Creative Writing Workshop Success

Last week I returned to the Mighty Miramichi to lead a creative writing workshop at the Blackville Community Access Centre on Thursday evening. It's the first time I've ever given a workshop, though I've participated in many over the years.

I anticipated a cosy group of about six, which is a fair size for a writing workshop. You don't often get many more than that, unless the workshop takes place as part of a huge literary gathering or festival. So I was more than a little shocked to arrive and learn that 18 people had registered, two of which couldn't attend, leaving me with 16 writers to coach and hopefully inspire in some way.

I felt nervous and a little intimidated as I stood at the front of the room and tried to speak over the hum of all the computers so as to be heard clear to the back. I wasn't sure what sorts of things these writers were looking for, where exactly to lead them in our two hours together. So we started by introducing ourselves, sharing our writing experience so far (if any) and telling what we hoped to get out of this event. I had prepared a large list of ideas for exercises we could do and during the introductions I started narrowing the list, eliminating the ones I felt wouldn't be the most beneficial for most of this group.

We started with a very basic exercise I use sometimes just to warm up my brain cells where you write for 10 minutes beginning with "I remember . . . " I wasn't doing the exercises that night, thank goodness, because my head filled with song lyrics --

"I remember when rock was young . . . "

"I remember everything. I remember everything as if it happened only yesterday . . ."

"I remember the day Clayton Delaney died . . . "

And on and on, I couldn't think of one solid original memory of my own. But since I was leading the workshop and not writing, it didn't make much difference. The "I remember . . ." exercise is a great way to get your brain warmed up for writing and sometimes you even find memories and stories you never anticipated and can use in your work. Try it sometime.

A brief discussion about truth in fiction followed this exercise. We talked about how everything in fiction, even in sci-fi where the writer creates whole new worlds, comes from the author's truth . . . or else it just doesn't work and that's when you'll hear comments from readers like, "It just didn't seem realistic" or "I didn't believe it for a minute" and so on.

In the second writing exercise I asked participants to quickly jot down 24 words, any words, their favourite words, whatever came to them right off. I gave them a few minutes to complete their list and then asked them to scroll through their list until they located a noun. This first noun on the list then became the subject of a story they must write in 10 minutes and incorporating the other 23 words from their list. This is a really fun and silly exercise to do, again as a warm-up before you get into the serious work of your poetry or novel or whatever you're working on. It can also work like a fishing expedition, casting your net into the water to see what you might bring might up, if you don't have any writing project on the go and need a new idea. Some of the participants shared their stories later and it was pretty cool to see how they had used all their words and come up with stories. Lots of fun, I thought.

Keeping with the idea of using exercises to generate potential new stories I gave them 10 minutes to write a story using a beginning line from someone else's story. You can try this at home. Grab any book off your bookshelf or literary magazine. Flip open to the first page, jot down the beginning sentence and then write for 10 or 20 minutes. I happened to have a copy of Grain in my bag and randomly flipped through to a story by Saleema Nawaz where I gave them this opening line -- Look, but don't touch. Some of the group shared their stories after this exercise and then I read the first paragraph or so from the original story. It was really interesting to see the different directions that everyone took. Inciteful for sure and I hope beneficial.

I decided to go into some character work following that exercise because much of my work is character driven. I explained how most of my fiction begins with a new character, a voice in my head chattering away until I pay attention and listen to the story. But you shouldn't wait for the muse to strike, you can go searching for characters to tell you their stories and you should.

For the first character exercise I asked the writers to think of someone they remembered from their childhood, not somebody really close to them, but someone they saw maybe one time or a few times that left an impression upon them. Once they thought of someone I told them to describe this person with as much detail as they could recall including things like height, weight, sex, hair, dress, shoes, face, mouth, hand gestures, head angles and movements, the way the person walked or sat, and so on.

After they wrote these details for about 5 or 10 minutes I asked them to now take this character and change them into their complete opposite -- so a tall beautiful woman might become a short ugly man -- and then put them into a situation the real person would never have found themselves in -- like if the person was a teacher have them working on lobster boat. And then to write about this new person in this new situation. After writing for about 10 minutes we discussed how characters sometimes evolve from people you know to take on a life of their own.

For the final exercise I asked the writers to stay with the character they just created, to head out to the curb on garbage day, open up the bin and see what was inside. I gave them 10 minutes to write about their character's trash. You can learn a lot by looking through people's garbage. Just when you think you know your character you rip into the black garbage bag and find a problem with prescription pain medicine or overdrawn bank accounts that you never knew existed. We talked about the surprises people found and how amazed many of them were that they could think of so many details from the garbage. One participant didn't even get to look in the trash because the voice of her character was so strong she followed it in a different direction. A fairly interesting exercise all around I think.

We spent the remaining time just talking about writing and publishing. I opened the floor to questions. We talked about how you don't need to make anything up, the world is full of stories, observe, the truth is truly stranger than fiction. We talked about the importance of research, knowing your characters, knowing their stories. I explained that one of my characters has been raised very strong Catholic, whereas I have not, so now my task is to find out everything I possibly can about Catholicism during the time my character was raised so I can be true to the story, and true to my character. We talked about the importance of persistance when seeking publishers. Again the importance of researching so you don't send work to publishers who don't publish the sort of story you've written. We talked about rejection and how even the best authors have rooms stacked with rejection letters before achieving publishing success. Persistance is key, and even a little bit of luck, but talent doesn't factor in much. There are many talented writers who never get published because they give up. There are many terrible books that do get published. Persistance, don't give up.

After the workshop several people remarked that they would like me to return and give another. And I've been discussing the prospect with the Access Centre. I'm not sure what sorts of things to cover in a second instalment. If you attended this workshop or would consider attending a follow-up workshop, please comment with any thoughts you have about what specific areas and topics you'd be interested in learning more about.