Today, my friend Naomi and I went to a writing workshop held at our school. We didn't expect much, and the workshop still didn't meet our expectations. The description was misleading: "This is a wonderful opportunity to meet a children's author and to learn about the writing and publishing process. [author's name] is the motivating author who tells stories of high interest to this age group and follows up with a writing workshop." I didn't say his/her name for the small chance that s/he finds this blog and is deeply offended by the critique coming up. The description should have read: "This an opportunity to meet a children's author and to learn about writing tactics/styles specific only to him/her, grizzly bears, and other things that are completely irrelevant to writing. [author's name] is an author who tells incredibly short stories of high interest to average-intelligence fourth graders and follows up his two-hour-long presentation with a ten-minute period to write according to his limitations."
Yup.
So when we first walked in, we noticed something strange: the entire audience besides us two had an average grade level of fourth grade. (Sadly, they were only a few inches shorter than us eighth graders. Go figure.) This was enough to make me want to leave, but I figured I should stay in case I could actually learn anything.
And I didn't.
Alright, so the author introduced himself and started talking about the books he wrote. They're targeted to third-through-eighth graders, allegedly, and I was thinking they'd be, I don't know, Judy Blume-esque books. They weren't. They were all about families camping in random national parks and finding themselves in a chain of highly unlikely events to happen to campers. He said that his books were around 22,000 words, and everyone was astounded--except for Naomi and I, of course. I have 25,000 words right now on my novel and I'm only halfway done. Anyways. I don't want to compare.
About 90% of the whole presentation was about hiking. He'd start off with, "In my book, these kids get into [insert incident] and..." and then he'd spend ten minutes going off into tangents about grizzly bears, hiking trails and Yo-fucking-semite. It guess it'd be interesting to someone who likes the outdoors. And I guess I do (I once spent five straight days without stepping foot outside), but I came to a writing seminar, not a camping seminar.
And finally, after two or so hours of him talking about The Wonders of The Outdoors, he finally let us write. But apparently we had to follow his rules, or "tips". Tips that I figured were common sense to writers. The story had to be realistic fiction. Something dangerous had to happen. The character wasn't allowed to die. I was transported back to fourth grade when my writing had to adorn to a certain structure. Which I hatehatehate. First of all, I didn't see what was wrong about writing fantasy. The seminar was titled "realistic fiction" but we mostly just learned about What To Do When A Bear Approaches You so why not write fantasy? Secondly, something dangerous has to happen? Bullshit. Sometimes stories aren't loud; sometimes they're quiet, meant to be read in a whisper. We don't all write adventure stories. Thirdly, why couldn't the character die? Because that would be too "morbid" for our age group. The age group was far too diverse to determine what would be "too" anything. In fourth grade, I read Harry Potter, and he dies anyways...
All in all, that seminar was crap. Even if I were in fourth grade, I wouldn't like it. At least it was free.
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