Chrissy Kolaya Writing Workshop

I love writing workshops. And last week I got to participate in one led by Chrissy Kolaya.

Chrissy Kolaya is a fiction and poetry writer. She teaches at the University of Central Florida, and is the author of three books. "Charmed Particles," a fiction novel, and two books of poetry, "An Anxious Body," and "Other Possible Lives."

A few weeks ago, Ms. Kolaya led me and several other classmates in a week-long writing workshop. Every year for our "May term" (a three week long semester after our spring semester), our English Department invites writers to lead the workshop, to provide students with another perspective.

I've participated in every writing workshop provided, and this year was no exception. Part of the fun of the writing workshops is that every guest writer, whether they be a professor, work in poetry, fiction or nonfiction, all bring something new to add to our "tool boxes."

One of the main exercises we did was Linda Barry journals. Linda Barry is a cartoonist who has several works on exercises to help spur writing, you can find her at @NearSitedMonkey on Twitter. The journal exercise we did in the class takes five minutes, split into four sections.

The journal exercise two of the sense: seeing and hearing. What we see and hear will spur our creativity, such as a phrase someone says. Linda Barry recommends doing the journals in a composition notebook. I didn't have one on hand for the workshop, so I used a loose leaf notebook.

A photo of one of my entries, in the top left what I did, top right what I saw, bottom left what I overheard someone say, and bottom right is a drawing. If you wish to do a journal entry yourself, start with 1 minute of drawing helixes, 2 minutes for what you did, another 2 for what you observed, and 30 seconds each for the overheard quote and drawing.

The journal entries were a part of the exercise to engage the "writing brain," which Ms. Kolaya brought up several times. She taught us, through assigned readings of short stories, on how to read like a writer: observe what other writers do and replicate those tools, sentence structures, actions, etc. in our own works. And the drawing section forces people (like myself) out of our comfort zones. Sometimes to make good work you need to scribble a crappy drawing in 30 seconds.

One piece of advice Ms. Kolaya gave us that stood out to me was (to paraphrase) "Good fiction engages you so you feel like the [character] or are experiencing it with them."

Part of that process is to use the senses to immerse people. Ms. Kolaya advised us not to worry about adding all the senses in one draft, but to layer them in with each draft. I found that advice particularly helpful, because I have struggle to add sensory details for all the sense into my writing.

Another exercise we did was digging deeper into short stories and fiction in general to "reverse engineer" a piece that "blows your socks off."

The reverse engineering process includes re-reading a work, taking notes, along with buying a copy that you can write on. Ms. Kolaya provided the analogy of job shadowing, and to seek out interviews by that writer on their process. She also advised us not to compare ourselves too much to authors, to ensure you create your own style and voice.

I really enjoyed reading the short fiction. I read a lot of articles and long fiction, but short stories are not something I was initially drawn to. So reading the micro, flash and short fiction was a refreshing change for me.

Here is the list of works we read, in case you are curious:

• Beggar’s Night - Yasmina Madden

• The Story of Biddy Mason - Dana Johnson

We dug into a list of questions and talked about it in class, such as what details stuck out to us, what was the POV (point of view), what is the protagonist's underlying problem?, etc.

We also pulled from our personal lives to make a scene. I wrote about my old play area in my family's old house in the basement on a blue rug. I focused on sight and hearing senses, such as the whirr of the battery operated trains I used to run on the rug. While the class was primarily about fiction, the use of nonfiction gave us practice for fiction writing. Senses are senses, no matter what you're writing.

One of the changes I've made since the workshop is reading more short stories, and compiling a list to re-read and dig into. I have stopped doing the journals, but I plan to start again once I get a notebook specifically for it (keeping the habit is key to success. I admit my stopping doesn't help, though I am still committed to it).

Overall I really enjoyed the workshop, and appreciated getting to know Ms. Kolaya. If you'd like to learn more about her, check out her website at chrissykolaya.com. A huge thanks again to Chrissy Kolaya for taking some time out of her busy life to help teach us.

Have you ever attended a writing workshop? What did you take away from it? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading this edition of "Conductor Pat's Perspective." If you enjoyed my writing and want to talk further, feel free to reach out on my social media, links below and on the contact page. You can also sign up for my newsletter below.