sci fi writers, feminist poets, a maximist, a minimalist, the guy who just needs another English credit, and a few anarchist limerick slam poets who all have differing needs, wants, and ideas about what writing can be, what a writer is.  There’s competition.  There’s ruthless (sometimes personal) criticism.  There’s the occasional story/poem that indicts the entire class for sheepism (written by the guy who can’t understand why no one appreciates his Troll sonnets).  In short, you learn to present some version of yourself in writing and you learn how to laugh when you get back a manuscript with a comment that simply reads:  “I have nothing positive to say about your story.” 

Not all groups/workshops are like that.  The reason the TWWATs worked for me is simple.  It was selective.  It worked for all of us because we monitored who was in the group.  A new member had to appreciate the ribald.  She had to have a drive to create.  And above all else she had to be willing to throw it all out there without apology.  If a writer came to group and felt uncomfortable, she probably didn’t come back.  There were no hard feelings.  It was just understood that we weren’t the group for her.  Sounds harsh, but no one would fault Flannery O’Connor for not hanging out with Ginsberg and Kerouac.  They just wouldn’t mesh.  And so, in a way, the TWWATs developed a voice together.  We all had different interests, different writing styles, etc. but we had enough in common that the desire to push each other, to encourage each other, to sit for hours and read the tenth draft of another member’s sestina was natural.  It was not a requisite task.  We were (are still) friends, and we respect each other as writers.

And maybe that’s the thing.  We saw each other as writers/equals/comrades.  We might have questioned our own abilities from time to time, but we did not second guess the abilities of other group members.  Sometimes you’re lucky, and you get that in a workshop, most of the time you don’t.  How does a beginning writer (or any writer) stand out and up in a setting like the workshop?  How does he/she discover who they are as a writer?  Is selectivity (creating workshops where the participants have common interests/genres/writing styles) the answer?  It worked for me.  But will it work for anyone else? 

Works Cited:

Laban, Lawrence F. “An Interview with Franz Wright.”  University of Arizona Poetry Center. 24 May 2011 <http://poetry.arizona.edu/newsletter/0410/interview-franz-wright>.

A New Question

One of my biggest issues with workshops is the quality of discussion (or lack of discussion) that occurs in them.  This characteristic isn’t the sole property of workshops.  Enter any high school or college class and you’ll hear the same answer to any open-ended question:  “I don’t know.”  Or you won’t hear anything; you’ll just see a field of blank faces.  The reasons for all this are the topic of another blog entirely, but I would like to address the lack of quality discussion in workshops in particular. 

            Now, I know that all workshops/writing groups vary.  The success of any of these is dependant on the personality/skill level/commitment of the writers in attendance.  But, the workshop model is universal enough to warrant a discussion, and that’s why I created this blog.  I’m not trying to start a gripe fest here.  I’m trying to find solutions to issues that pop up in workshop, maybe even design a new model.  Why?  Because at some point, many writers take part in a workshop, class, group, etc. There are over 100 writing programs in existence and a good majority of them use the standard workshop model (lecture, write, critique, revision, and repeat).  If most writers are learning to write and to discuss the craft from the workshop, doesn’t the workshop (its benefits, its drawbacks, its form, etc.) deserve an analytical eye?  I mean if we’re all participating in this admittedly strange activity (Who else would spend money to sit around a table and discuss word choice on a Tuesday night?), shouldn’t we all stop to examine how we spend our time in that space and what we are eventually getting out of it?

            So I’ll begin the topic of workshop discussions, by saying that I consider a good discussion one in which the class explores an element of craft in relation to the poems up for critique without getting bogged down by specific preferences.  It’s a common enough scenario:  Poet A suggests that Poet B change a line break because it would be a better break/would change the line’s rhythm, etc.  What’s not said is that Poet A would make that change because that’s how Poet A would write a poem.  Sometimes (a lot of the time) things will get heated with two or three factions going back and forth.  “Change the line break!”  “No keep it the way it is!”  ‘No, do it this way!”  But the discussion is half-baked.  No one ever asks the million dollar questions: Why does a poet use certain line breaks?  Why does he/she create the line breaks he/she does? 

