HOW THE COURSE WAS STRUCTURED

(The Importance of the Workshops)

        I initiated the creative writing program at Suffolk in 1970. That's why they hired me! I've shepherded the course along ever since. I, myself, took ten years of creative writing courses before I came to work at Suffolk and have taught them all over the world ever since. What I learned in creative writing applies just as well for essay and other forms of writing!

        Every course I've taken or taught has built its content around the workshop comments of others. I never took or taught one that didn't. So workshop comments are central to the process of learning how to write better. 

    You can write for yourself but you revise for others. If you want your writing to be read by anyone else, you owe it to them and yourself to talk about how the words work or don't work once you put them on the page:

"Workshop"=you work at picking the right words to say what you mean 

and you shop for others if the words don't work.

      I have had students who don't do all the workshop comments or worse, omit that part of the course. The way the course is structure, that is a major violation of teaching plan--the very concept--of the creative writing course. You just can't unilaterally do that. 

    In the classroom, students will come up to me and say they are shy about talking in class. I tell them that is no excuse. They will be required to both read their own work aloud and comment on the work of others. Otherwise, I tell them, take a different class. 

    Here, sending just six comments to other students during the term is all I put in place of a full semester of classroom discussions. Further, it is your job to pick work which you can interact with--going into detail, editing, suggesting revisions. If you have nothing to say, pick a different piece. It's not an excuse to tell me you had nothing to say. Find something to say!

    Click Here for:  More on how the workshops work