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Craft of Writing

Sheila Bender

Real Response
A method to teach peers and writing group members to help them help you revise

When I entered my first university-level poetry-writing workshop in 1979, I was too naive to be terrified. I was a late twenties, non-matriculating student who had been directing a day care center, training personnel and working with four-year-old children and their parents.

I'd learned to be child-centered and to honor the way children are most like adults in their feelings and least like them in their thinking. While children “don't listen” and make seemingly “inappropriate choices” — mixing sand in the Play-Dough, for instance — they feel hurt and surprised when scolded. I learned to facilitate the behavior I was looking for in children by understanding that their thought processes were different than mine but their feelings were the same. Rather than saying, “You are not listening,” I would explain, “I need you to listen to me now.” I might say, “Mixing sand with Play-Dough might be fun right now, but that sand will mean we can't use it again tomorrow.” I learned to explain my needs and my thinking, and expressing both helped children relate to me and grow.

In the poetry writing workshop, I was about to learn that this way of relating helps people of all ages grow, and that when writing workshops don't honor it, members feel as if they will never write well. When I brought my raw and compressed, often completely laconic first drafts to the university workshop, I heard my classmates say:

“The poet doesn't earn the ending of this poem.”
“I think the author should cut the second stanza and move the last one to the beginning.”
“I like this poem but....”
I felt as torn apart and unloved as the poem. Others in the workshop dropped out, feeling that the members, under the guidance of the professor, were colluding to keep newcomers out of their club. But I was desperate to learn to write the poems that I believed were inside, so I began translating the criticism into sentences that would help me learn:
  • “The poet doesn't earn the ending of this poem” became “When I get to the end of the poem I feel disappointed and confused — I don't know how I got there.”
  • “I think the author should cut the second stanza and move the last one to the beginning” became “As I read, I feel that I am not clued in until the last stanza and I wish for that information earlier.”
  • “I like this poem, but...” became “Here are the feelings that come up for me and distract me as I read.”
These statements made me want to delve into my poems and grow them.

After a couple of semesters, I applied to the university's graduate program in creative writing. A few years later, I had the chance to teach teachers a method for helping their students grow writing through the revision process. As I was presenting, the teachers asked me if I could explain my process in steps. I came up with three steps:
  • Repeating Words & Phrases that Stick
  • Explaining Feelings
  • Noting What You Still Feel Curious to Know More About
The teachers shortened this to Velcro Words, Feelings, and Curiosity, and I have been using this method in workshops ever since. The job of workshop participants is to respond, not tear apart. The root of the word “criticism” means “to tear apart” but the root of the word “author” is the same as in “authority.” The writer is the one with the authority in revision. It is hard to use that authority to paste something back together after criticizers tear it apart; response should help develop a piece of writing. Using what I call the “three-step response method” in workshops, I have seen people succeed in growing their writing, and leave feeling inspired to continue writing and revising.

In addition, I have learned to help writers overcome the negative self-talk that hinders them as they draft:
“You can't write.”
“This is dumb.”
“No one will care about what you have to say.”
“Nothing you write can approach the beauty of the idea you have in your head.”
“You're not as good as anyone whose writing you admire.”
I have helped them replace this chatter with an affirmation: “I will get down what I can and, later, through the process of hearing trusted listeners say back Velcro words, tell me the feelings they have as a consequence of reading my work, and offer me the questions they still have after reading what I wrote, I will carry the drafting process further.” And I’ve reinforced the belief that in a workshop, there is no bad writing, only the opportunity for good writing.

Real Response: A Three-Step Method
Giving response in three separate stages ensures that workshop readers will linger long enough to find a way to articulate their response clearly and will not start telling the writer how to fix their draft. When workshop members have agreed to give response in the three steps and then drift into a different style of response or skip ahead to a step when the group hasn't finished with a previous one, a gentle reminder to stick to the steps usually keeps them on track.

