The basic workshop format is this: there are six workshop meetings, from about 9 to noon every day; at each, the members discuss the work of two different workshop members. They'll do Alice and Bob on Sunday, Craig and David on Monday, Eduardo and Felice on Tuesday, and so on. Your job as a workshop participant is to take time before the session to read and mark up the person's work. Everyone takes their own approach to this -- some people do a really thorough job, some people don't. The workshop is led by a different "faculty member" each day; sometimes these are well-known writers, sometimes they are long-time Squaw staffers. You don't really get much of a choice about any of this -- the schedule of whose piece gets considered when, and who runs the workshop any particular day, is all scheduled out in advance. The faculty members rotate from workshop to workshop, while the attendees stay in the same group, working with each other throughout the week.
In the workshop itself, the facilitator leads a discussion of the works for the day, and often at the end of the morning there is time for workshop members to chat with that person in a group about their work, which you of course take advantage of if the person is a widely-published writer like Dorothy Allison or somebody like that.
The quality of the work is fairly broad. Some people are good writers, others are mediocre. There isn't anyone who can't string sentences and paragraphs together, but some people are definitely better than others. However, in general, one is expected to give the same earnest attention to all the work. The one thing that everyone has in common is that they are all in approximately the same place professionally, as far as their writing career goes: they have probably published a couple of things, but want an intense time of talking with other writers, partly for the moral support. Some attendees (few) have already published a novel; others (many) have published a few short stories; some have agents, some don't. Some have finished their first novels and are shopping them; some haven't finished them yet.
The workshops meet in improvised locations around the various buildings of the ski resort -- in its restaurants, bars, lounges, etc. Some of the locations are a little better suited to sitting in a circle than others, but everyone makes do.
That's the mornings. The afternoons are taken up by talks, panels and so on given by faculty and guest faculty. They're either about some craft point (characterization, for example) or something about the business of writing and publishing. These are usually very worthwhile.
Around 6:00 there's a group dinner followed by a reading by some of the more prominent faculty people.
As the week progresses there are more and more parties, especially Wednesday, because the conference deliberately doesn't schedule stuff on Wednesday afternoon and evening. Parties are held at houses.
Now about the houses. Squaw Valley is a ski resort, and adjacent to the resort and on the hillside above the valley are a couple of hundred houses -- these are largely vacation homes which are (I presume) leased out to vacationers on a week-by-week or weekend-by-weekend basis; few if any are someone's full-time home. Into these houses, the conference books between four and six conference attendees. This aspect of the conference is actually part of its hidden charm, as you spend a lot of time sitting around chatting with your housemates, and this is often where you end up making contacts with someone that last after the workshop.
An important point is that some of your housemates may be in your workshop, but most of them won't be. I think I was unusual in that I had two other housemates in the same workshop as I.
Of the attendees of the conference, it seemed to me that at least a fourth were MFA creative writing students, and another large group were "adjunct" creative writing teachers. Over the week I learned a lot about what an adjunct creative writing professor is -- someone with an MFA who is working as non-tenured faculty at a college -- anything from a community college to a large university -- and teaching undergrad writing courses. So you've got a large group that is MFA students and another large group that is former MFA students.
The remainder of the attendees are people who either write on the side, like me, or people who write full time.
Also, a small percentage of the people at the conference are screenwriters and non-fiction writers. Out of 11 or 12 groups, one is a screenwriting group and another is a non-fiction group. It's fun to talk to these folks, just because one gets a little tired of talking to other fiction writers.
The questions "What are you working on?" and "How's your workshop going?" are enough to get conversations started for the first couple of days; after that, everyone gets tired of those standard questions. Also, by Tuesday or so, social groups and cliques start to form, and this is most clear every evening at dinner when you see who has found amiable people to sit with, and who is socially awkward.
I wasn't crazy about the food catered for the dinners, and if you find some friends by midweek it may not be a bad idea to seek dinner farther afield. There's never any kind of program at dinner so it's actually an opportunity to get away from the conference if you feel like it.
There are several restaurants at the resort, but they're kind of expensive. You can drive to Truckee or to the shore of Lake Tahoe for alternatives.
One more thing: The conference office itself broadcasts a wireless DSL signal that is available within a hundred feet of their office in a certain building. They don't really advertise this, but if you sit at any of the empty tables throughout this large meeting area outside their office -- this is the area where registration takes place on the first day, so you'll know what I mean -- you should be able to pick up a signal. An alternative is to go over to the resort and pay for a signal, which you can pick up sitting in many of the outdoor areas.
Any other Squaw attendees, you're welcome to add to (or challenge) this rundown in the comments section.
Previously: Archive of posts from Squaw from August 2005
Squaw Valley Writers, literary conferences, writers conferences
1 comment:
This is a good rundown of the conference. I'd like to add a few thoughts. I went twice, in the non-fiction workshop. The most valubale thing for me was the ability to talk talk talk about writing for an entire week with other people who are obsessed about writing. I generally bore my family when I talk about my work, so I enjoyed this time away. The week is exhilarating and exhausting, but worth it. My first time was definitely more intense than my second time.
Another benefit -- you really feel you are on a continuim of writers. All the famous writers routinely point out that they were once unknown and unpublished, and encourage every one just to work hard and good things will happen.
And I am still friends with many of the people I met up there.
Post a Comment