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>.