Has anyone else ever attended events like these, and has it help you? I can just imagine myself sitting at a horribly undersized college desk, an intensely chewed on pen in my hand, and not being able to write anything at all. I think my super-power known as creativity fades away when I'm forced to write on command, like superman meeting kryptonite.

Especially if I have to produce something quickly for review and criticism by others present.

quote:

---

Has anyone with this problem found a way to get over it?

---

For creative fiction, I've found one of two things happen: I panic, jot something down, and later am shocked at how brilliant it is. Or, I panic, jot something down, and cringe in horror at the crap I just wrote. I seem to have no control over the two outcomes.

But perhaps a better question is, if this is difficult for you will you really gain something from the experience? It might be worth trying, just to see if there is something for you in it, but if you feel you aren't producing your best at such workshops then what's the point? You might get critiques, but of works not necessarily reflective of your true abilities.

On the other hand, as a famous author, you might have to write books on deadline. So maybe it's worth stretching yourself.

quote:

---

You mean the inability to produce content on demand? [..]
For creative fiction, I've found one of two things happen: I panic, jot something down, and later am shocked at how brilliant it is. Or, I panic, jot something down, and cringe in horror at the crap I just wrote.

---

Me too. But...

I learned a short while ago of a concept called 'creative constraint', or something like. (If anyone knows the right term, please do correct me.) Apparently, artists can be more creative when we're given contraints than when we have complete freedom.

Here's what I learned of that from a couple of flash fiction contests at Hatrack. First, the scary prospect of having to produce generated stories I never would have thought of: the constraints of a deadline, and a given trigger, actualy made me produce, contrary to my expectation.

Second, although the first draft was often complete garbage, the plot was almost always sound, and a couple of drafts later I had a decent working draft.

So--Zero, maybe, just maybe, the constraint might induce a creativity that will surprise you.

And Annepin, maybe your ideas are always brilliant, and maybe you have to shoot for that second or third draft for the brilliant execution to match.

Those short workshops, I don't know. It usually takes me a day or three to get from idea to draft, because I think it all through in painful detail before starting to write. Yet if there's such a workshop in my area, maybe I should try it; maybe with another constraint I might surprise myself yet again.

It isn't like you go in and they scream "Write about a romantic encounter on Mars!" Usually there's some lecture, some guidance, some exercises.

I do some occasionally that I call "Lucky 13" workshops (bet you can't guess where that comes from).

I have people bring stuff that they've already written and I try to teach them how to give feedback on it. Since we stick to the first 13 lines, we can do as many as five in one hour.

Other "workshops" are just places where you sit and listen to someone talk about writing and how they do it. (This can be useful because it can give you new ideas on approaches, on marketing, and so on.)

I know one writer who has people just "free write" for ten minutes on something like "what I have in my pockets (or purse)" or "what I was doing at this time yesterday" and those can be interesting and fun to discuss.

Orson Scott Card does his "1000 Ideas in an Hour" at workshops and conventions sometimes, and people have found them quite helpful because they don't just deal with coming up with ideas, but what to do to ideas to turn them into stories.

These are all basically one-hour "workshop" sessions, though, and some workshops have several different things of this type to choose from.

Dave Wolverton has offered all-day novel workshops where he goes over what he's learned that has helped him make a living as a writer.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith used to do a one-day workshop on the business of writing that was very helpful, too.

So, as I say, there are workshops and there are workshops, and you have to find out what is actually supposed to happen at a workshop you hear about before you can decide whether it will be of use to you or not.

It would probably go something like this.

John sat in the room. (thinking to my self: what room?) The living room. (why is he there?) He was very tired. (why was he tired?) He had been doing jumping jacks all day. ... And at this point I scribble it out, throw it away, scratch my head, and start again.

On the other hand, one of the keys to producing great stuff is to let yourself do a whole bunch of stuff that isn't great--this applies to music composition and art as well as writing. I find that the times when I get the most paralyzed is when I'm too set on producing brilliance.

But I can just imagine, suppose I was accepted and I went, I could just see myself staring at a blank piece of paper, unable to write anything of quality, and feeling like an absolute fool.

Writer's block... I've heard it described (and I think accurately so) as a failure to do enough developing beforehand. The writer is then forced to invent more as he goes, which is tiring, and he eventually runs out of gas. It seems like writing a piece on command is automatically writer's block, unless I went already armed with ideas. But then, would that spoil the exercise?

I enrolled in a Creative Writing class through an Adult Education program, you know, those inexpensive after-hours classes held at the local college. I was surprised that most of the students were already writers, ordinary hackers like me. While writing and publishing techniques were often discussed, it was really a writer’s workshop where we critiqued submitted stories and made helpful suggestions.