Workshops...:)

So far, I’ve really loved everyone’s workshop stories—the creativity of my classmates never ceases to amaze me. After each story, I’m always left breathless—I wish I’d written that! And I really think that we could compose a book—a collection of shorts from the PRISM class of 2011. Each of us, as writers, have our strengths and our weaknesses—our stories appeal to different age groups, people who like different genres, and perhaps more to a particular gender than the other—but that’s what’s so great, in my opinion. Sure, we don’t all have flawless stories, but each of us writes a story that no one else could—and that’s the magic of it. Honestly, a lot of the time I think people’s stories are great—a work of genius—and I hesitate to criticize it because my judgment is subjective. I may think it would make the story better, but it might actually not work with the author’s style. Oftentimes I go through the stories and simply proofread it—most of my red pen marks are actually made to highlight parts that I like (“Great descriptions!” “great characterization!”). If there’s something that isn’t clear, I ask the writer to clarify it—I try to give suggestions on how they could go about doing it, because I know how hard it is to have someone criticize something, but not actually telling you how to go about doing it. With some stories, I can’t give much more suggestions than those, simply because I thought the story was extremely impactful, and everything builds up to that point. Editing it further could mess up the foundation of the story.