YOU HAVE JUST BEEN WORKSHOPPED!

You sit in a circle of desks, and you distribute your work to your classmates like you're passing out your newborn baby to classroom full of strangers. You hope that they support the neck and don't drop your baby. You read your work of personal non-fiction aloud, emphasizing you favorite phrases and articulating your carefully constructed alliterations. You are proud, and you are self-conscious. You finish reading your work, you set your paper down, you look around, and you wait.

You must listen. You can't respond or answer questions or explain. You must remain silent while you listen to all of your classmates talk about what they like about your piece, your baby.  You bite your lip because you don't want to smile and look pretentious. You hope they get to the critique soon because you handle that better. You handle criticism better than compliments.

Then, they start. They talk about your baby right in front of you. They tell you what confuses them about your piece, what frustrates them, what bothers them. They tell you what doesn't sound right and what doesn't fit. They tell you what they think and what they interpret, and you know that they're wrong, that that's not what you meant, but you can't defend your baby or explain yourself. They are getting it all wrong. You look down at your paper because you don't want them to see your face; you know you look agitated and defenseless and hurt.

Then, it's your turn to talk. You recognize areas that need more context. You admit that the way you phrased that was awkward. You identify that there needs to be more description. You tell them, "And actually, when I said my dad didn't come home from work one day, I didn't mean that he left us for another women. I meant that he died."

Times up. Class is over. You have just been workshopped.