Welcome To 2009
Last night our writers group met at Suzy’s house, and we took turns announcing what we’d accomplish with our writing in the coming year. After a decade of this ritual it’s too easy to simply resolve to complete a current project, then begin and complete another. Something feels a bit automatic, and that robs the process of any value.
Instead, consider that a suitable goal should make you feel a little – or a lot – embarrassed with its aspirations. Maybe only the goals that seem “impossible” really inspire or excite us to take action. In my experience, I’m never excited to answer mail unless I can do that task in an outrageous, over-done manner. It always feels like more work to send a simple letter than an elaborate package. With that in mind, please consider that these resolutions are a first step toward doing something which seems completely beyond your abilities at the present time. None of us want to waste our lives. We all want to surprise ourselves as we discover our abilities, and we want to meet other people and accept their help in completing our plans. In turn, we want to help others reach goals which seem beyond their current abilities.
In workshop, Suzy wrote down each writer’s committed goals, and we each took a moment to examine our writing lives. What we didn’t like, we determined to change. What sounded exciting and motivating, we stated we would accomplish. Please take a moment to examine your own writing life.
It’s my top priority to not waste your time. So in the coming year I’ll be introducing fewer techniques or distinctions around writing; instead, I’ll be reviewing your work and using it as an opportunity to apply what I’ve already introduced: Submerging the I… Horses… Avoiding abstracts… Symmetry… all of it. I’ll look for the best aspects of your writing samples, praise those, then discuss how to make other aspects work more effectively. Each month, the Cult workshop will send me a selection of your work, ideally chapters or scenes or short stories – parts that stand alone to some degree – and I’ll respond with my comments.
By the end of 2009, I’ll have chosen enough of your work to publish an anthology wherein each piece of fiction presents a perfect illustration of a writing technique we’ve discussed. I’ll write an introduction to the anthology and publish it in the spring of 2010. Beyond that, how we’ll distribute the book… I’m not sure, but that’s all part of the “impossible.” For now I’ll be looking for your best, wildest, most-exciting work. If we take good care of that task – all the other details will resolve themselves. If we do this first part right, we’ll have publishers bidding against each other for the finished work.
Maybe we’ll donate the royalties to a charity, or split them among the contributors. We’ll decide that after we’ve done our job. Yes, publishing seems to be as depressed as the rest of the economy, but great work will always sell. For now, your job is to present your best work – hell, write better than your “best.” Commit to surprising yourself. Despite how circumstances around you change, you’re still the talented, dedicated, creative person you’ve always been. Let’s show readers, teachers, booksellers and publishers how amazing a book can be.
Consider this New Year as an invitation, and a challenge.
I’ll Shut Up Now,
Chuck Palahniuk
Comments
Nice to be back, Kabol.
Question, too, for the big dogs: Will the reviewers be able to do line-by-line commentaries or what's happening?
I imagine Mark will have a good recommended format for reviews. But I'll explain it from a technical standpoint.
Most reviews I imagine are likely to be critiques. So you'll simply type what you want into a text-box, exactly like you do on the forum.
For those people who really want to help a fellow writer, they can certainly download the submission and go to town with a red pen. At which point they could upload the "edited" version for the author to see.
A good part of the workshop is built around each person's activity in the workshop. Those who are the most helpful will certainly benefit.
There are a lot of ins-and-outs to the system, that we simply won't explain (to keep people from concocting ways to cheat), but rest assured those members who contribute will be rewarded.
I guess I have a question.
Does the anthology have a theme? Can our stories feasibly be about anything, and written in any style the author wants? How many stories are being picked for this thing, because surely it can't be everyone who participates, that'd be a ton!
I have just re-read Chucks original post and i see that he says "ideally chapters or scenes or short stories – parts that stand alone to some degree –" that means i will just have to edit some things to make them seem stand alone but can ultimately be reintroduced to the story as integral plot points.
This is a really good way for everyone to weed out the chaff in their stories as well e.g. Say like me you have something on the large side that you want to split into sections i think it will make us really see what needs to be there and what is there just because we want it.
