Workshopping failure pedagogy for creative writing studies

Abstract

This article explores how creative writing studies might draw from elements of writing studies' pedagogy to better understand and improve how failure is conceived of and taught. The author identifies significant magnifiers of failure encounters under the traditional workshop model (as compared to a typical composition course) and proposes a series of zones of mediation aimed at neutralizing, counteracting, and reversing the effects of these magnifiers.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance and guidance of Nicole B. Wallack, PhD, Director of the Undergraduate Writing Program and Senior Lecturer in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See, e.g., Samuel Beckett’s (1983) adage, ‘try again, fail again, fail better’; J. Jack Halberstam’s (2011) art of queer failure which sees failure as subversive and potentially empowering, noting that ‘[u]nder certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world’ (2); Stuart Firestein’s Failure (2015) on the importance of failure in science; and J.K. Rowling’s (2008) Harvard commencement speech focusing on the benefits of failure. Cf., critics have argued, however, that not everyone can afford to be positive about failure—e.g., Sodha (2016), positing that ‘only successful people can afford a CV of failure.’

2 See, e.g., Hubrig (noting, with respect to institutional disability narratives, the ‘entrenched power structures that put certain bodies in the margins’ (233)); Inoue, ‘Failure and Letting Go,’ ‘On Antiracist Agendas,’ and ‘Theorizing Failure in US Writing Assessments’ (collectively, observing how assessment norms privilege segments of the community based on race, class, language proficiency and other considerations); and Johnson and Sheehan (noting the palpable presence of ‘embodied failure,’ particularly with respect to queer failure (127)).

3 Creative writing classes, in an undergraduate or graduate program, may take several formats, ranging from workshops to seminars to masterclass lectures. I intend to focus my analysis on the workshop format, and more specifically, the traditional workshop model, given the prominence of its use in creative writing programs. See Section II of this article for a description of the workshop structure.

4 Citing the early career failures of Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, and Michael Jordan, John Maxwell argues that ‘all great achievers are tempted to believe they are failures,’ and proposes seven principles for ‘failing forward.’ These principles include, inter alia,‘rejecting rejection,’ ‘seeing failure as temporary,’ and bouncing back.’ See Maxwell, ‘Failing Forward’ (2011 & 2017).

5 As Edward Burger notes, ‘it is important to explicitly highlight how essential dead ends and mistakes are—that is, to teach students the power of failure and how to fail effectively.’ See Burger, ‘Teaching to Fail’ (2012).

6 Based on a search in Poets & Writers’ MFA Programs Database, conducted on 1 May 2022.

7 For further background on the history of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, see Chavez 2–11; Menand 1–3; Salesses xiv; and Simon 1–2.

8 For example, all courses, including workshops, offered by Columbia University’s MFA writing program are graded on a pass-or-fail basis. See Columbia University's Standards for Satisfactory Academic Progress website, available at https://arts.columbia.edu/policies/satisfactory-academic-progress (noting the that the grading scale consists of P (pass), LP (low pass), and F (fail)). Accessed 1 Aug. 2022.

9 Inclusivity training is particularly important given numerous accounts of ‘workshops gone bad’ horror stories, including incidents of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic comments, and of general rudeness and lack of civility. See, e.g., Lee, ‘When a Workshop Goes Bad’; Stielstra, ‘On the Worst Workshop Horror Story.’

10 See, e.g., Robert Kolker’s article, ‘Who Is the Bad Art Friend?’ and its now viral story about the case of a fiction writer drawing from another writer’s real-life episodes.

11 As writer-teacher Beth Nguyen notes, ‘[w]hen the writer gets to talk about what they’re trying to do, they discover something more about what they actually are doing’ (B. Nguyen 2–3).

12 In a talk for the Columbia Public Writing Series on December 13, 2021, Viet Thanh Nguyen recounts his past workshop incidents, lamenting how questions of the politics and theories behind his writings were often not foregrounded or discussed at all during workshop (V. T. Nguyen, ‘It Matters Now’).

13 John Duffy’s theory of ethical choices might be a helpful framework. Similar to the ways in which Duffy asks writers to consider their ethical obligations to readers and their community, a peer reviewer in a workshop might consider these questions: What kind of peer reviewer do I wish to be? What are my obligations to the writer? What effects will my words have upon the writer, upon other workshop participants, upon my community? See Duffy 31–32. For a further discussion of the role of ethics in writing and the workshop experience, see also Suphap, ‘What’s Ethics Got to Do With It?’

14 See, e.g., feedback techniques and methods offered by Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff in their book, Sharing and Responding (1999); and specifically, with respect to creative writing workshops, refer to the list of alternative workshop models proposed by Matthew Salesses in Craft in the Real World (2021).

15 See, e.g., Chavez (arguing that, ‘[t]he traditional model assumes that workshop participants share an identical knowledge of craft, and wields academic vocabulary as a badge of authority’ (10)); and Salesses (noting that ‘[t]oo often craft is taught only as what has already been taught before’ (21).

16 Specifically, Inoue observes this about the make-up of the contributing authors of Failure Pedagogies: ‘Of the 27 authors in this collection, 19 are white females, five are white males, two are Latina, one a Black female, and one an Austrian woman’ (262).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wally Suphap

Wally Suphap is a writer, lawyer, teacher, and social justice advocate. He is an MFA Candidate and Teaching Fellow at Columbia University, where he teaches creative writing, journalism, and undergraduate writing. He is the founding editor of Workshopping the Workshop, an online forum dedicated to workshop pedagogy.