How to run a writing workshop?

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Eva Avian, in her book “Writing and making people write”, published by Editions DeBoeck in 2018, gives us her advice and experiences in leading writing workshops.

Since the invention of writing some 6,000 years ago, we humans have never ceased to carry out our exchanges with our words and our language, ignoring the obstacle of time. How To create a Wikipedia page for an author we are fortunate to be able to receive the ideas expressed many centuries ago.

Through writing, individual experiences are relocated over time, put out of the reach of oblivion – for the moment – at the disposal of those who later read them.

Who is Eva Avian?

Eva Avian has lived with the desire to write since the age of 6. She knows something about ‘the desire to write’, of ‘ getting people to write’. She has been leading writing workshops for 20 years, and has written numerous novels, as well as collections of poetry.

Eva Avian began to write after the death of her grandmother, to deal with her loneliness, without any further explanation of the events from those around her. His desire to write was born out of this loss, absence and loneliness. She is convinced that the desire to write comes from somewhere, from a place, from a time when ‘ something’ happened for all of us.

Eva’s mother wrote little words to her that she signed “The four leaf clover”. She wrote her love to him, she encouraged her, she congratulated her. The messages were always sweet, positive, encouraging. His mother put the writing in their house.

Until she was about 12 years old, Eva wrote little stories that she illustrated, stories of abandoned children doing their best. She also wrote some poems. The pride and wonder of her parents surely contributed to her continuing to write.

Then, on television, she saw an episode where the teenage heroine was writing a diary. Eva confided her secrets in her journal and there was something sacred about this notebook: no one could read it.

Eva loved notebooks, notebooks, papers. After a while, she began to write again because writing became a place for the intimate, a sacred, inviolable place, just for her. In fiction, Eva has found freedom, and the best hiding place for her secrets. When she showed her texts to friends, she was told that she wrote well, that she should write.

She is a writer, leads writing workshops, but she has not studied literature. She worked for several years as an occupational therapist in a psychiatric hospital, where she once offered a writing workshop. Several times a week, those who wished came there. Then she left this universe.

She did a lot of odd jobs. One day, she discovered the book by Odile Piet and Claire Boniface“The writing workshops”. She then followed a few workshops with Elisabeth Bing, which gave her a taste for high standards. For several years, in the context of a housewife’s life, she used the time she could to prepare workshops, facilitate them and systematically analyze them. It was a real training school. The more she advanced in research and practice, the more passionate she became. His need to write grew.

The purpose of this book

In the first part of her book, Eva Avian reveals her way of leading a writing workshop. In a second part, she transmits her diverse and varied writing proposals, which are very useful.

She wrote this guide book presented above based on her experiences. This book is a tool for practicing and stimulating writing fiction. According to her, you only learn through experimentation. We learn to write by writing, over and over again. To write, she advises to write, read, watch, listen and live!

The purpose of this guide is not to turn a writing apprentice into a novelist, nor to provide advice on how to make a living from one’s pen. For her, a writer is someone who watches, who listens. Writing is surely learning to look differently. It is also expressing what is going through our heads, what hurts us. It is also to exist differently. Or to leave a trace.

Eva insists that anyone can write. Writing is not just for the elite. It should be seen as a means of expression and creation that everyone can use and develop. Eva read stories, she read to escape, to experience something else. She wanted to keep those bits of life.

Writing makes you want to read, according to Eva Avian. Taking a writing workshop teaches you to read differently. Professional Wikipedia writer no one can move forward in their writing without reading what others have written. To write, you have to read. Even a bad novel can advance your writing.

Eva Avian adores books that make her live another life.

Eva Kalian’s advice

She advises to read the novels of Marguerite Durras, which seem so simple and so obvious. This writer has a tone, a voice, which belongs only to her. She gives the impression of writing like everyone else.

If you want to know what a character is or how a theme evolves in a story, Eva recommends reading Marcel Proust. This writer puts things back in place. It will show you what you need to learn, including the extreme demands of the writing job.

Eva was also nurtured by writers such as Oster, Gaily, Toussaint, Irving, Allende, Garcia MarquezBoyd and others, who taught her what a story is. Rattigan, Agora Kristof and novel Don Quixote of Cervantes have marked forever.

The purpose of writing

We are all speech beings. Abstract thought, to express itself, passes through words. But, in our profitable society, how can we afford the time to write?

When we write, most of the time, it is neither for the fame nor for the money. But, maybe we write to be good with ourselves, to exhale a part of us that would not otherwise exist, to advance towards ourselves, to try answers or to dare questions and for the pleasure too.

To get better, to move forward, according to the principle of resilience developed by Boris Cyrillic, writing seems to have its place. Maybe we are writing to get through the shocks of life. Or writing is a constructive way of moving towards ourselves.

By writing we become a filter that tries to say something about the world. We are looking for our ‘ voice’. Eva knows why she gets people to write: she is convinced – like me for that matter – that everyone has a talent, a particular voice in writing. She likes to participate in this journey, to encourage it, to accompany it.

She is always amazed to meet so many imaginaries, to listen to all these voices. Each of us, with our baggage and our limitations, we can write, move forward in our writing, feed on the writing and comments of others.

Eva Avian leads writing workshops because writing belongs to everyone. The writing workshop is a creative and dynamic tool.

Create a writing workshop

The first writing workshops set up in speaking Europe date back to the 1970s. It seems like writing workshops are all the rage these days. Writing too, by the way. There are many people who keep diaries, write poems or the story of their life. But, until recently, writing seemed to be taken care of only by teaching.

Most often, we access writing and literature in a school setting. We are transferred a knowledge that we swallow as best we can. But, it was not often about experience, pleasure, expression and creativity.

The writing workshops have changed the situation: we can write there without shame, without being at fault. We can write there for fun, without wanting to make a profession of it. There we can meet people who read and write, where we can be actors.