February 9, 2006

The second cycle of the Veterans’ Writing Workshop began Tuesday, January 24, 2006. Eight people signed up. Three writers submitted their essays to me on Sunday, January 22. These three writers are now revising their initial submissions for the third time.

I made changes to this second workshop cycle based on lessons learned from the first cycle. The month before sessions began, I asked all participants to read Tristine Rainer’s Your Life as Story: Discovering the “New Autobiography” and Writing Memoir as Literature. Having gained so much from studying this book, I felt the participants would benefit from reading it, too. I also believed the information and exercises in the book would provide the workshop with a mutual foundation for beginning our dialog on writing. The workshop also received a gift of ten books, The Elements of Autobiography and Life Narratives by Catherine L. Hobbs, from Pearson-Longman publishers. I was sent a sample copy of the text last summer while I was in the process of choosing books for the college course I taught last fall. It is an excellent text, small though packed with information I thought the workshop could use. I decided to “check out” a book to each participant the first time the workshop met. I asked them to sign their names inside the front cover. I thought this would be a wonderful record of workshop attendance. I dropped Jarhead, A Farewell to Arms and The Things They Carried from the reading list. Instead of asking the workshop to read one of these books, I now choose books to read aloud from during our sessions based on the participants’ writing subjects, narrative styles, and resolving the issues they encounter. During this session, I have read from The Things They Carried, Catcher in the Rye and The Lovers. Tim O’Brien created outstanding descriptions in his book using what I like to call character tags (“dog tags”). Salinger’s book is, of course, expert on creating voice, and Duras’s book is composed of simply beautiful, rhythmic, hypnotic prose. I also either lent or suggested a book to each participant that I thought would help them with their writing since one of my recurring themes is: if you want to write, and write well, you should read what you like and study how it is written.

The second cycle of the workshop will meet for five weeks. I received essays from participants on the Sunday before our first session and distributed them (along with a flurry of handouts on structure and critiquing) on Monday morning of the first week. During the first week, we met on Tuesday for one hour and discussed elements of nonfiction narrative, story structure, and timelines. On Thursday, we held our first one-hour critique. This is always an anxious moment for the workshop because the participants, at least up to this point, have never participated in a workshop. During each Thursday workshop, we try to focus our comments on the subject of Tuesday’s craft talk. After Thursday’s workshop, participants work on revising their narratives until they send the revision to me on Monday morning. I distribute the revisions by email on Monday to be sure each participant receives the pieces they should critique and so that I receive all of them for critique. We have found that the time between Monday and Thursday is enough for reading and for writing our questions about the work and our suggestions for improvement.

During the second week, the craft talk focused on writing descriptively. The talk was chiefly focused on information taken from Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan. I came to love this book while I was a student of Rebecca’s. I refer to this when descriptive writing gives me trouble, which is often. The participants in second cycle – an active duty marine writing about her experience in Iraq during the first days of the war, an active duty marine writing about a most particular childhood experience, and a Department of Defense employee writing about her mother’s death from cancer – are bright and energetic. They learn fast. I am amazed by the improvements of each weekly revision and the speed with which they assimilate craft. I look forward to meeting and talking with them during each session at the Parris Island Recruit Depot. A sense of déjà vu recurs each time I’m aboard Parris Island. I spent four years – two tours – as a Parris Island drill instructor. The building the workshop meets in sits behind 4^th Battalion, the woman recruit training battalion where I spent those four years. Just as I experienced during my career, things have continued to change. New buildings sprout and nearly every recruit running or marching aboard the depot has begun to look like they are twelve years old. I suppose that is why seeing our warriors come back from war harder and older is so deeply affecting.

During the third week, this week, we discussed building tension in writing. My theory on this is that plot is everything. Most of what I teach during this session comes from Tristine’s book. We focus on learning the difference between theme, plot, and story. We also learn to distinguish between scene and summary, and how to match plot to desires, obstacles, and realization. I also used examples from In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal (edited by Judith Kitchens and Mary Paumier Jones) to show how plot, theme and story work together to create an organic unity. The short works of creative nonfiction in In Brief are perfect tools for teaching this concept. I am sincerely looking forward to reading the next revisions.

Next week we will discuss scriptwriting. During the fifth week we will have a visiting writer, poet Warren Slesinger who has also spent most of his working life in publishing, reading from his work and talking about his process. On Thursday, the writers will read from their work. This is my favorite day. I love hearing them read.

One of the first cycle workshop participant’s completed narrative should be posted soon. David recently retired from the Marine Corps. His essay is about an experience that occurred during his three-year tour on recruiting duty.

I am teaching again this semester, but at a different school. I teach a college-level survey of literature course to high school juniors and seniors who are allowed to earn up to 9 college credit hours through a South Carolina Education Lottery program. Technical College of the Lowcountry administers the program. The high schools I teach at are three miles apart in a rural county a short drive from Beaufort. One school is private; one is public.

The private school is regimented. Everyone wears uniforms. Most of the students at the private school do not like the reading assignments. The 22 students in my course there are bright, but struggle with class discussion.

The students at public school are bright, too. Of the ten in my course at the public school, more are young men than young women. One young man is a songwriter, another a scriptwriter. One young woman immediately identified the Jabberwocky in Carroll’s poem as symbolic of fear. My public school students love class discussions. Two of these students are in the Marine Corps Junior ROTC. One of these he has told me that he decided on September 11, 2001 to join the Corps and fight the war. All ten seem to be reading every word in their text.

On my first day at the private school, the headmaster met me at the door. The students were polite, even gracious.

On my first teaching day at the public school, where classroom doors are locked during class, a fight took place in the hallway outside my classroom. Several people were screaming and shouting. People began flying past the classroom door’s glass window. I turned back to the class and said, “There’s a fight. Do you know what the major difference is that I have noticed between your school and the private school?”

Blank looks answered my question.

“You have an edge,” I said, “the fighting, the loudspeaker announcements, the schedule changes, the struggle to learn – this makes you strong and gives you an edge.”

Their faces brightened. One student said, “I never thought about it like that. You opened my eyes.”

The same could be said of the inexperienced writers I love working with during the veterans’ workshop. They have an edge.

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