Running a BWAZ writing workshops: A facilitator’s experience
Shimmer Chinodya
Over the years I have had the honour to conduct and facilitate a sizable number of BWAZ writing workshops in diverse places spread all over Zimbabwe – in cities and schools, at growth points, training institutes, tourist resorts and the like. As a facilitator, the experience has been challenging and enriching.
What is a facilitator? Is it possible to ‘facilitate’ a writing workshop? Is it possible to teach writing? Between 1995 and 1997 when I was visiting professor in creative writing at St Lawrence University in up state New York, plodding through the knee deep, bone chilling snow after an evening class (to go home to a quick lonely meal of spaghetti and mince and the nightly instalment of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air), I battled with these questions. Of course I was not teaching the ‘typical’ budding writer such as we find in BWAZ – the eager-eyed young scribe with armpits bursting with optimistic manuscripts. I was teaching undergraduates who wanted a grade at the end of the semester, students who wanted a degree at the end of three or four years of a rigorous university life. Many had opted for a course in creative writing because they thought it was different and easy. They were a pretty mixed bunch – some fresh and original; some that could not go beyond a few passable paragraphs, others yet who were downright slovenly. I took them briskly through literary paces, tried to move them or jump start them or make them laugh.
BWAZ initiates are like, yet so definitely unlike, my St. Lawrence students. Each BWAZ workshop is like, and yet so unlike, the previous one. In each new crowd one detects hope, enthusiasm, and faith in the word. BWAZ workshops resuscitated my faith in the word, my waning belief in myself and my work. In these days of soccer, boozers, football, television and God knows what, only the truly dedicated can spend a Saturday and a Sunday locked up in a room, discussing writing and literature. But I quickly found out that participants are varied. Age and occupation are a pertinent factor. Some are adults – administrators, teachers, school leavers, part time house wives and the like; many are school students, mostly O and A level but in one school I had a sprinkling of Grade 5s and 6s (capable ones too.)
Others are book-totting, pen-chewing school leavers obviously in search of something to relieve them from pure boredom, unemployment, political uncertainty, relentlessly increasing prices and the persistent threat of AIDS. There is obviously some confusion among the school students. Some think BWAZ workshops are a superb opportunity to improve their composition and grammar, some genuinely seek to improve their writing craft, and others come to find out what writing is all about.
General Writing Workshops
I shall talk about the general writing workshop first, the one in which you talk to a variety of participants interested in different genres of writing at different levels. I welcome them all and try to make them feel at home. After all, writing is a crazy, lonely occupation and workshops at least give participants an opportunity to meet and commiserate with fellow lunatics and hopefully exchange useful tips.
I let them introduce themselves and say something of their writing experience, what they hoped to gain from the workshop and the like. I tell them my own story about why and how I started writing, the challenges and difficulties I faced, spicing it with anecdotes about how my father – with that vision of the sixties – stole or borrowed or haggled for books for me to read, about how I wrote my first novel(unpublished!)in Grade 5,how my father paid off my siblings school fees with the $40 prize I won in Grade 7 essay writing competition, how for the next eight years I became a precocious recluse with the word POET emblazoned on my head and how I ran out of poetic juice and switched to prose, how Anna Ndhlovu suddenly wanted to sit next to me after I published my full page feature article on African rain-making in The Sunday Mail when I was in Form 3,how I wrote my first successful novel [published as Dew in the Morning]when I was doing my A level.
I note the incredulousness and enthusiasm on the participants faces as I tell my story and I am satisfied. I think general writing workshops are as much about encouragement as they are about skills building. It is important for budding writers to meet and to talk to so called ‘established writers’, for them to realize that the latter are flesh and blood creatures without extra-terrestrially large heads or horns, people who can joke and laugh and eat sadza and mazondo at the local growth point take-away at lunch time, people who too started off by scribbling off in exercise books and pestering teachers and publishers for an audience, people who, too, in every ironic sense, are still budding. Many budding writers think in terms of absolutes – budding, published, established, and dead. But even established writers bud unto death, in a general sense, and the fruit of their labours are only realized when they are safely locked up in their graves.
I goad and provoke my enthusiasts: ‘Why are you here? So you want to write, eh? You want to add your offering to the billions of books already published in the world? Why don’t you go off and do something useful with yourself – like growing potatoes or fixing cars? Do you think you are good enough? How dare you think you know enough about life? Do you think you have any special perspective on existence? How much have you read, anyway? Have you read Zimbabwean literature?’
The last question reminds me of a young man who, at the end of one workshop, came up to me with a big fat khaki envelope and self-imposingly said to me, ‘I am a budding writer. I have written two books. I want you to read them and correct them for me. I want you to help me get them published.’ I flipped nervously through the first few pages. The writing was racy, pretentious, littered with mistakes. I would need a good three days to go through it and ‘fix’ it. (Meantime, my kids’ school fees were waiting and the mortgage and the uniforms and the medical bills and work deadlines and so forth and so forth.)
