How Writing Workshops can be Harmful
A planter full of pink tulips on the main table in the Studio.
This week I had an intake call with a new class participant. It was the kind of call I know well.
She sounded nervous, like her voice was hovering over a diving board. Our conversation circled around for a bit while we got to know each other. And then she said it:
“I’m really worried that my writing is shit.”
And we both exhaled. There it was, the central fear.
She told me that she used to love writing, but then, while reading a short story out loud to a class, someone snickered. Right in that moment, the message entered her heart — not good enough. And here she was, two decades later, on a precipice she should never have had to walk.
I hear this all the time.
Luckily (and unluckily) I know that diving board too. I’ve been shut down, shamed, silenced. Just writing that right now I feel the waiver rising up in my throat. I think we’ve all experienced this to different degrees depending on our personal histories and levels of cultural privilege. It’s a pain that connects us, if we let it.
I’ve built everything at Firefly around my understanding of that pain. A central part is how we lead groups in giving feedback.
Feedback is one of the most important and most misunderstood parts of Firefly.
Sharing work is terrifying. And it should be — it’s dangerous. That snicker my new class member heard is one of thousands of shaming, silencing moment that people have confided to me, and billions more that haven’t.
BUT, sharing work can also be thrilling, confidence-boosting and cathartic. It can be one of the best feelings I know. So what’s the difference, and how to we make sure we’re doing it right?
If you haven’t experienced it yet, in Firefly workshops when you read brand new unedited work, we’ll just talk about what we loved. When we finish reading, the facilitator will take a breath, smile, turn to the rest of the group and say — what was your favourite part? What is this writer doing beautifully? Where is the power in this piece for you?
Then we all pile it on.
That description of the temple was stunning.
You have a such a knack for dialogue, it flowed and sounded so real.
You have a way with first lines. It pulled me right in.
You’re so much more poetic than you think.
Naturally, people are skeptical at first.
How can I grow if I don’t know where the shit is? What about the “constructive” stuff? Tell me what the rules are!
I understand those questions as a direct outcropping of vulnerability. When we feel exposed and insecure, of course we want to reach for rules. They give structure to our chaos. We’re taught all our lives that we need to be good at them in order to trust ourselves. We don’t agree.
A teacher who says, “You have got to stop using that metaphor about the river” will validate our fear and give us a way forward. No more river! And it may be the right way forward. But it also may not. What if that metaphor about the river is the key to your whole plot, the place where you need to lean in to unlock the story’s natural ending? And what if trusting yourself with your metaphor choices will actually take you much farther?
You know your work’s invisible trajectory much better than anyone else. What if instead of advice, you had a structure to believe in your own knowing?
If you do one-on-one work with us, we can get to know you, understand where your work is going, and probe deeper. “Tell me more about this river thing. I’m not sure if it’s working yet but it feels important. Let’s explore it.”
But when you’re with a group of people you’re just getting to know, with a piece of writing you just created, there’s no point in questioning the river. Instead, we’ll focus on what’s amazing, you’ll naturally build from there, and the rest will fall away. It happens every time.
But what about the rules, right? Don’t we teach the rules?
Yes. But here, rules are tools. When they’re relevant, we offer them to see if they fit and throw away if they don’t. In some of our classes, we will get into stuff like dialogue, plot theory and story arc, but we never to tell you what to do, just to offer you options.
Let’s remember, rules are set by the people with the most power. Stories belong to everyone.
And whatever anyone tells you, writing isn’t one craft, it’s many.
We don’t use this approach because it’s pleasurable (though it really is), we use it because it’s the most exciting, ethical and effective way to help writers connect to their joy, write more, trust themselves, and improve their skills. We do this because it works.
I wrote a feedback manifesto.
For too long long we’ve talked about wanting all this to be somewhere central for people to read. You can read it here. Or you can just take in these five central principles.
Writing can improve, but there’s no single direction by which all writing improves.
A writing voice is a breathtakingly tender and vulnerable thing, especially when we’re just getting to know it.
When writing is ready for more analytic feedback, the writer will know and can ask for it.
The idea of “rules” for creativity is oppressive and damaging.
The best feedback is the feedback that makes you want to keep writing.
That’s what you will get here — ears that are tuned to your path, ideas that connect you to your genius, a space to step out and be braver than you knew how to be.
It’s about writing and it’s about so much more than writing.
Here’s to brave diving boards, and finding new ways to hear our own power.
In it with you,
