Lucas Loredo, ’12, tells about why he loves writing workshops and why, now, he’s going “cold turkey” and quitting them. 

Kurt Vonnegut gave us eight rules for writing fiction. Rule seven is my favorite: “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

I was supposed to write about my favorite creative writing class at Stanford, so here’s my plug: take English 90, Fiction Writing. It’s offered every quarter and all the professors who teach the class are brilliant writers and editors and mentors. I had the pleasure of developing a close relationship with my English 90 professor that has lasted me until now, my senior year, and there is no question we will remain friends for many years to come. Do yourself a favor—take Fiction Writing, take your first workshop, feel the adrenaline light up your spine when your peers talk about your short story as if it’s a real story, because it is, and you are a real writer and it feels good, like your feelings about writing have finally—finally—been validated.

I was supposed to write about my favorite writing class, but instead I’m going to talk about my relationship with writing workshops. Just as it was essential for me to embrace the workshop early in my writing career, it is equally as imperative—necessary, even, so crucial I feel this desire like a hunger—to forget writing workshops as if they were a bad habit. This is it—I’m quitting, cold turkey.

It’s complicated. Writing workshops are where developing writers learn the basics of writing stories. We learn about writing convincing dialogue, the difference between scene and summary, what makes for good detail, writing effective metaphors and similes. It’s where we learn about narration and perspective, about voice, about storytelling. That knowledge in indispensable and necessary. Yet I have arrived at a point—and I think other writers may sympathize—where workshop feels static. Myself and my peers have all received similar educations, and because of this writing workshops feel like they draw from a hive mind. We all are all drinking from the same milkshake. Some people may have bendy straws, some straight, some twisting, but we are all ingesting the same material.

English 90 awakened me to the magic of writing. It is essential to recapture that magic. A workshop can flatten a writer, when really he or she should be bent and stretched and corrugated. The Levinthal tutorial was perfect for this (and every writer at Stanford must do a Levinthal). The next step is writing for myself. Vonnegut’s point, I think, was that you cannot write to please the masses—it doesn’t work. And you cannot write to please a workshop—that won’t work either.

You should be anything but discouraged. Writing workshops are essential, and eye opening. You and your stories will learn together, and breathe together. My point is, don’t be frightened if you begin to feel boxed in after a couple years, if you feel cramped or claustrophobic. It’s only natural. It means you’ve gotten what you need out of workshop and you are ready to go on this writing journey alone. The hero can’t stay with his fairy godmother forever—otherwise, it wouldn’t be an adventure.

Do you agree with Lucas? Tell us about your love, hate, or complicated relationship with writing workshops in the comments section!

For more information about the Creative Writing program and the workshops it offers, click here.