There Are Workshops, and There Are Workshops - guest post by Vanessa Franking

I spoke with a friend recently who expressed interest in attending a writer’s workshop. I have recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, so I shopped the Internet with this friend a few moments and noticed that the terminology regarding workshops is quite limited, and seems unnecessarily baffling.  So I attempt to clarify the various uses of the same word used to refer to different things.  You must mind the usage to know the physical event described, or the verb intended, all this brought to you by the people who have made teaching writing an industry.

Consider the following legal, understandable, writerly sentence:

I hope I get accepted to Squaw Valley Workshop because Tori Patterson is leading a workshop and I would love to work with her again on a novel I workshopped in her group at Antioch last residency. 

Oddly enough, this is somewhat a personally true statement, but I digress.  I will discuss residency later. Again with asterisks:

I hope I get accepted to Squaw Valley Workshop* because Tori Patterson is leading a workshop** and I would love to work with her again on a novel I workshopped*** in her group at Antioch last residency.

As we can see, the term workshop is used in more than one way:

1. Workshop*- as used here, an event, organized by a college, university, writer’s club, or literary organization of any ilk with the time and money to hold one of these.  These normally are held in pretty places, or at colleges trying to recoup money from seats left empty between semesters.  Workshops can last from a weekend to a month or more.  Many invite several famous (relative word) authors who give lectures, readings and perhaps even lead a workshop**.  The big exception is the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, which is not a workshop but an MFA program.
2. Workshop**- a meeting of a small group of writers who exchange work prior to the meeting and are expected to come to this workshop ready to work diligently on each other’s product.  (I’m tired of the word “work” by now).  These can and should be spread out over several days or weeks.  Workshop** is typically led by an established writer/professor.  The leader will lay ground rules for the delivery of feedback to each writer, which is crucial because these are intensely personal sessions.  People read, write notes and comment aloud on each other’s work.  In most workshops that I am aware of, no one is allowed into the workshop** who is not workshopping*** their own work, aside from the teacher/leader. More later.
3. Workshopping***- from the infinitive verb- to workshop.  Sloppy, perhaps, but it is used as a colloquial verb to refer to the act of putting yourself and your work through this process. IMHO workshopping is one of the best activities a writer can engage in to improve her work.

Workshops** can and do exist outside the Workshop* event.  Many writers form a writer’s group and do this with a selection of friends or fellow writers whose work and feedback they respect.  A word to the uninitiated- it can be brutal, just because your work is often so personal.  Hopefully, your workshop** group, or leader, will have some parameters by which feedback can remain constructive, with “this chapter sucks” being replaced with “I became disinterested in this chapter on page 17, when the main character left the room.  The dialog shifted from following the storyline, to the sidekick’s observation on life, and I didn’t feel it kept me connected to the story.  I got bored.”  Specific, objective comments about the work on the page, not the writer, are the kinds of feedback that are useful.  In addition, after a few of these workshops*, you can parade your unfinished work in public with much less trepidation.  It is a paragraph you wrote, after all, not your actual soul on the page.  This activity helped me separate my written words from my perception of myself (that wrote them), and that was very liberating. When investigating workshops, other terms come up that we need to understand as well.

Festivals, Residencies, Retreats, and Conferences - these terms are used almost interchangeably with Workshop*. I’ll mention two programs that these terms pertain to here, and leave the million others for the reader to investigate:

• The Bread Loaf Writer’s conference is held by Middlebury College and claims to be the first one of these ever.  I imagine it carries some weight.
• The Iowa Writers Workshop- which is not a workshop at all, in the sense of *,**, or ***, but an actual 2 year, full time, in-residence MFA program.  Which means you would have to go to Iowa City, wherever that is, and be in school for two years and turn in a really good completed novel, or story collection, or book of poems to matriculate with your MFA. The MFA- The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing (invented, Iowa claims, at Iowa) is a terminal degree qualifying the holder to teach creative writing at the college level.  I borrowed this description from the Iowa Workshop page under “Philosophy”.  Good reading, check it out: http://www.uiowa.edu/~iww/about.htm 

Here is a site that catalogs many of these Workshop* thingies: http://writing.shawguides.com

Hope this helps! - Vanessa Franking