If, as the much repeated Paul Valéry quote maintains, “a work of art is never finished, merely abandoned,” then this is doubly true for undergraduates for whom the deadlines for workshop submission and end of term assessment is arbitrary when compared to the long, winding journey of the creative process. When combined with Hemingway’s adage that “the first draft of anything is shit,” we have a situation in which students are forced to abandon work to their cohort or tutor that has not yet been revised to quality. How do we cope with this situation that has obvious potential to undermine a student’s confidence, especially early in their development? By focusing on process over product, and framing feedback specifically on how an element of the story is working so far, rather than just how it is.
That is to say that discussions should not be focused on elements of a story that are not working—a discussion which may result in a student feeling like a failure—or even elements that are, but rather on elements that are not working yet—a discussion that reminds the student of the continuously changing nature of the creative process and their relationship to it. It is a small but key distinction, one which I believe allows students to engage with the workshopping process with more confidence. If an element of their work is identified as needing improvement, it doesn’t mean that they have done a bad job, just that they haven’t yet done as good a job as they eventually will. And that’s fine, because that’s the process. It also has the potential to allow the student cohort to be more confident in articulating their critiques, and the writer to be more open to receiving them; as in this scenario no one is criticizing their friend or colleague, they’re simply helping them understand where they are on the winding road of creative process, and where they might go next.
A lot of writing workshops focus on the destination—“good writing”—and a failure to reach that destination by the point they are forced to abandon the work to their classmates or teacher can undermine a student’s confidence. That focus also doesn’t properly acknowledge all the progress that they did make, progress which provides an excellent learning opportunity in the workshop environment. I think “good writing” isn’t what we’re there to teach; it’s the by-product of what we’re there to teach: a good writing process.
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Adrian Markle, originally from Canada, has a Ph.D. in English by Creative Practice from the University of Exeter in the UK. He has criticism in Aethlon and fiction in approximately a dozen magazines and anthologies, including Dream Catcher and Penumbra, and upcoming in CIRQUE and Split Rock Review.