The First Rule of Write Club...

...is to keep writing.

Writing students are sensitive souls. It goes with the territory, really, and it’s the main reason an emerging writer’s initiation into group workshopping is terrifying .

Running a writing workshop, which I do every week, requires guidelines. Together, our class established some at the beginning of the year. We value a supportive creative community. Comments should be affirming, constructive, and specific. Every member of class should speak to their writing peers as they would like to be spoken to.

This past week writer A, new to our school, workshopped her story, which I thought was quite good. I applauded the fact she’d made the unconventional choice to narrate it in the second person. Writer B, a confident and direct upperclassman, disagreed. She spoke out against the use of the second person in general and criticized the narrative itself. Writer B’s final comment was that Writer A should cut the entire second half of the story, because it contained nothing Writer B even remotely cared about.

This being Zoom, I noticed Writer A turn her camera off as I frantically tried to soften while backpedaling. My urgent mission was to wrap things up on a positive note and move on. I needed to get Writer A to a safe distance.

The fact that it is three days later and something I’m still obsessing over makes me realize that teaching, when you care deeply about your students, is exhausting. My role as facilitator and amplifier of creative self-expression can be heaven, but sometimes, it’s hell.

You ask students to take risks, to reveal themselves in their work, but neither you nor they can control the reactions of others. You can circle back after the fact, as I did, but by then, the chariot of fire is out of the burning barn. And, in a setting where a writer is required to put their work/heart/soul under a public magnifying glass, while there may be set rules about being thoughtful and supportive, we’re talking human beings here, with free will and limited impulse control, so there’s no guarantee.

Damage control, I can do. Empathy, for sure, and saying that they should examine rather than shove aside their pain. Telling them while the feelings are still fresh, put them in writing. Spare nothing. Someday, it may serve them, when writing about embarrassment, or unkindness, or that time when they got their spirit crushed before picking themselves up and becoming a writer anyway.