Thursday, October 6, 2005

Thirteen participants signed up for the first War Veterans’ Writing Workshop. The workshop began with five participants, quickly slimmed to three dedicated writers, and ended today with two writers reading from their works in progress.  We would have had three readings, but one of the writers was too shy to read. Listening to these writers read was just one among many rewards from the workshop. Workshop participant numbers surprised me at first because I expected more interest in a free service.  As it turns out, I was grateful for having only three writers during most of the cycle because I was able to spend more time preparing thoughtful responses to their weekly revisions.  Twenty participants would have been too many; so would have twelve.  Six is the most comfortable number I can handle while also teaching at the university, but I will try to work with nine next cycle. Working in groups of three is also important because of the short time elapse between revising and workshopping. Keeping the workshop pods at three holds the peer response workload at a manageable level. Another problem with attendance was marketing. Next cycle, we will do a better job with workshop description on fliers. MCCS (Marine Corps Community Services, the workshop sponsor) left getting the word out about the workshop to squadron senior enlisted personnel. I placed a notice in the local paper too late. We will market the next workshop differently. Fliers will be redone, base newspapers will be publishing an article on the workshop focused on participant experience, and I will post a notice in the local paper and in the base newspapers one month prior to the next cycle-start date.

I believed from the beginning that military personnel would learn quickly and be able to understand graduate-level material if it was presented the right way because military personnel are trained to be systemic thinkers. I was still amazed how quickly the writers picked up on craft techniques and improved their writing skills.  Part of this was due to the workshop process. We started with a three-page personnel essay which was revised each week based on what was learned from craft talk and workshop response. Each revision was critiqued by peers and by me. We annotated manuscripts and wrote short summations of the piece. We actually met for five weeks rather than six. The three craft talks were Writing as Meaning-making (elements of story, timelines & outlines), Writing Descriptively, and Building Tension in Writing. During the fourth week, visiting writer Richard Peabody led the discussion. Next workshop cycle I will try again to bring a professional writer to speak to the group. During the fifth week, we held participant readings. I decided to cut a week from the course because I sensed that four weeks was long enough for new writers to work on revising the same piece. It was not that they were getting bored, instead I picked up on the accelerated course’s closely occurring peaks and valleys and sensed that what most writers encounter emotionally as their work is critiqued over a longer period occurred at an intense pace for this group. I did not want them to end up hating their work or being unable to see their progress at the cycle’s end.

Using Jarhead, The Things They Carried, and A Farewell to Arms for readings was a failure.  None of the participants appreciated Jarhead, the book they chose to read. We never quite made it to the other two books.  Instead, I occasionally read from other two other books that emphasized character development and description, The Lovers (Marguerite Duras) and The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger). The writers loved analyzing passages from these two books.  We began calling a character’s description “dog tags” since information about a character could be planted and returned to for easy, quick ID later on. We had fun relating milspeak to craft. The writers would have benefited from reading at least one craft book, and I plan to require the next cycle’s participants read Your Life as Story, Discovering the “New Autobiography” and Writing Memoir as Literature.

The combat vet in the group did not want to write about his war experience. Neither the former recruiter nor the wife of a marine wanted to write about their wartime experience.  In fact, having not served in combat, they did not feel they had a war story to tell.  We engaged in a discussion one day about those who go to war and those who stay behind, about the value of a desk job and the scorn such a job earns. The former recruiter and the combat vet actually got red in the face discussing this polarity. I joined in the discussion by remembering being on active duty during Desert Storm, not being called to serve “over there,” and the talk among those of us who stayed behind, “guarding the rear.”  We were ashamed, and felt guilty for staying behind.  No amount of reason could eliminate that guilt, and the guilt just bowed us up.  This sense of “being less than,” of not having a war story to tell, is what I sensed in non-combat workshop participants. I learned there is no sense in any longer in labeling one war or another “my war or “your war.” Living in a world shrunk by ease of communication and travel makes any war “our war.” Our country is at war; our loved ones, neighbors, friends and friends of friends are over there. We are, each of us, affected by this war. One of the most valuable things I learned from the workshop is that every one of us has a war story to tell. So, I was glad participants are chosen from among all of MCCS’s customer base, veterans, spouses, and DOD civilian employees.

Having a mix of participants also keeps the spotlight off writing as a therapeutic tool. I made the decision to avoid mention of this aspect of writing, to go at it sideways, to let the therapeutic value of writing gain its natural place the natural way—through writing personal narrative. Anything pinpointing mental health issues still has an associated medieval stigma in active duty military minds. But, as I suspected would happen on its own, unresolved issues from the writers’ pasts began to emerge on the page, unresolved things from my own past began to emerge, and we managed to grow from the surprises because of the workshop structure. The combat veteran in our group is just getting his Iraq experience into his piece. He was surprised when, in his recent revision, convoys in Iraq appeared at a traffic stop in Beaufort, and his combat boots became a “character.” The former recruiter was equally surprised when his father appeared in his narrative and the bars he was required to troll for enlistment applicants became a metaphor for relationship dynamics. The spouse was surprised to discover she felt more fear when her husband went to boot camp than she did when he was deployed to Iraq. All three agreed that writing personal narrative led them to dig beneath the layers of experience to discover a new understanding of their pasts. Leading the workshop gave me new understanding of my own past. I’ve been retired from active duty in the Marine Corps for eight years.  I seldom visited local bases before the workshop began. I have no old friends from the Corps days.  I do not participate in retired Marine activities or groups.  This was my first journey back into that world, so I can understand how going back can take time. It was a twice-a-week journey back to base, sunny some days, dark on others, and a struggle at times to return, but reaching even one person makes it worthwhile, and I think that was achieved.

The workshop created a load of work for the writers and me. I occasionally found myself resenting my workload when I had twenty student papers to grade in addition to three essays to critique.  But most of the time I was in awe of the opportunity I had to teach formal essay writing and creative essay writing in parallel courses.  I learned invaluable skills for writing and teaching, another reward of this experience. The next workshop will begin mid-January followed by one in mid-March.  January’s workshop will be held at Parris Island Recruit Depot with March’s at the Beaufort Naval Hospital.  

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