The Tin House Winter Workshops are held on the Oregon Coast, in the small town of Newport. The quirky Sylvia Beach Hotel is an appropriate literary-themed home base, each room named after a famed author and decorated in the style of their particular genre. I applied to the nonfiction workshop at the last minute, feeling dejected from recent rejections and once again questioning my validity as a writer, as a creator of art. When I saw the instructors for this year’s nonfiction workshop though, I knew I needed to apply.
I’ve admired Esmé Weijun Wang‘s work and, in fact, met her briefly at AWP 2019. I asked her to sign my copy of The Collected Schizophrenias after an awkward non-conversation where I blurted out something about being grateful for her essays. (I am not good around celebrated authors or actors, let me just apologize in advance. Or in retrospect. Sorry, Bradley Cooper.)
Attending my first writing workshop with Tin House and with Esmé was a gift I didn’t realize I needed at this stage of my career. My small cohort of incredible women writers were generous in their feedback and kindness. Their critiques were insightful, their encouragement sincere.
Esmé and the other talented instructors, T Kira Madden and Sophia Shalmiyev, each gave lectures and readings (one of which, I surprised myself by crying through.) Other highlights included the book exchange, dive bar karaoke, participant readings, and moonlit morning runs on the compact coastal beach.
One night we talked about our writing goals for the year and I mentioned my participation in #Rejection100, a group whose purpose is to celebrate the act of trying. Sometimes, I feel too uneducated in the literary world, sometimes I feel too old. Sometimes I feel my voice is too privileged or too uninteresting to have anything of significance to add to the conversation.
T Kira’s lecture, and time with these writers, gave me permission to move beyond my own expectations and the world’s requirements of my work. She challenged us to ask questions of ourselves: What are you writing toward? What are you writing about? How do we reframe our ideas of what “no” means? I like the idea that in nonfiction we are “chasing the question, honoring the unknown.”
Esmé asked us on the last day of the workshop what we’re taking away with us, what we are offering to our fellow participants, from this time on the coast. I said I would take away, and offer, permission. Permission to, as T Kira encouraged, lean into my interests, to listen to my mistakes. Permission to write into the paradox, to take my time. I am impatient and this rushed world fuels this tendency. In writing, in creating, in listening to the story that is tumbling within, I’m learning to take my time, allow rejection to serve as a teacher, not a declaration of who I am. I’ll continue to honor the unknown, and give myself permission to chase the question. Even if I don’t know quite where I’m headed.
