I gave a three hour writing workshop recently for the City of Rockingham, called “Need a Little Inspiration?” I had about 40 participants, both published and unpublished, people who wanted to publish and people who just wanted to write for fun or to record their family histories. I tried hard to balance between encouraging them and giving them a bit of reality about the publishing industry and how much work goes into a writing career, so that they could make realistic goals about their writing and, hopefully, have a better chance of achieving their goals. Most of the feedback was good to enthusiastic, and I feel quite pleased with how it went.
I got an email from one of the participants today saying she’s been thinking a lot about the workshop, and she notices things more: when she meets people she has the urge to sketch them and tell their stories. Ordinary events for her are now story fodder, which was my hope and the goal of the writing exercises I’d made up for the workshop participants. She is thinking like a writer now, and enjoying it.
She said that she could accept what I’d said, that most of the people attending the workshop probably would not have careers as writers (most, I said, probably wouldn’t want to if they knew what it was really like), but she rather thought I could have been a bit more encouraging about that. Perhaps I didn’t really need to tell these people that most of them probably wouldn’t succeed beyond getting a few things published locally or in small venues. In my defense, I agonized about how to balance between being encouraging and being realistic. I told these writers that I agonized about what to tell them, and I told them I hoped that they would beat the odds.
I believe that there is a vast gray space between the urge to write and the reality of publication. There are dragons in that space, and one of those dragons is the dream of being a published writer. The dream alone might make a writer happy, but it’s made of mist. I wanted to help those who want to publish professionally to have a sense of how to do it, and to help those who just write to be happy to actually be happy about their writing. What I fear is that people will spend their whole lives haunted by dragons: feeling guilty about not writing, feeling unsure about how to get published, feeling discouraged from rejection letters, being taken advantage of by self publication deals that lead writers to believe they can make a career from self publishing as an unknown author (sure a few will, but that is the exception). People can suffocate from a lack of information.
Perhaps the real issue I am trying to reconcile myself with is the responsibility inherent in being an authority figure: even just saying that makes me feel like my head is too big. Writing requires hope and faith in yourself, but it also requires hard work and knowledge. I will be encouraging and flattering when I see talent and potential, but if I am not tempering that encouragement with the reality I’ve picked up from my ten years in the industry, I am not sure how much I am helping people. Some of the people who came to my workshop might be happier walking away from the word processor and picking up the tuba. But from the email I got, I know that at least one person is thinking more like a writer, and that I find encouraging.