Dropping Out
Why I'm quitting my workshopping class
Are you part of a book club or know someone who is? I’d be honoured to join your club for an author visit, in-person or virtually. I’d love it if you save this email and/or forward it to your favourite book club peeps so I can start filling my calendar with Book Club Visits.
“If you need advice about dropping a class, I’m the right person to talk to.”
My 20-year-old smirked at me when he said that. He has dropped more university classes in two years of university than I did in four. Of course, he has the gift of technology that makes it simple to drop and enlist with a few clicks.
I was on the fence about going to my workshopping class. My nose was stuffed and my eyes were watering. The circulating cold/flu has landed in my house and in this COVID world, I always opt to stay home rather than be a superspreader. I was feeling fine, but I really, really, really did not want to go to class.
I’m not loving this class at all. This is going to sound very snotty, but I’m the only one in the room with multiple books published. The workshop was sold as being for intermediate to advanced writers. Everyone but two of us working are on their first novels/memoirs, and I feel I’ve been bamboozled. I wanted to spend time deconstructing pages—mine and those of others—to fine tune what works and what doesn’t. I was hoping to sit in a room of writers of a similar calibre who could teach me how to craft better and how to critique like a pro.
I knew it was going to be problematic from the first class. We were asked to share some good news from the week and when I said I had sent out digital ARCs of my new novel, no one knew what ARC stood for.
Despite the excellent content and writing exercises the instructor presents, week 2 showed me how far apart I was from the others. Our in-class writing challenge was to write 10 lines of dialogue between a contrary character (the person who can see both sides of the protagonist’s dilemma) and a contradictory character (the one who only sees their own side and tries to force it on the protagonist) in our works in progress. The instructions were to write only the dialogue - no dialogue tags (ex: he said) or action tags (ex: He rubbed the back of his neck).
Out of nine students, I was the only who understood the assignment. I banged out 10 lines in less than three minutes (“Mom, you certainly do love your dialogue,” the above son pointed out when I told him about the exercise.) Two others had finished within the allotted 10 (TEN!!) minutes, but when they read their work aloud, the endless use of dialogue and action tags told me they didn’t know what those were.
I loved the exercise because it forced me to choose words that would tell readers a lot about the characters in the dialogue without any qualifiers. Using conversation, the contrary and contradictory characters could show you where they stand and illustrate their personalities. Let me repeat what I said in the previous paragraph: I was the only one who understood the assignment. I sat there for seven minutes waiting for others to finish and then sat through another ten minutes of others reading bloated pieces (from the tags that shouldn't have been there in the first place). I can’t advance my craft if I’m waiting for everyone else to catch up.
So, with the blessing of my son, I am dropping the class. I’ll have a credit for future classes and I’ll have my time back to work on my craft on my own.
Funny thing, though. The next day I woke up without a stuffed nose. If you believe the body knows, then you won’t be surprised by that. My eyes were clear, and I could see the new road ahead.
xo Dana
What I’m reading
I’ve just cracked the cover on The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. So many readers in my circles have been talking about this book since it was released last December. It was always quietly on my radar and I’ve had it on my holds at the library for four months. I love a good midwife story (Chris Bohjalian’s The Midwives is one of my all-time favourites) and I am looking forward to some cool evenings curled up with tea and a blanket and a book.
If you want to check out the books I’ve read and my rating, you can follow me on Goodreads.
That's too bad, we'll miss your sense of humor. Lin