The Eight People You Meet at Writers' Workshops
By Lesley Hershman


At some point in your writing career, you will probably attend a writers' workshop. That's a great decision, because writing conferences can be an exhilarating experience. You can discuss the art of writing without being interrupted by everyday concerns like taking out the garbage or walking the dog. In a practical sense, you'll gain tons of writing information, and will come home with at least a dozen new places to submit your work. You'll be surrounded by fellow creative types who probably have many of the same writerly idiosyncrasies you do. (I still fondly remember a woman I met at a Vermont workshop, who, just like me, was totally incapable of writing a single word if she was wearing shoes.) And at any conference, chances are good that you'll also meet several other participants who fall into the following categories:

1. The Workshop Leader Wannabe.  This member is a frustrated writing teacher.  He constantly adds his opinions to whatever the conference leader says and frequently jumps in to answer other members' questions. After the leader speaks, he'll chime in with "May I add something?" at least ten times. Be prepared to have the workshop run an extra half hour due to his extra commentary.
 

2. The Confider. The workshop is like one long therapy session for her and she's going to share a lot of personal details at the first opportunity. As soon as the leader introduces a memory exercise, she's off and running: "I wrote this because my ex-husband's first cousin's daughter once told me she hated my tuna fish salad. I remember how betrayed I felt by my husband, because he didn't defend my decision to put onions in the tuna fish salad. I knew then that our marriage was a sham and soon I was proved right when he left me for his secretary. This piece talks about my emotions back then and how I feel now and how I hope to feel in the future."
 

3. The One Who Never Reads Her Own Work Aloud But Has Plenty To Say About Yours When You Do. Enough said.
 

4. The Veteran. Count how many sentences this person begins with "Oh, I learned a different way to do that at (fill in the name of another workshop)."  During the break, you'll be hearing this participant compare and contrast this writers' conference to every other one he has attended in the past ten years.
 

5. The Published One. This is dicey, because of course we all want to publish a book-- why else would we be at a writers' conference? But we vow to be gracious in our future published glory.  We will not to mention the book in almost every paragraph we utter to our fellow participants, much like the woman I sat next to at one conference three years ago.  I counted how many times she brought up her book that weekend, and came up with a final tally of 27.
 

6. The Self-Deprecator. At first you feel sorry for this shy creature, who begins each reading of her work with a nervous chuckle and a "This is really bad, but here goes…" By the fourth time this happens, it takes all the willpower you can muster not to scream out "just read the damn thing already!"
 

7. The Borrower. Shows up totally unprepared and needs to borrow a pen or paper. Didn't this person realize she signed up for a writing workshop?
 

8. The "Just Give Me That Agent's Name and Pulitzer Prize, Here I Come!" Member. It's usually the first workshop for this new writer.  She thinks that getting published is as easy as just asking everyone else present if they "can give me the phone number of an agent who would want to read my soon-to-be-completed novel. It's a love story between a slave woman and space alien set during the Civil War. It's gonna be huge!"
 

Okay, you've been alerted to the sorts of writers you're going to find yourself surrounded by at a conference.  (You may even find yourself with a mental checklist, crossing off each type as you locate them, much like an avid birdwatcher out in the forest. Leave your binoculars at home though.) Sure, these eight can be a little annoying, but you've got to turn it all into a positive. They make the workshop interesting and you can view them as rich character sketches.  Then you can become the ninth type of person you meet at workshops:  The One Who Takes Everything Everyone Else Says and Does and Puts It Into Her Book.


Lesley Hershman is a freelance writer in the Chicago area.

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