Writing Camp

Writing Camp is my name for writing workshops/conferences. Years ago, when I attended my first, I was unsure what the reaction of non-writing people might be to 'I'm attending a writing conference'. What reaction did I fear? The same one gets if admitting in public to being a writer. "What have you written?" And if your work isn't immediately recognizable you feel obscure, unknown, a charlatan, i.e. anyone can claim to be a writer.

So writing camp became an amusing, disarming way to say 'I'm going off for four days to eat, drink and sit in rooms with other people who write. We'll have a nominal leader who teaches for a living and is therefore qualified to lead us.'

What does one encounter at these gatherings? Other writers, of course, and they run the range of newbies, weary veterans, the published and the unpublished. I have to confess one rarely meets writers who are publickly known - the workshop leader and I walked down a street in Montpelier without a single starstruck fan asking him for an autograph. I never met at a workshop Michael Crichton, Stephen King, or other writer I knew of from my regular life. The writers who teach at these gatherings are usually teachers in writing programs in colleges and they have a few publications to their name, but you'll need to explore Amazon to find them. So you aren't being taught by a famous writer - which is for the best, as some famous writers probably can't teach.

Past writing camps: Rappahannock Fiction Writing Workshop, in Virginia, catering strictly to fictional prose - attended 3 years. No poetry, no nonfiction. Sadly, this workshop had its last gathering in August, 2001.
Colgate Writing Conference, at the college in upstate New York - attended once, left early.
Vermont PostGraduate Writing workshop in Montpelier, VT. I've attended three times and plan to return this year. They offer workshops in fiction (short story, novel), non-fiction, translations, and lots of poetry.


Are you better than me?
For writing workshops, you submit your writing and you will receive copies of the other attendees' works. So before the gathering, you've already read their work, and they yours. And as part of the workshop everyone is reviewed by everyone else (And if it's a five day workshop and you learn on the first day that you are 'up' on Day Five that can make for a long workshop). And because life is short and these workshops aren't free, you begin to rank yourself compared to others. You don't want to find yourself out front, you won't learn anything that way. I'm happiest when my work doesn't look shabby next to the other material. I feel humbled and a little dismayed when someone presents a polished story - when you say (maybe just to yourself) 'I wish I'd written that'; it's the highest compliment I think a writer can give. I've read through those photocopies and said, "this one isn't bad"... "this one has good spots but seems to be missing something" and I confess to once reading an attendee's work and suspecting the workshop was letting in some sub-par writers to pay the bills. Ironically, that writer promoted himself as published to boot... I have no doubt he was.
I've seen one attendee leave early when she was called from home to say an agent had called... that's the best way to leave a workshop, with everyone else's tongues hanging out.

I applied once to Bread Loaf and was rejected. Everyone should apply once... The reason I like Vermont is its closeness, and now I know some of the people. I just wish it was cheaper, though they have a culinary school on site and 2 out of 3 years the food has been great.

But I've left for last the best part of these workshops, why I keep returning: being exposed to other work and other writers is so revitalizing! This is something you can't get reading someone's work on craft, or in any other way. (I also get a mild charge out of leaving copies of my novel in the bookstore - though last time it was just for an airing out, none sold(!))
You may arrive utterly burned out and blocked, but by the end of the workshop you will very likely be working on something new or have a better idea how to fix a work in progress. At Vermont, each group reads in a public room to whomever feels like listening (honestly, it's usually just the groups slated to read that day, and those who feel strong about solidarity), and I don't know a better way to ruthlessly edit writing than preparing it for public reading to other writers.