By Alex Cafarelli
Photo credit Mée Rose
Alex Cafarelli is a genderqueer femme Jewish Witch based in Toronto. Their spoken word has been featured across North America on themes of queer sexuality, survivorship, chronic illness, ritual, and activism. Alex facilitates creative writing workshops and is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph.
Community and collaboration have been essential in my lifelong efforts to draw out my raw, wild, tender, messy, creative writing voice without the fear and hesitation of my internal critic. When I was introduced to the Amherst Writers & Artists workshop method by Jen Cross in 2006 (2007?), I learned tools for accessing creativity in community that have stayed with me since. Jen, who is a certified facilitator in the AWA method, led creative writing workshops in San Francisco for sexual trauma survivors and writers who wanted to explore explicit erotic writing. I had been writing since I learned the alphabet, but these workshops took my writing to a new level. I began to deepen my “writing voice” and I became comfortable with freewriting, a practice developed by Peter Elbow in the 1970’s, where one writes continuously without pause. Freewriting doesn’t give the internal critic any time to interrupt. It’s one of the key elements necessary to tap into creative writing, according to Pat Schneider who founded the Amherst Writers & Artists method. Schneider knew that creative writing was a community effort.
“The Amherst Writers & Artists method for writing classes, groups, and workshops developed in a community of writers that had its origin in 1979. Teachers, workshop leaders, and several thousand workshop participants helped create these practices. They are deeply rooted in the writing process movement whose pioneers have called for and have brought about reform in teaching writing since the 1930s. That reform has been most fully articulated by Peter Elbow.”
This passage is from Pat Schneider’s book, Writing Alone and with Others, which outlines the method in detail. In 2004, Schneider began training other writers to become workshop leaders. I began leading creative writing workshops in 2010 and I was certified in 2014 at the first AWA leadership training that took place in Ontario. I have led creative writing workshops for queer and trans adults, teens and middle-schoolers, trauma survivors, women with mental illness and substance use issues, martial artists, witches, Jews, and activists.
The AWA method uses a non-hierarchical structure, creative prompts, and timed writing sessions. Participants have opportunities to write, share fresh writing, listen deeply, and respond with feedback about what works and what is strong about each other’s writing. When the writing is brand new, it is completely optional to read the work aloud or not. When the writing is brand new, we only offer feedback on what works and what is strong about the writing. Critical feedback and questions about content and approach comes later, when the writer has had time to clarify their intention and make revisions.
Freewriting to timed prompts in community and sharing fresh work aloud frees us from perfection which is one of the main contributors to writer’s block. Felicia Rose Chavez writes about the power of reading work aloud in her groundbreaking book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom:
“Engaging with the text aloud thwarts perfectionism, demands vulnerability, bolsters trust, and reaffirms that we are, none of us, alone in this writing thing. Most importantly, it celebrates participants’ own words, spoken aloud in their unique and powerful voices.”
Along with a commitment to confidentiality, one of the defining features of an AWA workshop is this: all of the writing is treated as fiction unless the writer requests that it be treated as autobiography. If the writing is in first person, we talk about the “narrator” when offering feedback. We talk about characters by their names or other features instead of calling them “your friend” or “your mom.” This way, the feedback stays focused on the writing instead of the writer.
Responding to writing as fiction in workshops has generated a particular freedom in my own writing process. If I write about a traumatic experience or a sensitive subject like body image, I know I am not going to receive therapeutic advice or be psychoanalyzed during the feedback portion of my share. The workshop feedback remains focused on craft, voice, and expression. The focus is not on healing, though we may experience healing in the process. I say “we” because another defining feature of the AWA method is that the facilitator writes and receives feedback alongside the rest of the group. Responding to work as if it is fiction also frees the writer to fictionalize true stories or to bring truth to fictional stories. A hybridization of genre becomes possible.
Writing in community and putting our internal critics aside to access creativity are tangible acts of resistance. Like Pat Schneider, Felicia Rose Chavez built on some of the practices laid out by Peter Elbow. Chavez developed a robust approach to an anti-racist creative writing pedagogy which she teaches in university classrooms. In The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom, Chavez writes:
“Let’s not get it twisted: this anti-racist writing pedagogy is aggressive activism. It’s immediate, tangible action that disrupts the legacy of white supremacy by changing organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably.”
If you are looking to attend a creative writing group or workshop, generate more creativity, or integrate community in your writing practice, check out my website, join my email list, follow me on Facebook or Instagram, or send me an email at info@alexcafarelli.com.
Brockton Writers Series 