NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/misc/writing/2371

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-30 | 1.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!icdoc!syma!mapd1
From: [e-mail] (Nigel Ling)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Writing workshops bad? (was Reserach in Fiction)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 30 Jul 92 10:35:16 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of Sussex
Lines: 27

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Fred Welden) writes:
>
...
>I have both heard (from participants) and read (for example, in Harper's
>magazine) the criticism of writer's workshops that they tend to produce
>literary co-dependents:  participants emerge writing like the workshop
>writes, not like individuals with different and individual messages
>to communicate.  And I believe that one can expect writing really good...

Yes. This is a real problem with workshops, I understand, even with very
famous ones. I remember reading some years ago a similar criticism about
the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia run by
Malcolm Bradbury. It has produced a few Booker prize winners but
apparently many writers who have been through it have the `course style'
about their work. I have never belonged to a workshop (except a computer
one) and so I have no personal experience. But those I know who have are
not very complimentary about them.

I don't read SF magazines but I hear that someone has written an article
which claims that subscribers to these publications are also the
submitters of stories, and this is resulting in material which is just
rehashes of old stuff.

Maybe this doesn't matter if you don't want to write in your own voice,
so to speak. But then where is the point in writing?

Nigel