This post details some of the reasons I don’t like workshops.
College was a weird experience for me. In my mind, I was going to learn to be a writer. That didn’t happen. I learned a lot at college, but I don’t think my writing improved much from the classes. I spent a lot of time writing on my own and that was when I started to improve.
I think that workshops were partially the reason. I learned how to structure an argument and how to do the basics, but I didn’t learn how to write a story. I had to do that on my own. We used the workshop system and frankly the other people in it were just as inexperienced as I was. I think we held each other back like a bunch of teenagers trying to teach each other about sex education.
I would kill for an experience like this. Well not literally, but you know what I mean. Instead, I’m pushing myself along and submitting my fiction where I can and learning by experience.
The Universes of Jason Andrew 