What is Writeaways?
Sometime writers just need to get away. Americans have been going abroad for a century or more to help themselves become the writers they want to be. There is something about being in a foreign or unfamiliar place that allows the creative mind to block out the extraneous in order to get access to the essential.
Mimi Herman and I created Writeaways, writing getaways, to help you do that. But there's more to it than going to a beautiful place, sitting down with a computer and notepad, and hoping your Muse decided to come along for the ride.
A lot of the work of a being writer involves simply planting your rear in a chair and putting words on paper or in a computer. Repeat regularly. But we’ve learned, through a decade of working on our own projects with each other as our best allies, that there’s more to being a writer than that. Learning to ask for help is one of the most important things a writer can do.
We often have a nightmare fantasy version of being a writer that demands a monklike solitude: the writer writes in complete isolation and emerges ten years later with a perfect manuscript, ready to publish. It’s a little like somebody sending you to your room and telling you, “Go in there and write the Great American Novel and don’t come out until it’s finished.” This is ridiculous. It’s not only okay to ask for help as writer; it’s essential.
For any writer who has been in a writer’s workshop, where fellow writers critique your work with the idea that “we know how to fix it,” this is not that workshop. Our job in this group is not to be critics, but to be resources for one another. In football, there are eleven people on the offensive side, but only one person has the ball. The rest of us are blockers. In our workshop, the job is to write, but also to clear the field in front of each other.
We can play “What If?” if you want. We can play “Yes, but…” if you want. We can discuss elements of craft. And we will. But there’s one thing we’re all trying to do, to say what you’re trying to say to the people you want to say it to in the best way possible. Some things are not going to work for you; some things are going to hit the bulls-eye. What we’re trying to do is to give you options. The choice of what options to use is always yours. You can ask anything. You can say or offer anything, but it has to be helpful and it has to keep in mind the writer’s own goals. If, in the course of conversation, the writer’s goals change, that’s the direction we’ll go in, but the writer is in charge. Whatever we offer it is strictly use or toss.
What we’re doing here is making a deal between the writer and the writing group-mates. The deal is this: your writing group-mates promise to understand your text as thoroughly as they can and to be as constructive and useful in their suggestions as possible. The writer’s part of the deal is that you will be as open as possible to improvement or change that might be useful in your writing. Sometimes we can have blind spots, and our readers and writing group-mates can help be the mirrors that let us see our own blind spots. That’s the hard part, to admit that we have blind spots, and to be open to change. But if we are all on the same side, with the goal of supporting you in helping your writing be what it wants to be when it grows up, then it’s worthwhile to listen to the ideas of our writing colleagues, even if they make us feel a little uncomfortable at the time.
You as the writer are in charge, and it works for any level of writer—even if you’ve never written before, but wanted to.
The whole group will help each person one at a time. Each writer will share her or his goals and then lead a discussion to help work through any obstacles that might be in the way of getting started. This is an opportunity for the person on deck to ask classmates for advice and for the classmates to help the writer clarify her or his goals by asking questions.
We all need different amounts—and different kinds—of input, so teach us what kind of help you need. What questions do you want us to help you answer? What types of questions would you like us to ask you? We will have a time for this process as part of each day’s classes, so feel free to ask for different kinds of help on different days, and more or less of it. We’ll help you develop and revise your goals as needed, keeping in mind not only the discussion of your own work, but also how the discussion of other people’s goals can inspired you to think differently about your own.
Mimi Herman and I created Writeaways, writing getaways, to help you do that. But there's more to it than going to a beautiful place, sitting down with a computer and notepad, and hoping your Muse decided to come along for the ride.
A lot of the work of a being writer involves simply planting your rear in a chair and putting words on paper or in a computer. Repeat regularly. But we’ve learned, through a decade of working on our own projects with each other as our best allies, that there’s more to being a writer than that. Learning to ask for help is one of the most important things a writer can do.
We often have a nightmare fantasy version of being a writer that demands a monklike solitude: the writer writes in complete isolation and emerges ten years later with a perfect manuscript, ready to publish. It’s a little like somebody sending you to your room and telling you, “Go in there and write the Great American Novel and don’t come out until it’s finished.” This is ridiculous. It’s not only okay to ask for help as writer; it’s essential.
For any writer who has been in a writer’s workshop, where fellow writers critique your work with the idea that “we know how to fix it,” this is not that workshop. Our job in this group is not to be critics, but to be resources for one another. In football, there are eleven people on the offensive side, but only one person has the ball. The rest of us are blockers. In our workshop, the job is to write, but also to clear the field in front of each other.
We can play “What If?” if you want. We can play “Yes, but…” if you want. We can discuss elements of craft. And we will. But there’s one thing we’re all trying to do, to say what you’re trying to say to the people you want to say it to in the best way possible. Some things are not going to work for you; some things are going to hit the bulls-eye. What we’re trying to do is to give you options. The choice of what options to use is always yours. You can ask anything. You can say or offer anything, but it has to be helpful and it has to keep in mind the writer’s own goals. If, in the course of conversation, the writer’s goals change, that’s the direction we’ll go in, but the writer is in charge. Whatever we offer it is strictly use or toss.
What we’re doing here is making a deal between the writer and the writing group-mates. The deal is this: your writing group-mates promise to understand your text as thoroughly as they can and to be as constructive and useful in their suggestions as possible. The writer’s part of the deal is that you will be as open as possible to improvement or change that might be useful in your writing. Sometimes we can have blind spots, and our readers and writing group-mates can help be the mirrors that let us see our own blind spots. That’s the hard part, to admit that we have blind spots, and to be open to change. But if we are all on the same side, with the goal of supporting you in helping your writing be what it wants to be when it grows up, then it’s worthwhile to listen to the ideas of our writing colleagues, even if they make us feel a little uncomfortable at the time.
You as the writer are in charge, and it works for any level of writer—even if you’ve never written before, but wanted to.
The whole group will help each person one at a time. Each writer will share her or his goals and then lead a discussion to help work through any obstacles that might be in the way of getting started. This is an opportunity for the person on deck to ask classmates for advice and for the classmates to help the writer clarify her or his goals by asking questions.
We all need different amounts—and different kinds—of input, so teach us what kind of help you need. What questions do you want us to help you answer? What types of questions would you like us to ask you? We will have a time for this process as part of each day’s classes, so feel free to ask for different kinds of help on different days, and more or less of it. We’ll help you develop and revise your goals as needed, keeping in mind not only the discussion of your own work, but also how the discussion of other people’s goals can inspired you to think differently about your own.
We have created Writeaway programs in France, Italy, and the Outer Banks in North Carolina, with more on the way.
