Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction [Paperback]

Carol Bly (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0385499191 | ISBN-13: 978-0385499194 | Publication Date: April 17, 2001 | Edition: 1st Anchor Books ed

An innovative new approach to teaching and writing creative nonfiction from veteran teacher and critically acclaimed author Carol Bly.

Teachers and writers everywhere are facing the limits imposed by the prevailing models of teaching: community or MFA “workshops” or, at the high-school level, “peer review.” In Beyond the Writers' Workshop Carol Bly presents an alternative. She believes that
workshopping’s tendency to engage in wry scorn and pay exaggerated attention to technical details, causes apprentice writers, consciously or unconsciously, to modify their most passionate work.

Inspired by a philosophy of individuality and moral rigor, Bly combines ideas and techniques from social work, psychotherapy, and neuroscience with the traditional teaching of fresh metaphor, salient dialogue, lively pace, and analysis of other literary work in her pioneering new approach. She also includes exercises and examples in an extensive practical appendix.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Many books about writing nonfiction are actually spiritual-quest road maps. They might call themselves writing guides, but they have more to do with self-help than writing. While those books certainly have their place, it is bracing to come across one that's more stringent about words on the page. In Beyond the Writers' Workshop, Carol Bly rails against what she sees as a state of cultural deprivation in the United States. She calls on all writers and their teachers to remove "as many of the influences and instruments or conventions that cause 'dumbing down' as we can." Elementary-school teaching, says Bly (who also wrote The Passionate, Accurate Story), is so focused on making sure the children have fun that they don't have a chance to take themselves seriously; MFA students get stuck "writing decorative humbug"; and older-adult writers are predisposed to penning affectionate, empty memoirs.

Bly's aim is to help writers deepen their writing. She argues for formality, both in the writing and in the classroom: it makes the writing more potent and acts as "a weapon against smirking." She is a strong believer in empathic questioning; has chapters on stage-development philosophy and neuroscience; and recommends that writers sharpen their prose by "scouring off wormy style," questioning any "shopworn observation," and recalling "peculiar details that no one else could fake." The 15 writing exercises at the back of the book will likely send writers digging inward. And though Bly criticizes the dispassionate "museumgoer" mentality, she claims that it is good for a writer to be a generalist. "The more material you have to work with," she says, "the more likely you are to produce fresh, unexpected connections." --Jane Steinberg

From Library Journal

Prolific author Bly (The Passionate, Accurate Story; My Lord Bag of Rice), who teaches ethics-in-literature at the University of Minnesota, has written a useful analysis of the existing archetypes of creative writing programs. Bly looks at the many built-in problems of writing workshops whose dogmatic emphasis of techniques and neglect of ideas often prevent writers from creating their most passionate work. But Bly goes further than merely pinpointing the problems of the existing creative writing programs: this revealing study is replete with constructive advice on how to write meaningful nonfiction by incorporating techniques from psychotherapy and neuroscience. Bly also advocates giving school students, the poor, and the have-nots of society a forum through writing that will let them express what moves them. She ends the book with 15 writing exercises, usage sheets, and sample writing class agendas. Most suitable for writing teachers looking for something new to spark their students, this manual is recommended for all academic and large public libraries. Lisa J. Cihlar, Monroe P.L., WI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1st Anchor Books ed edition (April 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385499191
• ISBN-13: 978-0385499194
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #522,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, frustrating, necessary, November 13, 2001

By 

Matthew Cheney (New Hampton, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction (Paperback)

It is frustrating for such a necessary, provocative, and compelling book to also be badly organized and often clumsily written. Carol Bly has some truly powerful ideas about how to write and teach writing, as well as why. Indeed, she is the most forceful voice for morality in writing since John Gardner, and many of her ideas should be taken seriously, debated in the pages of literary journals, the classrooms of universities and writing workshops, the hallways of teachers' conventions. But the reader can also regret that Bly did not take the time to organize her thoughts into a more coherent form, or to express them with more care and elegance. It is sad that such a valuable book about writing is itself so often badly written.

Few books for writers, though, are as full of useful advice and provocative philosophy. Despite the subtitle, this book isn't simply for writers of creative nonfiction -- it is for anyone who wants to put words on paper in any genre whatsoever, because the questions Bly probes are universal ones. Few of her chapters address creative nonfiction specifically in a way that excludes other genres, and the exercises she provides at the end of the book are useful for any sort of writer, at any skill level.

Perhaps the most valuable audience for this book is teachers of writing, whether they are elementary school teachers or instructors in MFA programs. There are specific chapters for all levels of teachers, but the most useful discussions take place outside those chapters -- discussions of the ethics of writing and teaching writing, as well as the processes.

Bly links writing to ideas from neuropsychologists, social workers, philosophers, and moral psychologists such as Lawrence Kohlberg to broaden the context of writing beyond that of the American "junk culture". While at times this viewpoint leads her toward self-contradiction or a reductive orneriness, on the whole she makes a convincing argument for passionate, committed writing which doesn't slink away from questions of morality and metaphysics.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Effective Reference Tool, November 28, 2001

By 

rizabiz "rizabiz" (Westhampton Beach, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction (Paperback)

This book is a great reference guide for those of us considering an MFA, writing degree, or career. I would not recommend this book be read from front to back, rather, utilize it as a refernce manual and/or topical approach. Bly gives the reader some thought provoking material. I enjoyed her dialogue on writing classes geared for the rich and poor. I've encountered situations where my writing was personally stilted due to commentary by the instructor. She answered some of these concerns which would be important for an instructor as well as student to understand. Mostly, I was inspired to write after reading it and have a better understanding of what I need to out of my writing. One of the better "workshopping" type books of its genre.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fresh voice, but left me wanting more....., June 11, 2001

By 

Suzanne E. Anderson "Author of Mrs. Tuesday's... (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction (Paperback)

I loved Bly's 'take no prisoners' style of dealing with writing teachers, and writing programs, their strengths and their shortcomings. Her insights about how some aspiring writers can be harmed or have their work stymied in its fragile state by workshops and comments by well-meaning students or teachers, is reassuring. However, I wish she had gone further, for instance, in her chapter addressing the process of first, second, etc. drafts of a manuscript. Her comments about the need to protect the work, and to give it time to develop through multiple drafts is valuable, but I believe it could have been fleshed out further.