It's finally time to talk about writing workshops, the good, the bad, and the nuts. Literal nuts. Thanks for hosting this conversation, Jane Friedman!

https://janefriedman.com/workshopper-...

My forthcoming novel, THE DEEPEST LAKE, is set at a memoir writing workshop. I've attended and taught workshops for twenty-plus years--which means I've seen a lot--but I hear new horror stories from other writers all the time.

There ARE ways to prepare, at the very least by understanding that workshop "best practices" are not always followed and that what we consider "good workshopping" has changed a lot in the last decade and some instructors, especially in the private for-profit sphere, haven't kept up. Some advance reading and thinking can help prepare the writer for an experience that may be magical, uplifting, disheartening, weird, or all of the above.