Introduction - First Courses and Impressions
In my Intro to Fiction Writing Course, I was blessed with a workshop group who was inexperienced in the process, but eager to jump into it. I, among a few others, made an ocean’s worth of comment on each piece. The feedback we gave was maybe sometimes too much, but in equal measure some of it was quite helpful. I say this from receiving the feedback and hearing my classmates' responses to having received it.
Engaging in an effective workshop critique is a practice that helps the workshoppers and workshop-ee. It’s an art unto itself that teaches everyone involved to examine writing more closely, and my first workshop group in that class set me up well for my workshopping future.
As you move through the 200 and 300-level courses in creative writing, workshopping increasingly becomes the focus (rather than analysis of published readings). I had some of my favorite writing experiences in my 200-level Speculative Worlds class and my 300-level workshop: Creating the Novel. These classes were unique benefits of the broad, genre-accepting approach the Oberlin creative writing program has.
Rising Action - The Classes That Were the Peaks
Speculative Worlds
In this class, I got to focus on perhaps the most important aspect of the writing I plan to do in the way fictional worlds can be created to enhance a story and immerse their audience. We read a collection of short fictions alongside the novels Kindred (Octavia Butler), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K Le Guin), and Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro). Each of these were enjoyable reads and were analyzed within our class to pinpoint the mechanisms of successful worldbuilding these authors used.
Creating the Novel
This was a class I dreamed of taking for a full a year—and which seemed to require quite some luck to get into. In the end, I got in by emailing the professor a lot and finally getting a spot when another student moved out of the class in add/drop week. While I loved all my creative writing experiences at Oberlin, this class was my favorite moment.
The workshops were run by my professor in a smooth and tactful way I deeply appreciated. We followed a structured approach to beginning to craft a novel that opened my eyes to the particular challenges the genre poses. The class had us submit a first and second chapter, alongside a purposefully chosen later chapter, and the novel’s final page. Each of these was workshopped with its positioning in the novel in mind. We were given feedback by our professor that tended to wonderfully synthesize the many thoughts of the group as she spoke in the workshop, and make purposeful suggestions with the potential to radically transform our pieces.
As if this weren’t enough, it came alongside analyzing the masterful novelcraft of Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), Giovanni’s Room (James Baldwin), Sula (Toni Morrison), and The Buddha in the Attic (Julie Otsuka). This course worked magic for my love of writing and inspired my capstone project and first novel I plan to publish.
Climax and Conclusion - The End of My Oberlin Writer's Journey and Where I am Now
Speaking of novel writing, I first worked on a novel on my own the summer after my first year. I wrote nearly 100,000 words of a manuscript, and learned a lot about how to approach my personal writing practice.
In my fourth year, my capstone project had me engage in a sustained writing practice to produce 25 to 50 pages of prose to finish my creative writing major at Oberlin.
Note: While a project similar to this was once required of all majors, the option now exists to complete the program with a capstone or a 400-level course in a language or other practicing arts department.
This made for a great culmination to my journey and, fingers crossed, a great launch into my planned career as a fantasy fiction author to come. The creative writing program has taught me so much and transformed my writing practice and sense of myself as an author. I’ll carry what I’ve learned through this major with me forever. I send many thanks to the professors who helped all along the way, and, most of all, to the students who made up my writing community that supported me from the start.
