First Workshopping Session

Although this is the first writing course I’ve taken here at SLU, I did take a lot of Creative Writing classes in high-school, and, although I was originally incredibly nervous to share work that was personal to me, workshopping quickly became my very favorite part of class. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to share poems that you care about, whether they are describing a person, place, moment in your life, or that which is most likely --all three wrapped up into one.

We’ve talked in class about how work-shopping time is not “therapy,” but, the matter of the fact is, if we didn’t care about the topics we were writing about they wouldn’t make for very good poems. Whether we are invested in the moments we write about because they have made us happy, incredibly sad, or are reminiscent of a time when we felt completely uncertain, they were chosen for a reason – because they in some way inspired us. It is inevitably scary to open yourself up to criticism not only about a “piece” you wrote, but about a portion of your life, which, a biological component I would argue that, all poems contain in some form. I have a theory that even writers who claim to focus strictly on “fiction” draw on biographical components to make their works stronger. Like any artist, writers draw inspiration from the world as they have come to know it, and therefore inarguably incorporate parts of their lives into their work. And, the fact of the matter is letting others read your stuff – especially the first time -- can be a really scary thing.

Even so, as time goes on, I’m sure, like in the writing classes I took in high-school, it will become a much more enjoyable experience than terrifying one. I found myself becoming closer to the people in my sophomore-year Creative Non-fiction class, because we started to learn. We learned about each other, not only as writers, but as people – and we became knowledgeable not only about the small moments in each others’ lives, but what about those moments inspired each of us to pick up a pen. Work-shopping, like poetry in general, is an opportunity to learn how someone else perceives the world, and what makes that perception uniquely theirs. It gives you a chance to understand how, as an individual, someone epistemologically “knows.”

I also think that somewhere along the line, a natural separation happens between critiquing each others’ memories and critiquing how we express those memories with words. Instead of picking apart someone’s life, you are learning to help them express that life more articulately – which I think is the really cool part about workshops.

All that being said, I can’t wait for today’s class!