“I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'” FatherFictionWeekMinutesStudentsOfficeFellowsLawyerCoffeeShopsLunchDaddyCablesWorkshopsCourtshipIowaCoffee Shop Author:Bharati Mukherjee
“I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.” WritingYearsLongFictionClassCreativeCoupleUniversitySeniorCreative WritingWorkshopsCarolsJoycePrincetonSenior YearPrinceton University Author:Mohsin Hamid
“I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.” ThinkingWritingTryingPersonsSelfPhilosophyBigsFormLiteratureFictionCreativeDoubtSeeingStudentsTheoryObsessionConfusionCuriousCreative WritingTabooWorkshopsInvestigatingWriting WorkshopEncourage Students Author:Kate Zambreno
“Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know."” KnowsShouldWritingStoriesFictionGraceOppositesShould IOutlinesWorkshops Author:Andre Dubus
“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.” WayNeedsWritingReasonLanguagePayAttentionFictionCreativeGreaterTaughtPoetProgramUniversityCreative WritingWorkshopsFiction WritingFiction WritersHouston Author:Edward Hirsch
“Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our own abandoned story drafts. After writing twenty pages about a harmonious family picnic, say, or a well-received rock concert, we discover that a story without a complication flounders, no matter how lovely the prose. A story needs a point of departure, a place from which the character can discover something, transform himself, realize a truth, reject a truth, right a wrong, make a mistake, come to terms.” NeedsWritingWellsMatterCharacterStoriesCoursesReadingTermRealizingMistakeFictionRocksPagesTwentiesFundamentalsVery GoodLovelyProseRejectsConcertsAbandonedHarmoniousGood StoryDepartureWorkshopsFiction WritingComplicationPicnicsRock Concerts Author:Monica Wood
“When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.” PeopleWritingKindDifferentFictionWorryFieldsPoetCrossesPerformancesGenreFilmmakerOccupationCommentMixingWorkshopsFiction WritersAnthropologistsWriting WorkshopMixing It Up Author:Sandra Cisneros