LEOMINSTER — Every Friday afternoon at the Senior Center, roughly a dozen elderly members of the community take a seat in the building’s basement, positioning themselves around several long tables fashioned into a large circle.
They are there ready to share their work.
Some arrive with five-page semi-autobiographical short stories; others with straight memoir; some with fantasy tales about magic books.
But for nearly two hours, barely anyone sitting around the tables even so much as gets up to use the restroom. They sit rapt, listening as nearly every person in the room shares their stories out loud with their peers.
Unlike other writing workshops, most of the conversation between each reading is positive, focusing primarily on earnest questions provoked by the elements of each story. In other writing workshop environments, facilitated at schools or nonprofits, this is typically not the case.
“The feedback I try to keep to a minimum to tell you the truth,” coordinator Jane Lonnqvist said after Friday afternoon’s session. “I don’t want to take the fun out of it, and that’s my main fear.”
She said that she belongs to other writing groups in the area, where criticism is integral to their programming, but that at the Senior Center, that’s not the culture she’s trying to cultivate.
“The business end of (writing) is rough, but if everything that you read you’re waiting for it to be pulled apart, and you’re waiting for people to criticize it, it takes the fun out of it and you don’t want to do it anymore,” she said.
Lonnqvist knows what she’s talking about: She has been running area writing workshops for 15 years, beginning first at the Fitchburg Senior Center, next at the Fitchburg Public Library and then, ultimately, at the Leominster Senior Center.
“This is really — it’s more of a social time,” Lonnqvist said.
Indeed, the energy levels during the two-hour session are high and students are demonstrably unafraid to crack jokes at their — or someone else’s — expense. Within a half-hour, it’s evident the participants know each other well and that they take true pleasure in each other’s company.
This is so much the case that Lonnqvist said it’s not unusual for the group to gather outside of workshop time, to grab a coffee or get dinner, discussing subjects both writing-related and otherwise. She jokingly remarked that, in the past, when she has floated the idea of splitting the group into two classes in order to be time effective, students rejected the notion.
“They don’t want to be separated,” she said. “They want to stay together.”
As for writing ability, Lonnqvist praised the range of her pupils, as well as their development over the years. While some, like herself, have written for decades, others only began more recently, in part because of the regular workshop.
“Some of these people are finding that they really do have some writing talent,” Lonnqvist said.
But, she said, the goal is not for any of her students to necessarily start a new career — although she’s willing to help guide them if they want.
“If I have people get published that’s great,” she said. But, she added, she’s dealt first-hand with the time-consuming nature of submitting one’s work to magazines and anthologies. And although it’s been fruitful — she’s published several pieces in the “Chicken Soup” series, for example — it really requires both a lot of both time and energy.
At the end of the day, Lonnqvist said, the workshop is about providing mental stimulation and getting area seniors out of their houses, fostering that energy and connectedness her pupils seem to hold tightly to.
“I wanted people to have something to come to, a reason for writing, and it keeps your mind going,” Lonnqvist said. “You just gotta keep going here.”
"craft" - Google News
December 30, 2019 at 06:17PM
https://ift.tt/2rDUM4P
Senior Center writing workshop promotes craft, comradery - Sentinel & Enterprise
"craft" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YrY2MS
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment