by Christine Swint
If you are aware that you need to be brave, you are probably on the threshold of writing something that matters.
Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and With Others (2003, pg. 172)
During the last week in April I attended an AWA writing-group leadership training with poet Patricia Lee Lewis at The Crossings in Austin, Texas. Patricia, along with writers Celia Jeffries and Charles MacInerney, coached twelve of us in the art of leading a group in the Amherst Writers and Artists method of writing. Patricia and Celia both worked for many years with Pat Schneider, founder of AWA, writing in Pat’s weekly group held in her home in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Pat Schneider developed the AWA method after finishing her MFA. She and her colleagues gathered ideas from the writing process movement, which she traces to Dorothea Brande’s work, Becoming a Writer, Peter Elbow’s Everyone Can Write, Natalie Goldberg’s, Writing Down the Bones and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (2003, pg. 144).
Besides learning the nuts and bolts of starting a writing group or workshop, we wrote together. That’s what the AWA process is about. A typical writing session starts with a brief meditation to center the mind and relax, and then is followed by a simple prompt. The writing is timed. We wrote for shorter lengths of time because we were learning the art of managing a group, for eight to twenty minutes per prompt.
The writing that came out of us was amazing. We wrote outdoors, immersed in the fresh breeze of the Texas hill country and the scent of wildflowers. We wrote about whatever came to our minds, and then afterwards read our work aloud to the other members. Since this was fresh writing, newly born, the members responded only to what was strong in the piece. AWA encourages holding critical responses for when the writer has prepared a typed manuscript.
Another important guideline of the AWA process is to keep all writing confidential. As one of our writers suggested, “what happens in the circle stays in the circle.” Also, we treat all writing as fiction, unless the author wants the members to treat it as autobiography.
When responding to a writer’s work, we talk about the narrator, or the character, never attributing the events of the piece to the writer. Patricia compared it to reading a Stephen King novel. Do we think that Stephen King actually experienced all the grisly tales of his stories? Even if the writer uses the first person, we don’t assume the author actually experienced the events.
This is the one aspect of the group writing process that gives writers the most difficulty, but it’s one of the most important parts. Otherwise the writing group enters the murky territory of group therapy, without a therapist! AWA sticks to treating the work as fiction to keep the writers safe.
How will I include this training in my writing life? I’d like to begin a small group in my home, and maybe offer workshops a few times a year in my city.
Pat Schneider brought her method to women living in a housing project near her town. Out of that work grew The Chicopee Workshop for Low-Income Women, as well as a DVD and book of their work with Pat. Many of the original members of this group have gone on to earn college degrees, and even MFAs.
One of the writers in the Austin training, Ellen Reich, says, “I plan to approach a local organization, the Charlotte Coalition for Social Justice, to explore possibilities of offering this writing workshop to teens. The CCSJ’s mission is to bridge differences and foster understanding among different populations. I also hope to offer a group to our local Room at the Inn – a residence for unwed, pregnant women who have little to no outside support.”
What experiences have you had in group writing? Do you belong to a critique group, and if so, do you write together, or only respond to typed manuscripts? What do you think about bringing writing and poetry to underserved populations?
Schneider, Pat (2003). Writing Alone and With Others. New York: Oxford University Press.
I love the idea that the writing is fiction! I teach a poetry-writing course to tenth through twelfth graders and some of them are so reluctant to read out loud. This concept would really help them, I think. Thanks for the idea!
This is a lovely article, Christine! You have a lot of great ideas for groups. I’ve been in both good and not so good writing groups, and the ones that are not so good are ones in which we only critique previous work. Maybe I need to get back to the type of group where we write new work too. Thanks!
Thanks, Linda. Maybe it’ll free the kids up. It’s not good to make assumptions about people, so I guess we shouldn’t about their writing. Teaching in a school can be tricky, because of laws that bind teachers to report information about any harm coming to the student, but in general, this process should work well for any age.
Jessica, in her book, Pat Schneider mentions the idea that in order to identify what needs to be improved in a writer’s work, it’s important to also be able to find what works. I think when approaching critique it’s important to keep this thought in mind. It’s more respectful to the writer.
As for writing in a group– it’s an amazing experience, especially if there’s a leader to keep the group safe from inappropriate remarks. Each writer reading raw material… I’ve come to think that the process is far more important than the finished product, espeically when I see piles of unwanted paperbacks headed for a landfill! But, it does feel good to complete a piece and send it on its way, ready for a life away from you.
I’m so jealous! Despite living at an educational institution (the school where I teach has boarding as well as day students), writing isn’t really a part of the culture here. Being an expat has its downsides. I do have an online writing buddy who spends half of her year in Oregon and the other half doing peace work in a Palestinian village in the Holy Land. I really wish we could get together and write, but it doesn’t seem likely anytime soon, unless I end up in Israel next year, which is a possibility … stupid wanderlust. Anyhow, I write with my Writers Club students, but writing with 10-13 year olds just isn’t quite the same.
Let us know how things go when you start your group with your new training!
Katherine, thank you for responding to this post!
I’ve done the training, but now that it’s behind me, I haven’t started the work to begin a group. Why is that? Fear? Don’t know.
If you really want to start a group, Pat Schneider details the process in her book, Writing Alone and with Others. The training isn’t necessary of you want to have a group, only if you want to be an AWA affiliate. Maybe you should try it! Even if you only meet a few times, the experience of writing together would be worth it.
And I’m jealous of your travels. I bet you have many interesting adventures to write about. I have to keep my wanderlust in check for now.
Christine-
I’ll definitely check the book out in … late November, when I’ll be back in the US. Books are a commodity here, and unless you’re into British novels (snore), you won’t find much at the used bookstores.
