The trope of the creative writing workshop is defined by short stories about old ladies in flower gardens, or the Freud-type evaluations of our childhoods through simile and metaphor, but there is more to those rooms than round table discussion and cute little characters. In fact, I've learned more about the real world at a wooden table with marked up pieces of paper at nine o'clock at night than I have anywhere else in my life.
Don't judge a book by its major.
As an English major, I have the wonderful experience of that look from friends' parents when I tell them what I'm studying -- the type with gritted teeth and judgmental eyes as if they're mourning my future before it even begins. Like a lot of other artists, I find myself falling into the same judgmental patterns when non-English majors walk into "my" workshop. But the differing perspectives bring about the most unique stories. Who knew the business major could create great plot twists, or that the psychology major brings the most unique perspectives to their characters? The studio artists can create in words what they do on canvas, just as the vocalists and musicians feel the rhythm on the page. There's always a weird tension in the room when someone decides to take a workshop for fun because, for a lot of us, writing is serious. Nevertheless, some of the best writing has come from the most unlikely of sources, because skill doesn't discriminate.
No two writers are alike.
If someone were to walk up to you and tell you they were studying science, you'd probably look at them weird and ask them to be more specific. Because just as the sciences are broken down into subsections, so is writing. We have poets, screenwriters, playwrights, creative non-fiction peeps, prose fiction, and then there are the people who like to mangle the genres into something different (albeit, weird) and beautiful. Any form of writing is perfectly valid -- you learn fairly fast to break out of your preconceived notions of what writing should be and approach each piece with an open mind.
High school never ends.
The cliques don't go anywhere just because we can legally drink wine with our Plath and Hemingway. After awhile you really start to notice that you hang out with the same three or four people, even outside of the classroom. You bond over literary interests, the types of stories you write, and before you know it, the girls who sat next to you in your intro to screenwriting course are the people you call when you want to go to the club, or even when you just want to sit around watching Disney movies and sipping on mimosas while writing fan-fiction for kicks.
There are as many ways to teach as there are students in the school.
No two professors are going to teach you the same way. Creative writing is an art, and each professor has their own style and method of educating. Some will lecture, and some will insist on workshops every week. Others will make you participate like you're paid to do it, or even want you to have your own epiphanies without the assistance of others. But there's always going to be the one professor who will just get what you're writing or respect your opinions and see the worth in them. The one thing these people will all have in common? Even though they are the teacher, they will still treat you as an adult and foster the sense of independence that grows in you over college.
Reading is fundamental.
No one wants to be the last person to get a joke. And it's even weirder when you're trying to comment on something, whether it be a workshopped story or the book you were supposed to read for class, but didn't. A professor won't hesitate to say something if they think you're not prepared. "Did you actually do the reading?" might as well be your name for as often as your professor addresses you as such.
Nobody likes cliches.
Literally, nobody. Not in writing, not in the real world. You're twice as likely to get called out on predictability in the English building then you are in a casual conversation. However, they need to happen -- they're not called cliche's because they're so new and innovative.
You are not Stephen King.
But everyone will expect you to be. Whether you have one day or one month to write, your professors and peers will expect top notch work. The "A for effort" is always recognized and easily forgiven, but people are going to know if you aren't trying. While no one's the expert (except the professor), if you put yourself forward as talented and hyper-critical (which a lot of us tend to do), the bar for your work is going to be set very high. If you don't deliver, it won't be unlikely to hear, "These characters are so undeveloped they could be stand-ins for Anastasia Steele!"
Nobody cares about your feelings.
Callous as this may sound, it's sort of true. Not in the sense that we're all heartless and rude, but writing is a profession, and feelings have no place in a subjective workshop. Your classmates may beat around the bush at first, but no one is going to lie to protect your ego. The professors, your peers, even your friends, ultimately want what's best for you as a writer. It can be difficult, especially when your blood is printed into those pages and you haven't slept for days. But you learn to sit back and take the criticism, which most of the time is very useful. You also learn to listen, because everyone has room to improve. Trust me, nobody wants to be the person who shuts down every negative remark.
You walk by a potential story several times a day.
At a certain point, writers see conversations or chance encounters as their potential winning story, to the point where your friends don't want to tell you about their lives because they know it will end up in your workshop. You suddenly find yourself paying more attention to the way people behave, and while you tell yourself that it's because you're studying human behavior, the truth is that you find humanity more interesting than you could ever imagine. The songs people listen to when they're crying in their room, or the same drinks they order every day at Starbucks, or even the backdrop of their iPhones are the details that you start to seek as you appreciate people for more than meets your eye. On the other hand, it may trigger you to dislike them more -- the important thing is the closer look.
Perspective is literally everything.
Everyone has ideas on how they want to do things, and everyone likes to think those ideas are valid. Well, they are and they aren't -- it depends.
Writing taste is purely subjective. What one professor thinks is wonderful, another will tell you to scrap and start over. The contradicting comments in workshops are going to drive you insane. There are things you write that you're going to love to death, but at the end of the day, you know will have to go -- the proverbial fruits of your labor going straight into the recycle bin. It will all get overwhelming. You know why? Because even though the rules of grammar are in the book, there are no rules for creative writing. Like any other field, success is mostly screwing around until something halfway decent turns up. Since there is no set formula on what makes a good story, trial and error is all you've got to work with. However, at the end of the day, it all works out -- just because.
You don't know what you're doing and you probably never will.
I don't think any of us ever really do. Writing, or any work for that matter, will have you converting to Greek mythology because no modern day religion has enough gods for you to pray to for mercy and strength. As much as we like to think that we all have it together, we're just circling the pool of adulthood. There are people who have been swimming around for decades and still haven't gotten the hang of it. There is no one way to do anything, and doing the correct thing is hard because there are no such things as "right" and "proper." But, hey, it's perfectly okay to not know what you're doing. If you knew it all, you'd never learn anything new, and if we're not learning, then what are we paying for?
