Onsite Writing Workshops and Other Splendid Things
The event page told me everything it could, but I still wasn’t sure of what to expect, in a day-by-day way, from the novel workshop segment of Cat Rambo’s Wayward Wormhole. There will be one-on-one sessions with instructors, it said, and also craft classes and critique groups. After the last two years, however, my brain is generally a small, scared animal waiting for more large objects to fall from the sky, and uncertainty makes my imagination whir along. Fortunately, this didn’t prevent me from being psyched about going, but I was acutely aware that I didn’t have a whole view of what exactly would go on, particularly as I’d never gone to this kind of event.
The good news is that, based on this experience, I’d go again in a heartbeat. Here’s why.
I got months worth of useful feedback in a span of nine days. I’ve gotten critique from writerly friends and from critique-focused online classes, often through Hugo House. This feedback has helped a ton, because every creative work needs an outside perspective at some point to be as good as it can be, but it was still only for ten to twenty pages at a time, in keeping with the scale of classes. Beta readers exist, of course, but I wasn’t ready to use that social credit when I knew I still had a way to go. Having several fellow workshop folks read my first fifty pages and getting full-manuscript feedback from the instructors gave me so much to work on. I learned a new writing tic of mine, got great ideas for my novel’s lumpy middle, and have thoughts on how to address other issues. Beyond that, I have a new sense of how to avoid many of them altogether in my next project. I’m still marveling at the project acceleration I got from this and will be unpacking it for the next few months.
Writing is generally a lonely occupation, and temporarily living with people I knew shared this peculiar vocation with me made for conversations I’ve never gotten to have. How do you start a project? What tools do you use? How do your ideas come to you? What are you working on next? I’ve had small versions of these conversations online, but they deepen when you’re isolated from the rest of your life. The energy freed up by the absence of getting groceries, vacuuming, and keeping the kids and pets alive enables conversations to get deep and specific. What a privilege it was to spend a span of days with fellow dreamers. What a joy to know that I hope for their success as fervently as I hope for mine. What a tribe I got to join.
The chance to concentrate was unparalleled. My life is pretty easy-mode for this in ordinary times—no human dependents, no roommates—but even work, keeping house, and trying to stay afloat in a wild era is enough that things I want to do very badly can be pushed off for weeks or months. To wake up, grab a little cereal, and get to listen to new-to-me ideas about effective scenes or establishing character interiority was just a sublime luxury. I’ve gotten nibbles of this via online classes or reading craft essays, but (as with London Writers’ Hour), having something like this as the sole purpose of my day is just incredible. The activity itself focuses you, but that focus radiates through the days. Walking out onto the patio or through the house and always seeing someone furiously typing was a wonderful bolster too. Imagine being somewhere that working on fiction is everyone’s primary goal. It gets into the air and the water. It gets into your blood.
I like writers. We get a lot from having friends that aren’t exactly like us, but we also get a lot from being around serious people with a shared purpose. I never doubt the hours I pour into my writing projects, but it feels even better when you see other smart people spending their lives in the same way. I think writers as a group are more talented than most at finding online friends, and I’ve found people that share these goals and band together in wonderful ways, but sharing physical space for several days accelerates so many rare and splendid bonds. Another way to say this: it’s been a socially isolated few years, and what a joy it was to be around other people and remember how to be a person myself. “What are you working on?” remains a fantastic conversation starter.
An event like this isn’t a small investment. Whether time or money is your tightest budget, it takes some doing for most of us to make something like this happen. For me, though, it was an easy choice. I’ve already poured a billion-odd hours into this particular draft and my many other projects. I realized in 2020 that I wasn’t interested in only writing for myself, and I’ve been trying to learn ways to progress ever since. I figured days and nights somewhere new, guaranteed critiques, and learning were enough justification, and I was more right than I could’ve hoped.
If you’re considering doing something like this, and especially if you’re an introvert, may I suggest reading more on the day-to-day reality of this temporary, intense, and wonderful environment here?
Here are some things I've written or liked.
The previously mentioned Onward, Wormhole: Onsite Writing Workshops for Introverts at Deviation Obligatoire
It took me several days to read this, and it was worth spending the time on Who Ate Where A social history of the city, told entirely through its restaurants. I love an informal little history told through so many small details.
Oldster is reliably wonderful, and Carolita Johnson’s essay there about the wonders and horrors of being her mom’s live-in caretaker is especially so.
Ever wondered why your eyes feel differently after different sorts of crying? Because there are chemical differences. Yes. I swear. It’s wild. Shared with me by a friend who’s also still in the grief pits
Meg Elison pieces are always winners, but this one is especially perfect
A sentence I’ve written that I liked: He didn’t plant the seeds, but he made them blossom unexpectedly, pushing their way through the soil of Juliet’s brain until she staggered back from him and fled the kitchen.
It’s been a good month and a long year. I hope you make it through December in even moderately good working order; I hope the same for myself. The future will be hard, but I’m glad we’re in it together.