Workshop Bingo

Yesterday was the last workshop of the MA, for the full time students, at least. Which felt strange, since it seems like we haven't been at it for very long, but at the same time welcome, because I've been in workshops for seven solid years now and at some point you get really tired of the process. Cava was bought and poured around, which led to the decision that everyone should drink at the mention of Point of View, because Henry reliably picks on P.o.V in every piece we read or discuss.

Which, of course, reminded me of my undergraduate workshops.

There seems to be a bit of a tradition at old R(MW)C involving English majors, their senior year, and large, opaque water bottles, specifically in relation to Senior Seminar. You can take a drink whenever the lecturer says something you think is moronic, or you can choose cue words that your classmates use frequently; in my case it was 'Jane Eyre,' 'A. S. Byatt,' 'Boy Band,' and any assignment that didn't apply to the ten Creative Writing concentrators in the room because the seminar was geared to Lit majors, of which we had one in the class, and so calculated to make the rest of us rend our garments in frustration. It was a three-hour study in frustration every Thursday night, when I was supposed to be fencing but was instead discussing critical approaches and research habits for a theoretical project that I would never actually conduct because it wasn't pertinent to my concentration. You would have drunk, too.

I'll blame Honors for causing that bit of fun to spill over into other things. Mandatory departmental readings? We all sat in a row, chose a key word based on the author's interests, and had ourselves a good old time. Except for the evening we chose 'um,' because none of us knew the visiting writer's work. You'd think that professional word people would have excised that bit of filler from their vocabularies when they were toddlers, but the introduction alone contained enough 'um's to drain half the volume of my Nalgene.

But the best place to play the game was Workshop. Workshops are tough when you're first starting out and don't really know what you're doing. They're tough in a different way when you're months away from graduating and are surrounded by students that are still figuring out plot arcs and grammatical sentences. My response was to toss about six shots of vodka (I'm not really sure, I free poured that shit in proportion to the pain I'd felt while reading the pieces earlier that week), filled it up the rest of the way with Mountain Dew from the dining hall on the way to class, gave it a shake, and started sipping. One gulp every time someone I knew was written into a sex scene. Every time boy bands were mentioned. Twice for metaphysical bullshit. And a nice long chug whenever the professor drastically misinterpreted my work or when one of the other students correctly explained the entire piece to him. There were other cues, but they varied from week to week. It was a good way to curb my temper: the more reasons I had to be annoyed, the warmer and fuzzier I felt. When the session was promising to be really bad, other people joined me, or borrowed my water bottle in the middle of class.

Which leads to a bit of confusion I think needs to exist, but is too specialized to be mass-produced.

We heard 'point of view' in every workshop. In undergrad it was some variation on 'metaphysical bullshit.' And everyone contributing to the workshop has a handful of private buzzwords that get whipped out every week. 'The writing is very assured.' 'Tropes.' 'It reminds me of Z. Z. Packer/Ali Smith/Raymond Carver/whoever you choose.' 'Structure.' 'You should read...' There are words and phrases that come up over and over again, not so much because the concepts recur in peoples' writing, but that the participants have pet ideas that get trotted out every week.

Bingo cards.

They'd be different for every workshop group, and would have probably made me pay more attention than my drinking game. Of course, anyone that won would have to scream 'Bingo!' in the middle of workshops. But most workshops could stand to be a little more surreal. Someone out there has to do this. If I never get the chance to do it myself, I'll find a baby MA to corrupt (if I'm still around next year) and revel in second-hand shenanigans.