If we can download Word documents and use Word's in-house comment feature on reviews, and then upload them in an attatchment with our critiques - like in the intensives - that'd be great, I think even necessary. That kind of thing adds a proper dimension to the reviews. Of course, this is going to be a problem if not everyone has word - thus why I sort of hoped for an in-house LBL system.
Also, regarding the anthology. Levi, it'll probably be an eclectic bunch of well-written stories, no grand theme, I assume beyond what Chuck mentioned, "an anthology wherein each piece of fiction presents a perfect illustration of a writing technique we’ve discussed," and anthologies usually hit between 30,000 - 50,000 words. Considering the man has a fair few techniques up at the moment, I'd say we'd probably be going beyond that. If you're dead keen on getting into it, I'd guess you'd probably have to really riff off of those essays as originally as you could - and that in itself is probably the pinnacle of what you could hope to achieve from them.
And, on that note: are we obliged, by submitting, to have our stories appear in the anthology, or do we still hold all rights even by using the workshop? i.e. If a story is tagged for a Chuck review, and he likes it, are we fine then to take that story and start submitting places - not out of cynicism for the materialising of the anthology, but more for our own good? Get 'em published and get on with the next one?
Finally, about the payment thing. Royalties, all the way. If an author wants to donate his or her part to charity, they should feel free, but for a lot of people getting Chuck Palahniuk to tote your fiction has a fair possibility to bring in some groceries. To take that away from them would be fairly mean. Chuck and the Cult of course, should have their cut.
I have a question as well: Will the new workshop we'll be joining in Feb. be an extension or a completely different animal from Premium Membership? Basically, if I join Premium now, will I have to sign up/pay for something later, or will it come with the membership?
We decided to not go with an in-house line-by-line system because it is simply overly difficult to retain the writer's intended formatting. Since most people write in a word processor, it just seems like an extra chunk of work that no one likes doing.
Writers & Reviewers will be able to upload .doc .rtf .txt and .pdf So if a writer has uploaded a .doc, it's safe to assume you can use Word's editing features. I would love to require everyone to use .odt but I suspect the average user is still unfamiliar with the format.
When submitting a piece, the user will have to indicate if they want it to be considered for the anthology.
I'll leave the legal questions and specifics to someone else, because I'm not really involved in the exact rules and such.
Jester1206,
It is a replacement of the current Premium Workshop. Meaning if you join now, you'll have automatic access to the new Workshop as soon as we open the doors. The new Workshop will replace the current one entirely.
In other words, no, you won't have to join something different if you sign up for Premium today.
Sounds splendid by me, Kirk. Thanks!
@Martin Barker
It looks like you got some nice pointers from J. Kabol about how to entice people to read and review your work. Good job re-reading Chuck's original post for clues, as well. A surprising amount of information can be unpacked or intuited from what Chuck addressed there in necessarily broad outline. Suffice to say that for now there will be no hard word limit on the size of your entries, but you'll do yourself a service if you look for ways to give us the best 3,000 words of something that's larger.
@corellion
Good to see you back. I'm sure you'll bring your A-game to the anthology, just like the time we spent together during the first Clevenger intensive. While Kirk has addressed most of your technical questions, let me add an important caveat about Word's Track Changes feature: If someone opens your Word document with mark-ups on a competitor's platform, they'll likely not see the line notes! For example, many members use shareware from OpenOffice.org instead of Word. It let's you save to the .doc format, it let's you open and modify Word documents, but line notes done with the Track Changes feature, those little side bubbles, do not show up! So if you've summarized your review at the end of the document, that is all the recipient is going to see.
My personal recommendation is to make everything PDF, both story documents and any extensive mark-ups you want to send around. The PDF document format offers the best stability across platforms for any document type that people are likely to have ready access to. If you save to PDF on a Mac using one word processoer and someone opens the PDF on a Dell laptop using a free download of Acrobat Reader--well they're going to see pretty much the exact document you intended, all of your formatting preserved. So I think it's the best way to go, both for your original stories, and for any more intensive kind of line-by-line edit you feel motivated to do for someone else. And nobody has to buy Adobe Acrobat Writer just to make a PDF. As a matter of fact, the OpenOffice.org shareware I mentioned--the free software that acts mostly just like Word--it will allow you to Export to PDF. So why not do that?
If you wanted to go completely crazy and deliver handwritten margin notes on somebody's story, you could even do that. You'd just need a scanner and then you'd make the scanned document into a PDF you can upload.
But for the most part, I think it will be adequate for Workshoppers to open a story in PDF using Acrobat Reader, print it out if they want to for easier reading, make notes in their own idiosyncratic ways, and then compose a brief, global review or critique that can be pasted directly into the reviewing field. By brief I mean a review of 100-300 words, not a simple "Good job, buddy" and not a painstaking line-by-line edit.
@Levi
No, we haven't picked out a big theme. Yes, your stories can be feasibly about anything. And no, we aren't dictating any certain style. But you'll do yourself a favor if your writing has benefited from at least one or two of Chuck's craft essays. And I have no idea how many stories, total, we'll be able to accept. The final shape of this anthology is months away.
Thanks for the enthusiasm, everyone, and all the great questions.
Mark Vanderpool
Writers Workshop Admin
perfect. Thanks mark!
Hi All,
I'm another "lurker" and covert essay reader, but the magnitude of this opportunity has spurred me into full participant mode. I just wanted to extend an official "hello" to everyone and say how excited I am to read/review everyone's work and receive feedback from fellow minimalist writers absorbing every syllable of Chuck's essays like I have been. Looking forward to 2009. Thanks.
Though I'm with Mark and love OpenOffice.org, a good alternative for windows users to create .pdf files is something like PDFCreator found here http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
It is free and installs like a print driver, which is nice because you can then make .pdf files from any program you can print from. Simply go to the print menu and choose the create pdf option, instead of your printer.
Thanks Kirk, that's a great suggestion. I may pull that down and work with it some myself.
Additionally, I suppose that if a reviewer were intent on using Word's Track Changes feature to display margin notes, then it might be possible to use a program like PDFCreator to convert that Word document with the margin notes showing, making a PDF "picture" with everything displayed. Here, I'm still answering corellion's suggestion that is based on his experience in one of our writing intensives, but it should be noted that the overall pattern for the Big Workshop and the Anthology Project is going to involve lots more people and will last for an extended duration. We expect to see lots of different skill levels, with new people joining up all the time, so the kind of intensive line-editing he's thinking of probably won't be appropriate as a general standard. We don't want new workshop particpants to feel intimidated or unqualified as reviewers if they've never been fiction editors.
A workshop review just needs to be focused, honest, and helpful in intent. It can be written by anyone with some skill as a reader. It should reflect careful reading of the work under review; for example, making reference to a specific character, how that character develops, and why the reader liked or didn't like the character. Alternatively, it might take up concerns with the subject matter or theme of the work, or with how well the author handled transitions or used dialogue. Any literate person with a little time and care can learn to write a workshop review. It doesn't require knowing what a gerund or a split infinitive would be, it doesn't require correcting someone's grammar or spelling. In short, we aren't expecting reviewers to be skilled as copyeditors.
If a story is loaded with spelling errors and other beginners' mistakes and carelessness, it will be sufficient to say something like: "You have a number of spelling or typographical errors that I found distracting." OR "Little things like homonym confusion (to, two, and too) kept interfering with what I otherwise think has great potential as a story." Hopefully, you'd say a bit more than this, and find some things to praise, as well, but it won't be necessary to go in and mark each specific instance of the errors you're talking about. Writing is re-writing, so there's a point at which you'd be doing the writer's work for him. Show your first reactions and overall appreciation, instead. Just demonstrate good reasoning to back up any criticism you make and say some good things to balance anything negative. Then get onto the next story. This is going to be a big and busy workshop, and it may move a little fast, at times.
A global (summary, big picture) review of a short story should be specific, but not exhaustive, exploratory more than prescriptive, and probably won't need to be any longer than this forum post. Your direct experience as a reader will count for more than any expert knowledge that you may or may not possess. The deeper editing stages on this project will come later.
Do I have to pay to join the "workshop" to be able to send Palahniuk my "work"?
@vigorous
As always Mark, you're coming on here with the big picture, my kudos to you, sir.
"Writing is re-writing, so there's a point at which you'd be doing the writer's work for him. Show your first reactions and overall appreciation, instead."
