TIL a writers workshop in a church basement can totally derail your story

I went to this local writers workshop at St. Marks Church last Tuesday. About 20 people showed up. We were supposed to share prompts and get feedback. Halfway through, this guy named Tom starts telling us all his characters have to be based on real people he knows. He said fiction is fake if you make it up. Then he spent 20 minutes describing his neighbor's cat in detail. The whole room got quiet. I realized I had been trying to write a story about a space station but now I was second guessing every detail. Has anyone else had a writing group where someone's weird rule threw off your whole project? How do you shake that off?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavin_allen483mo ago

Ditch that guy's rule, your space station story sounds way more fun lol.

james923mo ago

People really act like someone making up wild rules is some kind of dictator. It's just a space station story, not a treaty negotiation. If he's getting worked up over imaginary rules, that's kind of weird. Gavin's version probably has aliens and explosions anyway, which is WAY better. Let the guy have his fun, rules are boring.

ruby5611mo ago

St. Marks church basement sounds exactly like the kind of place where someone would drop a weird writing rule like that tbh. But I gotta ask @james92, do you really think rules like that don't mess with your head even a little? For me it's not about the rule itself, it's that now I can't stop thinking about it. Like my brain is stuck on "is my space station story fake because I made up the aliens" even though thats obviously dumb. Tom's neighbor cat story probably wouldve made me zone out too, but the real problem is how hard it is to unhear that voice once its in your head. I usually have to write a completely different story for a few days to shake it off. Did that cat description actually go anywhere or did he just describe the fur color for 20 minutes?