September was a special month for me as a writing coach, because I had a team of players to lead for a few weeks. The Workshop’s Creation Nights returned in a special, five-Tuesdays-only engagement. These were the original workshops where I started my literature business in 2006 years ago. A handful of writers with notebooks, sitting at a table together with snacks, followed prompts that encouraged play with few rules.
We used postcards and Story Cube dice and peculiar nouns, verbs, and adjectives drawn at random. The concept for my workshop came from the Amherst Writers & Artists training I took in late 2005. In the wake of failing to get a spot in the Texas State MFA program, I still wanted to lead writers. Face it, much of what an writing MFA gives you is a way to examine writing and teach it.
Well, everyone can write, says the AWA, so let’s get together and write for short sprints, then read it aloud and hear what people loved. It’s a powerful elixir, knowing that three or four people will find something positive to say about just-forged writing. For until we know what’s working in our writing, we have no business hunting down what’s not working.
In coaching, this has been called the Buckingham method, and you can practice it on yourself whenever you’re stuck — either looking for a way to begin, or looking for the next step forward. What you’re seeking, really, is attention, so you know how your work resonates, matters, and can make a difference.
Marcus Buckingham practiced the same things that Pat Schneider taught us at AWA. The difference he notes is that coaching tells you how to get better, while critique just tells you where you stand. And you get better at writing when learn where it’s working, alive, and memorable.
That attention should be focused on how to help the writer get better – but that’s a far cry from feedback. What you desire is coaching.
Feeling accepted to write more
In this find-the-best-first playtime, you feel accepted and encouraged to write more. It’s a blinding contrast to critique, where those you share with are standing on one side of a fence. The difference between critique and coaching “lies on what side of the fence you, the leader, are on,” Buckingham says. “If you’re giving them critique, it’s like standing on the opposite side of the fence, throwing a grenade over it, and covering your ears and running away after the damage is done. Hey, you’ve given them their feedback, now it’s their job to perform better, right? Wrong.”
It only took about five months before I drove my Amherst training onto the course of book coaching. We brought manuscript pages to monthly groups and cheered for each other with praise, as well as questions about where we were confused or fell away from new chapters. Schneider, who started her work in the late 1980s to serve impoverished communities and imprisoned authors, told her coaches that listening was the most important part of coaching — and as it turns out, for editing too.
“What makes you a brilliant editor is not knowing the names of parts of speech,” Schneider said. “Yes, that helps. But what makes you a brilliant editor is that sort of careful reading where you are listening, not only to the manuscript, but to your own response. Your job is not to teach grammar, but to reflect back to the writer where you loved and moved freely with the work, and where you had difficulty.”
On workshop nights, I’ll get to play at things like starter sentences drawn at random such as “He’s afraid of his grief — that’s why he acts the way he does.” Or, “I hope the next man you love deserves you more than I did.”
We may also write lines of dialogue on index cards and pass them to the left, so each card has a line written by another writer. You write another line on the reverse and pass it again. You’re left with two lines that are unrelated to each other and you find a way to work them both into a story section. You get 15-20 minutes to do this, and everybody is at the table, scribbling away or tapping on a laptop. It’s a powerful thing to get to create together, knowing that praise is waiting, alongside with your gentle, careful reading to share what you just wrote. Whether you ever publish a book and get a reading night at a bookstore, this act of sharing will always be there for you.
Covid struck down the last of that practice for me. It’s been a minute, and we have vaccines, so after a few alums of the Nights asked me about a return, I relented. Surely, we could make the lighting strike again. The flashes have been at the table. Ninety minutes, and then let’s go home with the nougats of good work inside our notebooks or laptops.
It amounts to 200-300 words of work, sometimes more, per prompt. We underline the passages that that are praised. Now we know what’s working, alive, memorable — and we believe in ourselves more. This group effect is the magic of a Creation Night, but you can practice these assignments on your own, too. Story Cubes and postcards, a Foodie Flashcard deck, a set of dice to help you choose at random: they’re all out there for you to collect and gather in a creative toolbox. Write down the names of five places you’ll never have access to again. Now pick one and write about its smells. For something more focused on classic story structure, the Writer Emergency Pack card deck from John August is always certain to move a story forward.
I mind the time at the table. At the moment that I ring a bell to start, the writers know they have a limited amount of time to create something. “Just write whatever comes” is my last instruction. You can tell that one to yourself, no matter how many people are at your table. Even if it’s just you at your desk, tape up that instruction where you can see it. You’re about to make something that alive, working, memorable.
