What makes this chapter useful and long awaited for me is the explanation of writing workshop dynamics as opposed to a casual conversation about a piece of writing. After following the undergraduate track of a creative writing B.F.A., I switched to an English B.A. both to become more employable and because my experiences with writing workshops mostly excluded the practices of active reading, active listening and “Listen: Don’t defend.”
The pitfalls I’ve most often experienced, to moderately demoralizing ends, are a lack of responses formed by the “I”-as-one-reader responses and more editor/ critic stances, and even its opposite flattering, though equally unproductive, cheerleader attitude — “Everything’s great, I love it all! No changes.”
In thesis writing groups or graduate workshops, I’ve experienced more developed responses and critical eyes, but also the tendency to use time to edit for grammar and punctuation. In attempts to prevent this, some workshops have used formalized structures in which the writer refrains from speaking until hearing feedback from every member of the writing group, but I haven’t found this to be successful because my own anticipation to respond to the last responder tends to detract from fully listening to the next responder, despite taking notes.
What I also remember noting is how easy it is for readers to slip into personal anecdotes, which may be lovely for their own sake and additionally lovely for the writing to be able to elicit remembered experiences through its own outreach of experience, but the workshop meant for the writing has oftentimes slipped into shared anecdotes.
