How to Actually Become a Better Writer

Why I don’t believe in traditional, MFA-style critique workshops + A detailed, step-by-step method writers can use to help themselves and others effectively refine work-in-progress

Often—very often, in fact—I hear from students about the bad workshop experiences they’ve endured. Casual cruelty delivered as so-called “feedback.” Observations untethered from the words on the page (that is to say, judgments of the writer, not the writing). Sometimes, these students are seasoned enough or just plain wise enough to suspect the problem was carelessness or lack of skill on the part of the other writer(s) and/or the facilitator, bad workshop methodology, toxic culture of the institution or organization, or all of the above.

But, more often, my students have believed the problem was their own unworthy work, and/or the fact that they’re “too sensitive” and just need to get a “thicker skin” for criticism.

I disagree, and passionately.

Creative work is sacred, vulnerable, and alive. It does not grow in the harsh soil of other people’s undisciplined opinions. In my experience, many writers have never been taught how to do a close reading, let alone how to give genuinely valuabl…