People shouldn't come at stories with a critical eye, though. That tends to ruin all but the very solid. Reviewing, I think it's important though to get at a story like it's the finished product. If people are uploading in-works (which, of course, is going to happen anyway) then any review is going to be less effective than it ought to. LBLs are useful, to me anyway, because I do tend to make mistakes and errors at the prose level. Which is to say, first reactions and overall appreciation doesn't... well, I sort of don't know what to do with it. I need something to work from, whether they're the rules of the craft or an essay someone is aiming at. I'm worried now that maybe my editing would be a bit copy editing. I'm worried now I'm not giving good reviews.
@Ironman.
You know full well, you odd boy.
@corellion
I think you make a good point.
But, as in the previous workshop, way back, I think there will be a little window where the writer/submitter of the story can say what he tried to do in this story. And so, can also ask for what kind of feedback he or she is looking for.
Bateman, You are correct. There will be a "synopsis" area where someone can discuss what they were going for and make any notes they feel necessary.
@corellion
Rest assured that I'm not prohibiting the exchange of line-by-line edits or extensive margin notes, where people want to do that.. If line-by-line is the best way you feel you have to crack a story open, then do so. Just consider that when you've cracked that nut and you've got a bunch of margin notes to look at on a story you're reviewing, you still need to summarize your findings and make some global comments. And then you can judge whether to send only your global commentary or whether to send your mark-ups, too. Some people would view their margin notes as the "rough draft" of a review, and not as helpful to the author as the finished review. Others might like to provide both. I'm not knocking your approach, I'm only moderating the larger expectation.
@Vig
"Some people would view their margin notes as the "rough draft" of a review..."
Don't knock it, man. LBL's have done far more use for me than global comments, which are often exceedingly lazy.
Global comments that are "exceedingly lazy" and of little use are vague and general and done straight from the top of someone's head after a single, quick reading. You can bet your ass that vague, useless reviews that don't show any real process or reflection are going to be penalized.
Oh yeah baby!
That's all we wanted to hear VP!
A good spanking will do the trick... we can make little movies of it... no/yes?
My camera is rolling.
penalized makes me think of In The Penal Colony. Whoever writes a bad review should be stripped and have the Machine write the story they reviewed onto them.
@corellion
"Reviewing, I think it's important though to get at a story like it's the finished product. If people are uploading in-works (which, of course, is going to happen anyway) then any review is going to be less effective than it ought to."
Precisely. And it would be a good idea to differentiate in your story description. When I feel something is nearing the finished stages I format lengthwise in two columns like a published book so he feel of it is finalized and the reviewer is less likely to begin chewing through it. Especially when a story is a first person narrative with a lot of internal monologue aka Big Voice. As a reader you have to commit yourself to accept the narrator's voice and style otherwise the review is failed from word one.
"As a reader you have to commit yourself to accept the narrator's voice and style otherwise the review is failed from word one."
This something which i think everyone should adhere to. While we may be using Chucks essays as guidance, people must be aware that the writing style will not necessarily be like Chucks. We are looking for good writing that encompasses the techniques that the essays provided, am i right?
Yes. As Mad Daego points out:
1. It would be a good idea in your summary space to note how close you feel your story is to completion, and beyond that, write a brief author's agenda -- something I've always advocated here -- an agenda which includes some clues to the kind of feedback you're looking for. Just keep it simple and polite and don't sound too demanding. For example, it's fine to mention what you think you have particular trouble with, or to ask for commentary focused on one aspect, like characterization, or whatever.
And it's fine to ask for a microscopic level of critique, if that's what you're after, or to give permission for one, from any reviewer who feels up to that paticular challenge--but you shouldn't feel hostile toward a reviewer who wants to make more general but still pertinent comments, someone who spends only an hour writing the review instead of two or three. People have lots of demands on their time and they've already done you the courtesy of reading your work.
Likewise, it's fine to say in your agenda that you feel your story is complete, and that you'd like reviewers to comment on it like it's already published work. Be clear about what you want, but be gentle in your reactions to how well people fulfill or live up to those specific requests or expectations. Generally, don't rate a review as Unhelpful unless it's clear that the reviewer took no time or care with it at all. The way you guys rate each other will have consequences.
And
2. I'd be very disappointed if everything we see looks like imitation Chuck, instead of brilliant original voices who've learned a few tricks from his hat. Equally, I'd be disappointed to see a preponderance of reviews that harp on Chuck's essay distinctions like they are gospel instead of guidelines. It's okay to reference the essays if you see where a piece could be made stronger from one critical distinction that the author has maybe missed, but you should be sensitive to the overall refinement of the work and to the specific agenda the author has included in the summary space. Lots of excellent and award-winning writers use "thought verbs" more than Chuck, or have first-person narrators who aren't shy about the word "I." So, for Chrissakes, learn these distinctions and experiment with them and see how they strengthen and benefit your writing, but don't be militant about it.
Art always trancends the rules that it's built upon.
Dude's building an army of writers.
Will there be bunk beds?
Yeah, I was wondering about that, Vig. Is this workshop for writers who are minimalist, of the Lish/Spanbauer/Hepel/Carver/etc school of writing? I don't think it would be a bad thing if it was. If I went to the Andy Warhol paining workshop, I wouldn't paint like Monet; I would stay within the pop art realm. I mean, Chuck's gonna want pieces for this book that fit the minimalist sensibility, right?
I have to agree with Bug, the primary reason I'm anxious to participate in this particular site's workshop is it's focus on minimalism techniques. I've had numerous writing group trials scuttle because they championed methods in direct opposition to minimalism. If we're still in the early stages of framing expectations for this workshop, I'd like to submit my vote for reviews that comment on the usage of Chuck's essay curriculum. Just my thought.
N
so much to process, so much to really take in..
bug, no. this isnt a chuck seminar. (and hey, N. welcome to the workshop!)
if youre looking for a class specific to minimalism, there have been two members from here who've gone on to join chuck in spanbauer's writer's workshop. expensive, but if that's what youre looking for then it would be worth it. here, though, there is not a direct focus except to help writers by offering techniques that anyone can use.
so, again, bug. no. this isnt a chuck seminar. this is a writer's cult. we just happen to share a love for the same writer and he's helping out. amy hempel is his god when it comes to writing. it would break his fucking heart to see every submission mimicking what she spent painstaking years developing.
so. your voice, your story.
which leads me to offer perspective about chuck's line quoted above:
my take on chuck's essays over the years is that it is about writing stories. his first essay was on authority, the way grisham and clancy use it, in the head method. the way denis johnson uses the heart method in jesus' son, or the way joy williams uses it to effectively infuriate you, and how hempel uses it to break your heart. or the on the body, like will baer with his on the body character descriptions. or craig clevenger with his choruses. none of those authors are minimalist writers (except hempel, and the label pisses her off intellectually). and clevenger utilizes the "i" as the first chosen word in both of his amazing novels. the handbook is one of his favorite books, after all. even if clev doesnt align himself as a minimalist writer. so, i dont think chuck's looking for a collection of minimalist stories but rather all stories are told with many of the same techniques.
so, the answer: your story, your voice.
-kabol
..
next. LBL. or, line by line edits.
@ core
brother alex. big vig and i have discussed this in detail a few times over the years, the implementation of intensives design in the workshop. the debates have come and gone, after filtering through all of the obstinacy we agreed that implementing word/orsuch attachments to be the polar opposite of productive. we cannot vamp a workshop the way we administrate an intensive. the intensive was a brilliant way of separating the private work from the workshop, but it was makeshift and could only work on a smaller scale. hence the hefty price difference. (six weeks for $300 plus, or one year for less than a bill.)
vig has always championed that line by lines are always available through email. if members want to send each other lbls via attachments, that's fantastic. maybe when the time comes to move the rolling parts some of us can start a "group" at the cult. kind of like a ten dedicates. writing emails on their profile page, all that.
me, i like global comments. whenever i would get back thoughts from clev or baer, i would read those through several times over. those few hundred, heavily packed words can tell so much about the initial reader impression. to me, for the most part--and this is mere conjecture, of course--the editor is the one fixing grammar and spelling and your job is to explain what throws you out of the narrative.
vig already went through a lot of these points..
a few line by line edits is unavoidable, for the most part. youre going to be doing some of the writer's work for them, unavoidably. a large majority of my reviews run in excess of a thousand words. half of that chunk is generally exploratory exposition, and the other chunk is line edits. kind of like, i saw examples like this one and this one and this one. that way, the writer can extrapolate from the few in favor of the many. but basically it is not our job to edit the work. we arent editors.
a perfect review--as i know it--is a few hundred words in length about the basics:
did the characters come across as flat, lifeless ?
did the plot grip you ?
dialogue thoughts
prose
what threw you out of the narrative ?
where did the story lag ?
et cetera
.
.
basically, everyone writes their reviews differently.
-kabol
..
Then tell your reviewers, in the summary space that leads each of your submissions, that this is exactly what you want. But when you're reviewing others, "you should be sensitive to the overall refinement of the work and to the specific agenda the author has included in the summary space."
We have two major divisions in our prose workshop: Lessons from Chuck and Self-Assignment. When you make a submission, you can tag it for either of these major divisions. When you tag something as a Lessons from Chuck entry, you'll be prompted to name which specific assignment you are addressing; for example,
Assignment one: Establishing your Authority
Title:___________ Author:___________
Summary or Author's Agenda:
In this story, based on a childhood experience, I'm trying to capture the skillful reflection of an adult narrator who can relate something that happened long ago with the energy and immediacy of the present moment. I haven't pumped in a bunch of "head authority" research details or expert knowledge of any kind, but I have tried to achieve compelling "heart authority" without tipping over into lugubrious sentimentality. Please let me know if you feel this work achieves the right emotional balance for compelling heart authority.
____________________
Now, if that's the way you address your readers, choosing the correct tags for the entry and then writing a clear agenda to make it unambiguous, reviewers would be quite remiss not to address your specific concerns.
On the other hand, if you've been engaged in this workshop since we invented it six years ago, and you've learned and incorporated dozens of Chuck's techniques, and you want to submit a Self-Assignment entry that doesn't highlight any one of the techniques you prefer above all the others, while deliberately flouting one of his cardinal rules that doesn't serve the voice of your story's compelling narrator, then you should feel that you can do that and you won't be punished for it when it comes to Anthology considerations.
We have a number of skilled readers who will be drawing without prejudice from both Lessons from Chuck and Self-Assignment entries. These readers will be guided in their choices by public ratings and by the reviews of all members, but they won't be over-determined by them, especially where some reviewing might be reactionary or inexperienced. These selected readers will likewise be guided by a close understanding of Chuck's essay distinctions. But each reader whom we've chosen as a nominator will step into the crucible of his or her own conscience for selecting the strongest entries we see each month. It will be important that you move these readers emotionally, that you teach them something, that you entertain them, and that you write in a clean and compelling style. If following a number of Chuck's essays helps you accomplish this, then all the better, and I wouldn't be surprised. If deliberately breaking one or two of his rules helps you achieve your own stride, I wouldn't be surprised by that, either. When you've done this part well enough to convince one of our nominators to select your story, then it stands a compelling chance of being one of the five that Chuck will read and give comments on for that month, making it a finalist for the Anthology. When Chuck takes hold of it, it may be precisely for how well it illustrates one of his teachings that he wants to feature it, but it may be a different aspect of the story which caused one of our nominators to champion it in the first place. There won't be any crude uniformity or heavy monochromatic filter on the way these selections are made. The best writing will rise to the top, period.
Beyond this, let me point out that Minimalism is not a technique, it's an aesthetic. Certain techniques lend themselves to it, but are not exclusive to it. I can name authors who feel minimalist while doing things that Chuck advises against. It's just that they do what they're doing extremely well, and an element that might sink your story simply gives theirs a bit of ballast. Other authors use two or three of Chuck's principles almost religiously, yet write with epic sweep and a huge cast of characters who interact with one another across generations and 500,000 words, novels that you'd never think of as Minimalist. But a perfect illustration of one or more of Chuck's techniques could be found throughout.
I'm challenging you not to feel confined or literal-minded in your application of the teachings, and to trust that some of us have given a hell of a lot of thought to this in deciding to be pluralistic and not exclusionary.
..
JKabol,
Maybe minimalism isn't the school Chuck belongs to. But it seems that Baer, Clevenger, Johnson, Chuck, etc, do belong to a school. One of CP's tips is "Write about the issues that really upset you." My concern with this is because I feel I may not fit into the mold. My writing isn't very personal. It's more like fun and comedic.