‘How much have you read?’ I asked the young man.
‘A lot,’ he replied.
‘Have you read Zimbabwean authors?’ I pursued. ’Oh yes,’ he said.
‘Which are your favourite Zimbabwean authors?’ ‘Oh, man. You are one of them. I’ve read all your works.’
‘And which of my books do you like most?’ I ventured, optimistically. ‘Some Kinds of Wounds and Other Stories,’ he replied, without batting an eyelid.
‘But that’s Charles Mungoshi’s book,’ I protested. I handed the envelope back to the young man and said, ‘Go back and read twenty good novels. Clean up your stories then send me one chapter.’
‘Read, read, and read.’ I repeat at workshops. ‘Read, read, read, and write, write, write. You can’t be a writer unless you start writing. You can attend a dozen workshops but you’ve got to work at it alone, on your own. Persist. Be ruthless with yourself. Take care with every sentence. Ask yourself; is this something somebody else would like to read? Good writing is 50% instinct, 25% training, and 25% persistence.’ I listen to myself say this weekend after weekend and I begin to doubt my mathematics. Is this the best way to encourage budding writers, by provoking and encouraging them?
Ok, I have told them about myself and my career and got them to reflect on and discuss why they want to write. I then get them to think about what they want to write about. It’s easy to say ‘I want to write,’ but unless you get focused and narrow things to specific subject, you are groping in the dark. We go on to talk about how to get organized to write. We discuss tips such as choice of genre, research, the use of diaries, notes and anecdotes, planning, sketching out the beginning, middle and end, and the revision of drafts. We also talk about self editing and brainstorming. We talk about the qualities of a good writer and the importance of wide reading. We cover writing problems and how to deal with them – problems such as language, grammar, style, and inspiration and/or lack of it. I give tips on getting help when stuck – such as reading inspirational writing, consulting colleagues and teachers, joining writer’s clubs, referring to writer’s manuals or contacting writer’s organizations such as BWAZ.
We then discuss technical aspects such as manuscript preparation, typing, line spacing, margins, binding, and photocopies. Finally we address the intricate question of getting published –identifying suitable publishers and contacting them, coping with rejection or utilizing assessment reports and evaluator’s comments, working on revisions, signing contracts, legal aspects such as contractual obligations (copyright, libel etc.) and the contentious issue of royalties. It must be pointed out here that many of these literary and technical issues are well covered in BWAZ publications and that there are often members at local branch level capable of disseminating this information to initiates.
I usually wind up these general writing workshops with an open session in which participants are free to ask any questions and the nature and range of questions here can be amazing. I find it judicious to allow participants to read out or perform their work to the group every so often, to give participants a live audience and to enliven the workshop. After all, one soon finds out, publishing for the budding writer is not only about seeing oneself in print, but also performing in front of others.
General writing workshops can be problematic. First, one is here working with a variety of genres and interests. Typical to beginning writers, there is often a predominance of poetry on offer, but one cannot ignore prose – short stories, novels, drama, and even screenplays. Ability, age levels, exposure and experiences can also vary considerably. Available workshop time is limited to a day or two – hardly enough to get things in detail. There’s little time for actual writing or participator performance. Because of the numbers involved, individual attention is virtually impossible and at the end the facilitator is invariably inundated with unsolicited manuscripts and promises of more to follow in the post. Follow-up workshops are obviously necessary to economize more systematically on both the facilitator and participants’ time. Here BWAZ has done well in occasionally appointing a writer-in-residence to see to the individual needs of members on a more regular basis.
Writing Short Stories
Apart from general writing workshops I have also conducted short story writing ones, with interesting results. The format of these has been as follows: Participants introduce themselves in order to loosen up.
I tell them how I started writing and my experiences with the short story genre. We discuss aspects of the short story such as setting, character, motivation, plot, theme/message, mood/atmosphere, conflict/problem, dialogue/monologue, twist/surprise, suspense, style, vision, viewpoint and resolution. All the time, I stress the point that economy has to be rigorously practiced. Every word, every phrase, every sentence counts and has to build up to the total, dramatic effect of the story. Showing, and not telling, is another important principle. Most short stories are, and indeed look, short, but they are not so easy to write. A short story is probably more difficult to write than a section of a novel. Characterization has to be brisk. Weighting can vary from story to story. Some stories can be biased towards the plot, others towards characterization or conflict, and so on. Practical work is important. We talk briskly through the theory, and then go on to practice. We talk about, and examine the work of selected works by leading Zimbabwean short story writers. We use sample materials from the work of such writers as Charles Mungoshi, Alexander Kanengoni, Shimmer Chinodya, Dambudzo Marechera, Virginia Phiri, Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Barbara Makhalisa (Nkala). Time-permitting, we discuss the literary aspects demonstrated in each peace.
Above article was first published in the Writers Scroll published by the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ).