The Worth of Workshopping..

I mentioned a little while ago that I went back to school to learn Mandarin, and to take my writing up a notch by enrolling in a Magazine Article Writing Class. The Mandarin course is going so so, but I think I’ll at least be able to talk like a Preschooler.

The Magazine Writing course has been quite a surprise. Led by a talented writer by the name of Brian Payton, the class flows easily like his prose. I’m finding that the course is really pushing me to adjust my writing and the way I look at articles. It’s quite different from the blogging that I do and from the articles that I write for Futurelooks. I’ve always wanted to open up the writing I do, to include a wider audience. I think this course is getting me off to the right start.

One of the activities that we do in the class is called Workshopping. Essentially, we read eachother’s work, and tear it apart after, to make it better. I personally, had never done workshopping till this point. I know this is something that my writing needed because I tend to be a horrible Editor of my own work. Since I am the Editor, who do I pass it to?

This week, we had our first workshopping session, and there was some surprising, but not unexpected behaviours during the session. For one thing, what I noticed is that everyone was afraid of offending eachother. We would all start off with phrases like “I liked it” or end with “It was Great”. I felt the critiquing was a held back. I guess we all wanted to push gently for our first couple sessions.

While critiquing an article for one of the participants, we somehow got away from addressing the group, we started to address the writer. The writer got really upset, started to defend his work, and really was not into any of the comments or suggestions. I think I got the worst of it because when I commented on taking down the intensity and angle of attack of his article, he got really angry. Brian quickly pointed our attentions back to addressing the class, and defused the situation somewhat.

The problem with his article was that he wrote like he spoke, and it was tiring to listen to this level of intensity without a bit of contrast. It was very “David Chalk” like, but even Chalk knew that he had to have peaks and valleys througout his keynotes, though when he ramped up the intensity, you could feel the rage. The story didn’t have a good balance between the contrast that he was trying to portray. It was so intense in the first half, that the last half in the counterpoint or contrast was lost and kinda fizzled in comparison to the first half.

As his article got commented on, he just closed up in the back of the room. If you’re going to put your work out there, you are going to get feedback, good or bad. If you can’t handle getting your work picked on, poked, and prodded, then getting it workshopped is clearly not something you’ll be able to handle. As we went to workshopping the work of others, he really didn’t have much to say anymore. If you want to write better, you’re going to have to take in the experience. Instead, he punched out.

The worth of workshopping is based on the quality of feedback and what you get out of it. If you bottle yourself up in the back of the room and consider every comment a personal attack, then the session becomes worthless. This is a course about publishing your work and writing for others, and writing for others means listening to others. No one is asking you to agree, but you do have to listen as this is the audience that listens to you.

OMG! I’m Going Back to School!

It’s true folks! After over 10 years of being away from school, I’m going back once again. I had a hard time in Taiwan during COMPUTEX. I was a Chinese Guy stuck with the mind of a White Guy! I spoke English with no Chinese accent, and couldn’t understand what the hell you were saying. People took pity on me and thought I was Japanese! Well enough is enough!

I’ve actually enrolled myself for two courses at Langara College . The first course is a progressive Mandarin course. The course has different levels of progression from newbie/beginner (me) to being able to read and write. Of course, I’m starting at the bottom. They did have courses for Cantonese speakers, but because I can’t write or read Chinese, I would have a horrible time in those classes, even if the prof let me in.

The second course is a Magazine Article Writing course where they take you through the industry and look at different writing styles and examples to improve your writing skills. At the end of the course, you will have produced two articles that could be published. They even take you through the steps of submitting the articles to magazines and newspapers. I’ll probably be the most overqualified student there. Afterall, I’m my own publisher and I’ve writtin for print media before like in Brian Jessel Magazine. Nonetheless, I think it’ll be a great opportunity to bring home some tips to improve my writing and to meet a whole pool of writers that might want me to publish their work. Building a business is all about networking!

I’ve encouraged my writers to take the course with me so we can learn together. I’ve even offered to buy their articles off them if they are relevant to the site. I have some very enthusiastic writers, but I just don’t have enough contact time with a lot of them to make them better writers. I think it is a skill that you cannot stop developing because the more you do it, the better at communication you become, and the better at communication you become, the easier it is to get what you want.

Langara also offers a Public Relations course that I’m quite interested in. Unfortunately, it is about $7000 dollars…prepaid. It looks really good, and even though it is expensive, I’m very interested in taking it. I guess we’ll take one step at a time here.