Taking this class was really enlightening to me as a writer. I was a little nervous when I found out that everyone would have to share their stories with the entire class. When I’d write creatively, I’d always hold that work close since I felt like it was too personal to share. However, this class made me much more comfortable sharing and discussing my own writing. Having that space to talk about the writing process with a room full of writers was comforting. Many of the anxieties and struggles that I was having with writing and workshopping were also there for others. The workshopping format like this is the best way to have a writing class because everyone is talking about one piece at a time and are offering suggestions for improvement, but also talking about what’s working. I also want to note that I learned so much about the genre of literary fiction itself. The format of a short story is interesting because it’s a small chunk of time where something meaningful needs to happen, but not have a beginning, middle and end. Literary fiction is a great genre to work with for short stories because it focuses on people and their reactions to things around them. So, instead of writing a long novel creating a world, you’re focusing in on a person without talking much about the world around them. You reveal the world through their behavior. That was a really interesting concept to learn about.
As for advice, I’d first like to say that you need to keep an open mind. This can mean many things. You need to keep an open mind when coming up with story ideas since inspiration lives in everything around you. You need to keep an open mind while going through revision. Everyone here is in the same boat as you and is only here to help you improve so, don’t be nervous about sharing your work. It will only help you get better. Share your struggles with everyone because there will most likely be someone in that room that shares your pain or even has some advice about pushing through. I’d also suggest that you have a couple different story ideas to work with because you might not like your idea once you get a couple pages in. That’s what happened to me. Finally, use the writing exercises to your advantage. These can be random scenes like I did, but I wish I wrote some of them as scenes for my short story.