Let's simplify things. Let's say I wrote a story like this,
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheckley4/shec...
.
the only real problem this workshop has with sci fi is there is so little of it. i'm hopeful with the influx that we'll see more of it.
Oh, I just read Vig's last post which I somehow missed reading.
So the way the 'Lessons from Chuck' area works is that you submit a story that follows one or more of his techniques? See, until now I didn't get this was the way things work. I was picturing more like, I write a story, then submit it. Not that I write a story that purposely applies a technique. This is the way things work in the 'Lessons from Chuck' area, I take it. But what's 'Self-Assignment' then?
Or is there a WW FAQ somewhere here that explains things for slow people like me?
the workshop is split down the middle. two parts. during the first year of chuck's lessons, we'd read an essay and craft a story around it. submit it and garner reviews, then rewrite it. and when it became a fuller story, closer to completion, we'd up it in the cult side, or the self side. some members stayed within the workshop while others stay completely away from the lessons, or chuck, side. cassun stayed primarily in the cult side. paul (pmck) stayed religiously in the lesson side.
but many of us ventured back and forth for the fuller experience.
so, yeah. no worries.
-kabol
..
I'm very excited for this!
This is pretty awesome. I may have missed it due to being without my glasses but when is this new thing being launched?
Well, there are stories that start as stories, just some inspiration in your head, some character or situation, and no real direction but what your imagination feeds you next. And then there are writing exercises that you take up just for building skills. Then, of course, assignments which could be dull like school or dangerous like project mayhem, but assignments often feel like an exercise when you begin, because you've taken someone else's cue to achieve a certain thing. That doesn't feel like working from inspiration. Right at first it feels like a chore. But a weird thing happens. You put your whole conscious focus just on hitting a certain technique you've never tried, and you've given the boring part of your mind something to do. That part of your mind that sometimes feels compelled to count every pane of glass in a giant window while your waiting for someone outside a supersized grocery store. That part of your mind gets preoccupied with what the assignment demands, and instead of trying to find inspiration or the next idea, some way to make yourself be creative, it just flows out of you. Your secret mind, that other side of your brain that could host talk shows on another planet says, Thank God the Bean Counter has gone to sleep with some weird form of Math! That's what a good writing exercise can do. But we've always got a place for people who want to work freeform.
When the Cult first had a workshop in 2003, it was just The Cult Writers Workshop, or "cult shop." When Chuck started providing craft essays in 2004, we had a big stock of freeform submissions--short stories, essays, poems, everything--all of it driven entirely on the author's own agendas, just like you're thinking of. It became necessary at that point to create Lessons from Chuck, or "chuckshop" as a sort of twin to the original shop. Think of it as cult shop had been a big family movie theater in a small town, and it got split into twin cinemas so that we could show two movies at once. Now on the second screen, assignments from Chuck himself.
I renamed the original workshop Self-Assignment in honor of a great creative writing professor from my university days, a brilliant poet with an MFA from Iowa who would remind us to choose our own assignments, to search in our own ways and to set ourselves new challenges, because we should be reaching a stage in our writing where we would know best what it needed. That is adult and respectful and gracious, and the complete opposite of the abuse everyone suffered in high school--but some adult learners actually need and want specific assignments, some voice to come to them from the outside just like when you're a kid in school. Because just taking up that assignment, that something you didn't think of, whatever it is, it can set your mind free, it can stretch you and teach you something new and help you get out of your own way at the same time.
When you're ready, you can make up your own rules. When Chuck wrote Fight Club, the original short story which later became the book, he started with just the rules. He thought of a weird social club for men and a different way for people to get together and interact, something that would need to have its own set of rules, and then he built a world around those rules. But before he started making rules, he was following them. He was taking up every workshop challenge that Tom Spanbauer could set for him.
Who would have thought that following rules could ever be liberating? Who would have thought making up some weird rules of your own could lead to a breakout novel?
