“Eat fast,” my bunkmate said. “We have to be at Shop soon.”
“If you need supplies, you have all day,” I informed her; trying hard to show I’d acclimated to the camp schedule. “The shop doesn’t close until just before dinner.”
“Not the shop where you buy stuff, Dummy! ‘Shop…where you do woodwork,” she said in disgust. “Don’t you know anything about camp?” Apparently I didn’t, because she looked at me with a mix of scorn and pathos.
“‘Shop is short for ‘Workshop’,” she informed me, with a little more patience.
“So is a ‘Workshop’ where you always do woodwork?” I used my most mature, serious tone to sound fully engaged, rather than still smarting over her intended slight, which I was.
“Woodwork and other crafts; at least here,” she added. I took it as a sign she’d struggled with anxiety over being a ‘new girl’ herself, once. “I suppose workshops might mean something different in other places.” She smiled, and I felt a rush of relief and gratitude. Little did I know then it would take me over fifty years to fully understand and appreciate how broad the range of workshops could be. Learning to answer the question ‘what is a workshop?’ is a skill I could never have mastered at camp, nor could I have predicted the importance and impact of it on my life.
Last week I attended my sixth consecutive summer writers’ conference. The heart of it is now and has always been ‘The Workshop’, even though there are many enticing electives and lectures open to all participants; to say nothing of the myriad social events spicing up each day and evening. Still, the workshop is king, no matter how many other subjects are on the menu. This year, for the first time, I felt let down by the process, even though the participants in my group were all delightful, and skilled writers. So what was the problem? The quality of the actual process was wanting; the “workshopping” itself. This time I had a reaction that my years of creating, building and participating in full-time workshops of dedicated participant/writers has produced without my awareness. We’ve raised the ordinary workshop to an art form as particular as the craft of writing itself. I also realized it takes a lot of time and a huge commitment on the participant’s part to respect the significance of the process. Neither one of these requisites is possible in a four day workshop of strangers, no matter how pleasant or gifted they might be.