Because I am in my final semester of grad school, Tom Sleigh is
the second and last Sander’s Writer-in-Residence whom I will have the pleasure
of taking an additional workshop with as part of the MFA program. After I
graduate in May, I will enter a whole new realm of writing — the realm of
writing outside the workshop. And Sleigh’s workshop, while still nestled under
the umbrella of the workshop and still safely away from the storm of real world
writing, provided a good starting point for considering what writing can be
outside the workshop setting.
Workshops create their own guidelines for how to achieve that
level of writing that members of the literati would consider “good.” In a way,
this is a necessary part of teaching writing. How can you help students improve
their writing if you can’t point to what is “good” and what is — in the
euphemism of the workshop — “weak,” then give those students strategies for
taking the “weak” and making it “good”? However, in trying to guide students
toward “good” writing, the workshop gives advice that is picked up and parroted
by students until by virtue of repetition it becomes a rule, an impermeable
boundary.
In Nonfiction workshop, one of the most common rules is that
personal essays and memoirs should be written from a place of emotional
distance. In theory, this principle allows writers to analyze their lives with
clarity and logic. And it gives them the time and context to understand the
importance of a life event and clarify that importance for the reader. However,
it also leads to a lot of writing about half-remembered events, and a lot of
writing that avoids the messiest aspects of human emotion. There are times when
writing from that place of immediate emotional turmoil could produce stronger
and more engaging work. But because emotional turmoil doesn’t usually produce
stronger writing, “emotional distance” has become one of those repeated rules
of nonfiction writing, and it is a rule that nearly everyone adheres to.
During Tom Sleigh’s workshop, we were asked to break all of our
rules. Sleigh asked us to look at our writing and consider our process — the
rules we’ve set for ourselves or heard touted in workshop and adopted — and to
do the opposite of what we would normally do. For people who normally write
from a place of logic, try writing from a place of emotion. For people who
normally write minimalist prose, try writing as a maximalist. If there is a
subject you avoid, why? If there is a subject you always return to, find
something else. Sleigh’s workshop was a process of undoing what we have done to
our writing in previous workshops and remembering that with each piece we
write, we must sit down and decide for ourselves what form it will take and
what rules will help or hinder the piece — Is this a piece that will benefit
from emotional turmoil or emotional distance? Only the writer can decide.
Because in writing, there are no rules, only decisions. Every writer has the
privilege of deciding what form will benefit her piece, with or without the
consensus of the workshop.
Shari Lefler is an MFA student, focused on Literary Non-Fiction
at Florida Atlantic University. She was born and raised in Boca Raton,
FL, where she spends her spare time trying to cuddle with her dog, which spends
its spare time trying to escape her grasp.