My biggest problem is that the people around me just aren’t interested in writing, or reading for that matter. They write to pass their exams, they write to do their jobs, but stories in the local languages are generally spoken or sung, and don’t often get told at all in English. The idea that English can be a means of artistic expression, rather than just a garden hoe, is quite foreign. There are some stories and poetry published in the newspapers, but they’re almost all the same story with the same moral: witchcraft is bad and you need to be a good Christian, or something BAD will happen to YOU. It becomes dull pretty quickly.
It just gets lonely, you know? I’m glad I’m here, I’m so thrilled to be experiencing the world more directly than through the evening news, but FORK if I wouldn’t give five hundred kwacha to chat about alliteration with somebody for an hour.
Oh well. The grass is always greener on the other side of the Atlantic, at least until the rainy season starts again … then it’s definitely greener over here. That’s why I heart the internet.
I belonged to a writing group once, I really enjoyed the sharing of ideas and the respectful critique of each others work, which I know is not standard in all such groups. I’ve also facilitated writing workshops and I’ve seen people who were very uncertain about their writing develop confidence, I facilitated a workshop at a conference once where one woman who started out by saying she couldn’t write ended up reading her poem out to the assembled delegates!
Katherine – I know how you feel, I felt like that too when I lived in Malawi. I found lots of friends and really enjoyed working in the school I was in but I couldn’t share my interest in writing with anyone really.
CGP, thanks for sharing your experience with us. It helps to hear success stories of people who were once timid opening up and experiencing their writing power. Everyone has the right to create, even if not everyone is a poet for the ages.
this all sounds very interesting. i just don’t seem to be able to find time to do anything like this right now…but it might be something i’d like to think about down the road.
I lead an online writing for women that follows a lot of the AWA methods. Without having a specific name to link to it, many of the AWA practices have been part of the writing groups I’ve been in over the years. Particularly the piece about the assumption that all work is fiction. (I remember my surprise the first time I was in a group with someone who began remarking on my work, saying, “I love the way you’re dancing naked in the fields in this opening line, and then you go on to wrestle with these alligators…” and all the while I’m thinking, “WAIT! What ‘me?’ Not me! That’s not ME!”)
I’ve had different feelings about writing groups, depending on where I’ve been at in my life and what sort of group I’ve been in. My overall experience has been positive, and I love my current group. The online writing group–and community, like this one–is an interesting sidebar to this topic. I love that I’m able to fit it in over the course of a week–it would be difficult for me to make time for a conventional in-person group right now, but it’s easy to find time for an online group. One of the best gifts a writing group gives, in my experience, is that they really are amazing tools to get you to write. With a “deadline” looming, I’m much more inclined to make time to come up with something, and my writing is better when I know, in a very concrete way, that it’s going to be read by other, specific people. It’s also a wonderful thing to feel like you have some like-minded souls around you–someone else out there who will understand your obsessions, compulsions, your love of alliteration, the pleasure of a sustained image, etc.
durable pigments,
I love your story about dancing naked! It’s a perfect example of how the writer and the narrator more often than not are two separate entities.
Your online writing group sounds great for you. I’d be interested in hearing how you found the group you now work with, and how often you “meet.” Thanks for commenting!
Thanks, Christine! About the group: I created it. I needed some sort of structured way to get back to writing regularly and knew I wouldn’t be able to find a free night every week to get to a regular group. I pulled a few friends and acquaintances together that I knew did some writing, and developed an online forum to write together. It started out very free-form and has evolved and become more structured over the year or so we’ve been doing it. It has a weekly structure, and people post & comment throughout the week as they find time (much like Read Write Poem, it seems).
It’s definitely been a life-saver for me, time-wise… and I like being able to sit with other writers’ pieces for a little while, and have the comments and feedbacks written out, too. I feel like my experience of these pieces is more thoughtful and considered than I had time to be in my previous in-person, real-time groups.
Writing groups can be a hoot, but I’m not so enamored with critique groups. I respect the decision of those who find critique groups beneficial. Anything that gets us writing is good, and if feedback from random others spurs and encourages you — then that is what you should do.
My experiences in these areas have been mixed, leaving me lukewarm.
Unless you and the person(s) critiquing you, are on a wholly parallel and complimentary wavelength, such as an author in a long-time relationship with an editor — critique can be a double-edged sword. I believe it is dangerous, potentially destructive, to the burgeoning writer — often making them insecure regarding their true personal voice, which has the potential of stunting valid creativity.
I monitor several well-populated online writing critique groups, and sadly, so often people offering ‘critique’, have not invested themselves whatsoever, in learning and understanding the unique voice and style of the authors they critique. Too often what they offer up is not constructive critique that will move the writer ahead on their personal and singularly original path — instead it is pontification on “how to write like the person doing the critiquing”, or some dour academic edict.
I believe strongly that this type of ‘directive’ advice can be most harmful, and unfortunately, can make mute and impotent a writer’s genuine voice. Can you imagine someone in one of these online groups, critiquing the likes of e.e. cummings, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the like — if these particular writers were unknown, and therefore unfamiliar to the critique group.
Having your work critiqued, by someone who has taken the time to grasp your voice and style, who knows and understands you, can be remarkably helpful. Most published, established authors would attest to the fact that the relationship with their editor(s) can be invaluable. But beware of online critique groups, more often than not they are just opinion pools — and you know what they say about opinions… and that’s my opinion on that.
Rob,
Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough comments about critique groups. I have read on Writer’s Island how you encourage participants to leave the critique for other forums, that the Island is place to enjoy each other’s work. I think that’s a wise way to go about an online writing group, and I agree with your comments here too.
I think it’s much better to respond to what we find strong in the piece, to what we like. RWP mentions a similar approach in the Code of Conduct section.