You may think it's crazy that someone plunking down three grand per semester to attend a far away creative writing program would need to fork over another $65 for local workshop, but that's what I did today. I've hit a creative dry patch lately, so needed a quick shot of inspiration. I also wanted to see how such workshops are taught, with thoughts toward one day teaching them. It was great fun and I plan to shamelessly steal some of this material to use one day as an instructor. On both fronts, the day was worth while. The instructor is a well regarded local writer named Tom Peek. He's got a very easy, comfortable instructional style, filling the day with worthwhile exercises proven to get the pen moving. The workshop was entitled, Tapping Your Right Brain and it did just that.
The class was the last ever to be held in the Old Japanese Schoolhouse, the same place where I took ukulele lessons. The property is being sold by the Volcano Arts Center. There are two buildings on the property, one where classes where held and one where the teacher lived. Students were the offspring of Japanese farm workers. During the war, the teacher was removed and sent to an internment camp on the mainland. The school was closed. While most Japanese in Hawaii were not interred (unlike the mainland population of Japanese Americans), those who wielded influence (like teachers and spiritual leaders) were taken. The Schoolhouse again became a place of education and enlightenment when the Arts Center bought it and began holding classes there. Sad to see it go.
I would definitely consider another of Tom's seminars. I think they're really seminars rather than workshops, despite lots of practice writing. No real feedback is offered. We are asked to listen to voluntary readings and rather than comment, instructed to say simply, "Thank you." I got the sense that several of the people with whom I was partnered were hungry for some feedback and if they asked me, I gave it in small, positive doses. Some people were pretty hung up on "what we were suppose to do" or whether what they were writing was what was expected. I assured a couple of them who were stewing during our lunch break that the point was not to generate any specific content, but to just do it. Just write. It was a process class. Besides the instructor, I was the only published writer there. Even so, the unedited, uncensored writing I heard was excellent, most of it coming from deep places where I often have trouble venturing. Every single person in the room had the capacity and potential to write something worth reading. That was cool.
A hui hou. Aloha!
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