Writing to Prompts Workshops

This workshop is designed after the method developed by Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists, to help us find our truest voices and to silence our inner critics.

We meet together weekly at Carol’s house for three hours in a group of 8 writers, plus Carol. Pat believes that everyone can write, and has a voice. I believe this too.

In the first half of the evening, we write in response to a prompt suggested by me–which you are completely free to ignore, if you’d rather write about something else.

Pat’s guidelines:

• You don’t have to read your work aloud.

• We confine ourselves to positive feedback ONLY for this freshly minted piece of first-draft writing–ONLY what we love, what we remember. Critiques will be available for later drafts.

• We treat everything as fiction–unless specifically asked by the writer not to. This means that in our discussion, we refer to the “narrator/speaker,” not to “the author,” as the voice of the piece. So, for example, if there is a mother in the piece, we don’t talk about that character not as “your” mother, but rather as “the narrator’s” mother.

• The workshop leader writes and reads along with the participants.

• We maintain confidentiality.

We write for about 25 minutes and then we read the new work aloud. After a break, we write and read again.

After a break, we write and read again. In discussion, everyone’s work is treated as fiction–unless the writer specifically asks us not to. To maintain a comfortable level of objectivity we treat everyone’s work as if it were fiction (unless the writer specifically asks us not to). If you’ve ever been afraid of writing and sharing personal material in a group, this is the most comfortable approach imaginable.