Workshops Teach Reading

Problem: When you write, or review your own work, it's hard to separate the words you've strung together from the ideas you were trying to communicate. You need to be able to look at a work (software, prose, poetry, whatever) and see what's really there, separate from what you want to be there. It's hard.

What's easier is to read someone else's work, see what's there, and think very consciously about what the writer intended and what the "gap" is between the one and the other. If you do that enough, if you practice reading objectively, you learn how to do it even for your own writing.

Therefore: to be come a better self-critic, and thus a better writer, participate in writers' workshops.

--PaulChisholm (learned in English 308B, Creative Writing: Fiction, taught at Ohio University by Daniel Keyes in a format of half lecture, half writers' workshop)

Please comment on WorkshopsTeachReading

I have found from my own experience that doing a lot of code reviews can also help this "distancing" process. When a group of software developers get together to review some code it can be a lot like a writers' workshop. The key difference, which can help it to work even with less skilled team members, is that somewhere there is (or should be) a definition of what the code should actually do. Being able to refer back to a specification can act like training wheels for the "distancing" process. It also helps that in code reviews you have to learn to look at detail such as punctuation and typing errors at the same time as tracking the big picture. Useful skills for reading other forms of creative writing. --FrankCarver

Actually, I've found the process so helpful, my clients (well, those who listen) use the writers workshop for all document reviews. The ritual is quite simple and does wonders to keep the reviews focused. -- TimOttinger

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