A Weekend for Writers
Ted Chiles -- June 12, 2005
With five other writers, I sat looking out the French doors and listened to tales of death, bigotry, delusion, altered time, and an eleven-year-old girl pondering the name on a church pew. I then shared my tale of a man with a knife in his back in Matt Pallamary's Fiction Intensive, “Breathing Life into Your Fiction,” sponsored by the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference (SBWC).
An Intensive combines a writing class and an extended read-and-critique over an entire weekend. Twelve hours of work and five hours of shared meals were limited to ten writers. The intensive began with a reception Friday that offered a chance to meet other classmates, Matt Pallamary and several workshop leaders from the SBWC in the Villa Rosa Inn's conference room. Conference rooms in large hotels are often partitioned boxes with sliding walls, bad chairs and industrial air. But this room had the feel of an informal, Spanish-influenced dining room in an architectural magazine. The kind of place a writer would choose.
Saturday began with the most important ingredient for successful writing -- excellent coffee. Pallamary, author of Land Without Evil, A Small Dark Room of The Soul and a long time workshop leader of the “weird stuff” at SBWC, briefly lectured on some of the elements of fiction (his syllabus provided twenty topics) and admitted his preferences. A third person, past-tense kind of guy, he loathes the passive voice and circled every “was” in my manuscript.
The read-and-critique ensued. During each participant's run through the gauntlet, Matt's talent as a workshop leader emerged. He drew upon both the strengths and weaknesses of participant's writing to demonstrate different elements of fiction. He revealed why one transition read seamlessly and another jarred or how a simple rewrite condensed and intensified a passage. He illustrated topics, using his work or those of well-known writers for examples.
Sunday repeated Saturday's format.
Writers often attend workshops for the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with other writers. The SBWC Intensive provided ample opportunity for such camaraderie including a no-host dinner on Saturday night and an impromptu talk by Abe Polsky, playwright and SBWC workshop leader on Dramatic Structure.
I left Sunday afternoon with a list of fellow travelers and copious notes on the craft, nestled in my computer bag next to six well-marked copies of my manuscript. I left tired from the work, but with a sense of urgency to get back to the task at hand.