Welcome Mongolia!

A Zoom Writing Odyssey

By Diana Goetsch

Early in the pandemic, I volunteered to lead a Zoom writing session to help raise money for Paragraph, a workspace for writers in New York City. We put the word out to Paragraph members, posted a notice on Facebook, and to our shock, eighty people showed up. There were writers from the US and Canada, South America, England, Wales, continental Europe, Africa and Australia. Several who’d registered to study with me at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival — which had since been canceled — now met me online. “Will you be here again next week?” people wanted to know at the end of our ninety minutes together. (Here?)

I discussed the idea of continuing with Joy Parisi, founder of Paragraph, and programs director Ryan Davenport, who assisted me on Zoom. Nothing was normal or certain in the early days of Covid, but we knew a bright spot when we saw one. We decided to hold weekly Zoom writing sessions on a donation basis, for as long as people showed up.

The sessions began at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, just as the nightly applause, honoring New York City’s healthcare and essential workers, erupted outside my window. Participants chimed in by writing their name and location in the Zoom chat window, and I greeting them out loud. “Welcome London, Portland and Brooklyn, and Ohio, LA and Long Island!” “Welcome Groton, Connecticut, where they build submarines.” “Rotten Groton,” wrote Judith in Groton. “Welcome Buenos Aires, and Bolivia, and Iowa City.” “Hi, I’m in Mongolia.” “Welcome Mongolia!”

There was joy, and an esprit de corps, among strangers grateful to gather around the fire of our common art in a dark time. There was joy for me as well, to be able to share a corpus of teachings I’d developed over years, with more people than I’d ever imagined. I was using the principals and techniques of my “Free-Writing Intensive,” a workshop I’d first taught at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and subsequently in art centers and living rooms across the US, to groups typically capped at twelve. Could these teachings translate to a cast the size of Ben-Hur on Zoom?

We knew a bright spot when we saw one.

Not only was the answer yes, but the teachings were even more effective online than in person. Participants (often typing reactions into the chat window) found it “riveting,” “utterly amazing” and “transformative.” Others felt restored, reminded of their inspiration to write from long ago—or just prior to Covid. “Thank you for giving writing back to me,” someone wrote. People kept registering, week after week, some bringing friends and relatives. What was going on?

Part of the answer had to do with the social isolation that caused us to be online in the first place. Instead of having to travel, and navigate the politics of a workshop table, people could focus on navigating the page, in the privacy of their homes, among familiar objects and pets. We were in webinar mode, so nobody had to present themselves. But a few times each session I’d ask if anyone wanted to read, a few would click the “Raise Hand” button, and the screen switched from me to others. Suddenly there was Bernadette in her bedroom in LA, in front of an elaborate shrine, or Tia on her deck in Washington State. The day was still bright in the mountains of Crestone, Colorado, where Adam read to us, while Emma, in her cottage in Quebec, already had the lights on. Belén read from a kitchen in Buenos Aires, where winter was beginning. Vanessa in Brooklyn was surrounded by a lush array of house plants.

There is no overstating the benefits of refuge—or isolation, or even exile—in literary expression.

Zoom affords many options for privacy and disclosure. The majority of participants never raised their hand, and some who did opted to leave their camera off. A writer with a speech impairment texted her exercise to Ryan, who read it aloud for her. During Q&A, some opted to type a question in the chat window, rather than come on screen, and Ryan presented these. They could also send questions to me privately.

There is no overstating the benefits of refuge—or isolation, or even exile—in literary expression. The Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, whose books were banned under a police state in South Africa, once said that she wrote as if writing from the grave. Dante expresses a similar sentiment in The Inferno, when Guido de Monte Feltro says that he will tell his tale only because he knows his listeners won’t ever return to the world. T.S. Eliot used that Dante passage as the epigraph to “Prufrock,” and Eliot himself did some of his most important writing in asylums, as did Anne Sexton. Virginia Woolf emphasized the need for a room of one’s own, which James Baldwin found in France and Istanbul.

When I encouraged participants to try out a technique I was modeling, and gave them some time to fill a page or two, I turned my camera off, so the screen was blank as they wrote — if not from the grave, from somewhere in the vast pandemic. Then, using a Tibetan singing bowl, I called them back from the page, turned my screen on, and gave them a minute to look over what they’d written. Then I offered the opportunity to read — before a supportive worldwide audience.

And what they read gave me the perfect opportunity to teach. Perfect because I could zero in on the particular skill we were targeting, and the effects it affords. I could also sensitize them to their own best writing — perhaps the most valuable feedback a teacher can give — without ever having to administer a workshop critique, because no one expects a critique of an exercise.

So there was minimal pressure involved, and to further lower the pressure, I constantly reminded participants to give themselves “permission to suck,” which is also the permission to be brilliant. And I think it was this permission, more than anything else, that kept them coming back every Thursday, through the spring, and into the summer.

In the current “workshopping” culture, nearly all writing craft is taught at the revision stage. The central activity in (high-priced) creative writing MFA programs is the dispensing of workshop “feedback” on pages submitted in advance. There are some great writers teaching in these programs, but you could build a small bomb with the amount of ego investment in that situation. The continuous hope for praise and dread of criticism, the inevitable alliances and jealousies, favorites and scapegoats, issues of trust and integrity — none of this has anything to do with learning to write.

In the Zoom sessions, writing craft was being taught at the point of creation—much the way music, dance, or painting is passed on—which simultaneously lowers the pressure and raises the enjoyment and excitement. Composing, for every writer, is an act of walking in the dark, where you might surprise yourself on the page—though you’re also allowed to suck. An MFA candidate in a prestigious program told me, “I feel like I’ve made more progress in developing my writing into a practice this summer than my entire last year at _________.” Another said she was being exposed to concepts she’d “never encountered in twenty-odd years of writing workshops.”

At the request of a man in Venice (a gondolier!) who was staying up past midnight to join us, we added another session on “European Time” (Wednesdays @ 2 p.m.). The attendance, now split between the two sessions, held steady, as each week I introduced new techniques for going down the page while remaining, as William Stafford liked to say, “susceptible to now.”

At the end of August, after twenty weeks, it was time to bring things to a close. Twenty felt like a good number, it had to end somewhere, and writers eventually must sustain themselves. The last two sessions addressed just this: what it would take for each of us to install and maintain a productive writing practice.

I had never before taught writing online. In fact, I had avoided it repeatedly when propositioned by institutions and students. Then, as a result of the pandemic, I saw how effective it was to offer teachings—and a way to train as a writer—to people who otherwise would have no access to this. That’s exciting for anyone interested in inclusion, democracy, and art itself. “I can’t afford to do an MFA,” said Vanessa. “Moments with people with your understanding of the craft are so valuable to me.” Vanessa is a talented young fiction writer from West Africa, and the mother of two small children. I feel lucky to be her teacher.

Note: This fall I will be re-starting the Zoom writing sessions, under the name “Actually Writing.” I’ll offer new teachings and practices every Thursday for 20 weeks, beginning Oct. 8. Anyone can register for a single session, or the entire series, at paragraphny.com/actually-writing