My job here is to never forget the handsoff courtesy of my poetry teacher, both the goodness of it and the way it left us dangling. My job is to never stop learning but never to hoard it, to master everything Chuck teaches without making a fundumentalist religion out of it, to know the beauty of both rules and leniency and transgression, and the tension and balance between these things, and finally, to channel for you the best of every teacher I've ever had. That's why Dennis keeps me around.'=)
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It should also be noted that chuckshop and self-assignment were a little too sealed off from one another in our previoius incarnation. They were two independently functioning workshops in all ways, which meant good organization, but it also meant that writing reviews on one side earned submission credit that could not be applied to any crossover activity. That's too much functional division for our own good, and merely an artifact of building things on an as-needed basis.
In the new shop, credit for your activity is credit for your activity, period. One engine underneath all the driving. Self-assignment versus Lessons from Chuck is just a tick box to show what you're doing, like marking your work a short story instead of a novel excerpt. And that's the way it should be. No matter how you choose to focus yourself, the writing community on this site is one body, brother, and not a war of competing cliques. Little pockets of elitism and insularity arise here and there, but they also fall. So I'm glad to achieve the real level of functional integration that we need. Kirk and Clay have been working like mad on the new things you're going to see.
If I were less sick right now, I would literally jump for joy about the message from Chuck, and I can hardly wait to join in on the workshop.
I haven't checked here in a few weeks, albeit my jaw dropped a little when I saw the new post directly from the man himself.
Does anybody know of any special events coming up soon? Besides this of course.
I guess I could stop being lazy and actually check.
Missed seeing your response till now, Mr. Pup. Thank you, I appreciate the explanation very much. I recently took a fairy tale writing workshop, and she would give us "prompts" for things to write. The prompts had to do with what we were reading. Like "enter a secret world", after we read the 12 Dancing Princesses. But I could never follow the prompts. It made me have to find an idea, and the way it's always worked is having the ideas find me. Maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I should give working another way another go.
Vigorous Puppy i have a question (and i know it will probably be answered in due time.......but) how will the first wave of uploads work? I know this is being done on a points scheme e.g. you have to review to upload, so will there be a 1 submission style rule, where you can upload 1 initially and every subsequent submission you have to review to then upload? just to get the ball rolling.
For my money, "enter a secret world" is too general to be a good writing prompt, and could leave many students going, "yeah, but how?" It's like telling somebody, "Grow eight feet tall."
A better prompt for a fantasy story could be something like: Start your telling in the classic way, with "Once upon a time..." Even if you don't keep that opening, start that way for now. Make sure that your main character appears within the first few paragraphs, and touch upon the setting, as well. Your story will involve a death, a resurrection, and a magical object. You have 40 minutes to write your first draft without pausing.. .Go!
See, that gives you a starting place. If I need to make sure you "enter a secret world," I'll prompt you to have a character arrive somewhere unexpected and by unusual means. You can't enter a secret world, but your character can. So, in addition to a death, a resurrection, and a magical object, your character will leave the world of his birth by unusual means. He could be picked up by a giant bird or discover that a mirror is actually a doorway, or anything else you devise. 45 minutes for your first draft. write without stopping. Go!
See, these sound more restrictive, but they are actually more useful. And no two students who get such a prompt are going to write anything close to exactly the same story.
Prompts, to be good, need to be specific.
Assignments like Chuck gives operate under different logic, though, than a straight-up writing prompt. Read them and experiment. There's a treasure of specific assignments on the end of all the 2004 essays. Some involve watching movies to analyze a particular element. Others involve re-visiting something you've already written on your own, to apply a specific kind of edit.
There will be a window for submitting without reviewing first. The exact duration is not revealed. You will have the choice of submitting one story early, before you've reviewed anything, or taking some time with your first submission to get it just the way you want it, and writing a few reviews for others first. If you miss the open submissions window, you will not find it hard to earn your points for a first submission. That is, as long as you set to work with the right attitude. Just set to work earnestly in helping others and keep revising toward your first submission. For people with the right attitude, getting your points for submissions will not feel like a major hurdle. You won't even need to know the exact point values starting out, just approach in good faith and you'll find our process eminently fair.
That's so cool!
I have just finished some local workshop in Moscow encouraged and ready to writing and here comes this good news.
My problem is just that I'm not a native speaker ((( So I'll narate with a "burnt toungue" )