Step One: Velcro Words
After a workshop member reads a draft, listeners repeat the words and phrases that have stuck. They don't tell why the words stuck or even say, "I liked.…" They merely repeat the words back as closely as they can remember them. It feels wonderful to the writer to hear words back. All of us write to be heard and there is no better way to affirm that you've been heard than to hear your own words from someone else's mouth. Not telling why the words stuck keeps the focus on the writing and the writer.

Step Two: Feelings
To warm up for this step, I have workshop members list as many emotions as they can. The more emotions they list, the more versatile and articulate they become in responding to writing: gentle, harsh, lost, discovered, nostalgic, sentimental, fearful, reconciled, panicked, bored, surprised, thankful, in mourning, grief-stricken, at odds, defeated, successful, glib, surrendered, and resistant are but a portion of what we generate. We discuss how feelings elicited by the subject and tone of a piece of writing often include opposites; for example, sadness and joy, displeasure at loss and surprise at opening up to new gain, and innocence and learning.

When readers report the feelings they experience from the writing presented in workshop, I divide this step into two sub-steps. First, I have them report feelings that seem to be in keeping with the subject and subtext of the draft. If someone writes about being stuck with twin two-year-olds in a long line of cars at a U.S.- Canadian customs check by making the metaphor that he felt like Mt. St. Helens right before she erupted, workshop members would report registering feelings of bottled up anger or unbearable frustration.

Next, I have them report whatever discomfort occurs inside them from phrasing and details that veer from the writing's subject and subtext. For instance, if the writer with the two-year-olds in his car included a detail like, "My stomach felt like a pond under a clear blue sky," when he was writing about being in the customs line and feeling like Mt. St. Helens, readers might report that the clear blue sky evoked calmness that surprised them in the context of what they registered as frustration. The writer gets to decide if the metaphor is accurate or not. Maybe in the drafting process what the unconscious was delivering to the writer was that although consciously he thought he should feel frustrated, unconsciously he enjoyed being with the kids and away from adult responsibilities. The writing might take on a new direction, depending on what the writer decides about the readers' emotional confusion. The body of reader responses concerning feelings helps a writer figure out how his or her writing is making contact with its readers. Even if readers have contradictory responses, they help the writer, who often clears up contradictions with very small changes in wording or examples.

Peer responses help the writer identify wheelspinning and meandering from their real subjects. If readers are confused, if they feel ripped off, if they feel batted around in different directions, the words are causing that confusion, that theft, that assault. If such emotional journeys are not in the service of the real subject, the author figures out how to change the words. It's a "self-correcting" exercise like learning to cut with scissors — no one teaches children to cut on the lines — they keep at it until their eye-hand coordination develops to the point where they can do it. Something like this is true for writing; no one really wants to confuse readers because then they confuse themselves. Receiving feeling-level response helps writers cut along the true lines of their writing's emotions.

Step Three: Curiosity
Finally, readers tell the writer what they want to know more about and where in the writing they wanted to know it. Specific curiosities indicate to the writer where more writing is required. When writers listen to where others want to know more, they get additional help in recognizing their writing's real subject and where and how they may have skirted it. They often also realize that what they skipped because they thought it might bore a reader is exactly what the reader wants to know or that they inadvertently skipped something because they know their subject so well.

The three-step response method has helped me ensure workshop members honor that we are alike in our feelings (we want to succeed, we are shy, we are easily wounded, etc.) though we may differ in our thinking. The response method opens up possibilities for the writer, leaving him or her not only empowered to continue developing a piece of writing but eager to do so. Since most drafts are not fully developed in the thinking and choices they contain, helping writers approach these drafts as I approached the children in the day care center encourages writing that is authentic, lively, and very much worth getting right.
 

About The Author
Sheila Bender is a poet, essayist, and publisher of WritingItReal.com, an online writing magazine. A past columnist for Writer's Digest Magazine, her books include Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page, Keeping a Journal You Love, A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery, Writing Personal Poetry: Creating Poems from Life Experience, and Writing in a New Convertible with the Top Down. She teaches at writers conferences and online. For information, visit http://www.sheilabender.com and http://www.writingitreal.com