Wednesday, April 13, 2011
working with workshop
My first workshop/critique was last week. I wasn't nervous when I got to class, but when I started reading my poem I began to get extremely nervous. I find that most of my class is pretty quiet, there is a select group of people that are willing to speak out and say what they honestly think. I was appreciative of the responses, for the most part. I think it is definitely helpful to get honest opinions. However, as a girl below me wrote, some of the advice did contradict other advice. I didn't mind that, I paid more attention to the advice I felt would work better with my personal style. Something that did bother me though-- a few of the comments on the poems handed to me. Comments which were, at least, unnecessary like one I received that said, "passive aggressive much?". Hopefully workshop will not only help me to take criticism in a better light but to also learn to give it more constructively than offensively.
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I agree workshop can be a little nerve wrecking, but the more you do it the better you will get at it and the easier it becomes. Keep taking the criticisms for what their worth and use them how you like. Don't let one bad comment discourage you from putting one poem in front of another. It seems like we have a mostly respectful class and we all want to help each other, I wouldn't worry about those who don't want to be constructive.
ReplyDeleteAll of us put a lot of ourselves into our work, particularly our poetry. So it's tough to take criticism sometimes, particularly when it involves an aspect that we thought was strong. It's hard to appreciate it at first, but in the end, having people tell us things that will make our piece stronger is a great advantage. However, things like the passive aggresive comment have no place in the workshop. That kind of criticism isn't helpful.
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