            So what would happen if instead of saying “I don’t like this line break,” Poet A said, “What is the purpose of a line break, and how can it be used by the poet?” I think that discussion would be a hell of a lot more beneficial than the back and forth debates over whether Poet B should keep his break or not, because that discussion covers more than just one poet and one poem.  It opens up the writer to an exploration of craft that the first statement simply can’t.  Of course, that’s tricky, because all Poet B wants is to know how to make HIS poem better, and he paid for the privilege of having HIS work discussed.  What would happen if the workshop veered away from his critique to discuss A.R. Ammons or Whitman or the history of the line in poetry?  How much of the workshop should be devoted to critique and how much to discussion of craft? 

            It may not be a popular opinion, but I think the needs of the many outweigh the few in this area.  I think workshops should focus less on individual critique and push participants to ask the broader questions about craft.  That’s how you create a thinking writer.  Imagine what would happen, if the facilitator/teacher/Poet A/anybody took the opportunity to say, “Let’s explore this.” And as a class, right then and there, all the poets took out a sheet of paper and rewrote a poem using different breaks, different line lengths, etc.  What would that workshop learn then?

            But you might disagree, so here’s my question to all of you:  How do we create and maintain better, more helpful discussions in workshops?

A Case of the "What Ifs"

In a comment on the first post, Raven brought up an interesting aspect of any workshop:  The “What if” scenario.  She was speaking about workshop participants asking their teachers/facilitators a bunch of “what ifs” rather than trying things on their own, but the “what if” situation I want to address occurs when a writer presents his/her story or poem and in the process of critique other participants things like, “What if the main character was a woman?” or “What if this story took place on Mars?” 

The “What if” scenario annoys a lot of people.   At best, a “what if” offers a possible solution to a problem in a story or poem, at worst it’s a group of people altering/ripping apart an original story.   However, I think “what if” scenarios are an important part of workshop.  Why?  Because for me a workshop is a place where we make things, tinker with them, modify them, etc., therefore the “what if” scenario and all the discussion that comes after a “what if” suggestion is necessary to all that creation, because it pushes the writer to go to places previously unexplored.  That is, of course, if the writer wants to go there.

“What ifs” can be dangerous, because most of the “what ifs” asked in workshop don’t take into account the original intent of the author’s story.  Many people present “what ifs” because there is a problem with the manuscript that they cannot put their finger on, so they throw out a series of hypotheticals that may or may not help. For example, a woman once presented a story in class and half the class suggested moving a scene from the beginning of the story to the end, effectively making that scene the climactic point of the story and altering the theme/focus of the story.  There were some issues with scene placement in this story, but what was being suggested would have done damage to her original, unique story and would have effectively made it something else, something not hers.

That being said, “what ifs” can also be liberating and can take a story down a unique path.  I wish more workshops would encourage writers to explore “what ifs.”  Consider what Angela Carter (Fiction) had to say:  “In a way all fiction starts off with "what if," but some "what ifs" are more specific. One kind of novel starts off with ‘What if I found out that my mother has an affair with a man that I thought was my uncle?’ That’s presupposing a different kind of novel from the one that starts off with ‘What if I found out my boyfriend had just changed sex?’ If you read the New York Times Book Review a lot, you soon come to the conclusion that our culture takes more seriously the first kind of fiction, which is a shame in some ways. By the second ‘what if’ you would actually end up asking much more penetrating questions. If you were half way good at writing fiction, you’d end up asking yourself and asking the reader actually much more complicated questions about what we expect from human relationships and what we expect from gender.”—Angela Carter

Imagine what kind of stories we’d create if more workshops allowed time for a writer to explore “what ifs” or better yet demanded a writer explore a few “what ifs”?

Opinions May Vary

Not sure where to begin here, so I'll begin by asking "What are your thoughts on writing workshops?"

First, let me say that I think workshops (and you can substitute the word seminar or writing group here) are helpful, esp. to begining writers.  They provide a sense of community, they offer critique, and they provide an impetus for writing.

But they can also be confusing (what to do with all that critique), incestuous (same people in every class, same thoughts, same weird dynamics), and static (notoriously adverse to experimentation or difference). 

Those are my general thoughts...so, what do you think about writing workshops?  Do you like them (and yes, please explain why)?  Hate them (again, please explain why)?  Why do you attend them?  What was your experience like?  If you teach workshops, what are those experiences like?