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Lauren Hohle on Embracing the Unwieldy: A Fiction Workshop for Writers Who've Been Told to Stop Having Fun
by Writing Workshops Staff
5 hours ago
A lot of writing advice, when you boil it down, amounts to a single instruction: stop having fun. Trim the wandering sentence. Kill the darling. Tame the impulse. For Lauren Hohle — fiction writer, editor, and self-described ex-Evangelical with a deep resistance to being told what to do — that advice never sat right. So she built a class around rejecting it.
Grey Gardens: Embracing the Unwieldy in Fiction, an eight-week online workshop at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature, is designed for writers whose stories don't fit neatly into conventional molds — and who are tired of pretending they should. Named after the Maysles brothers' iconic documentary, the class invites writers to bring in their most unyielding fiction and, instead of cutting it down to size, find ways to expand it with greater intention.
Hohle brings serious editorial range to the table. She's the managing editor of Conjunctions and has previously worked at Big Fiction Magazine, Willow Springs Books, and the Gettysburg Review, where prose she edited won the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and appeared in the Best American series. Her own fiction has been published in Black Warrior Review, the Sun, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, and Ecotone, and her essay "The Cardinal Way" was listed as Notable in Best American Essays. In the interview below, she talks about reclaiming creative impulses, co-creating a "burn book" of bad feedback, and why she wants her workshop to feel a little like cosplay.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Lauren:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Lauren. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Lauren Hohle: Hello! I'm Lauren and the kind of person who panics at open-ended questions. I'm a fiction writer by training, but not especially by instincts. (A professor once told me a kind of parable about how she, a nonfiction writer, went to a flea market with a poet and a fiction writer. The fiction writer was contemplating what drama she could set there, the nonfiction writer was interviewing the vendors, and the poet was touching velvet. I'm somewhere between learning the vendor gossip and touching velvet.) I've been preoccupied with writing about girlhood and religious deconstruction, but I read far more widely. I've worked as an editor at literary magazines and small presses, which has given me lots of practice helping writers achieve their visions for their work.
Writing Workshops: What made you want to teach this specific class? Is it something you're focusing on in your own writing practice?
Lauren Hohle: This class is basically a manifesto! My resistance to authority and being told what to do (especially as an ex-Evangelical) has been amplified by how the stories I want to tell don't seem to fit into traditional modes. A lot of writing advice I've been given has felt like it's boiled down to "Stop having fun," so I wanted to explore what might happen if we embraced our creative, and often rebellious, impulses. The example I used early on when I talked to friends about this idea was how frequently people pointed out that I used summary. (Though, I would argue, it was often "mini scenes.") Regardless, it was pointed out as if it were a bad thing, like I dripped hot sauce down my shirt, rather than a tool. That's not to say what I was writing was finished or even good. But I kept feeling like there were more interesting conversations to be had. In my own fiction, I've begun writing "toward" these impulses explicitly and have had a few pieces published as a result. I kept saying to friends that this would be a workshop where "crazy women enabled each other," but maybe "empowered" is the better word.
Writing Workshops: Give us a breakdown of how the course is going to go. What can the students expect?
Lauren Hohle: My biggest goal is to help stuck writers feel unstuck. Students can expect to self-direct their workshops, learn a different method of reading drafts and giving feedback, as well as leave with fresh revision ideas. My favorite part of this class is how on the first day we'll co-create a "burn book" of feedback that's been unhelpful for us in the past. I'm hoping that it will feel both healing and galvanizing. I've also always fantasized about this class as part-workshop, part-cosplay, so if anyone wants to channel their inner-Little Edies and wear a shirt as a scarf for the Zoom, I welcome it! My college writing group had the requirement that you wear a silly hat — we were often scrambling, stapling paper together. Something about this set the right tone.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Lauren Hohle: LeVar Burton.
Writing Workshops: What are you currently reading?
Lauren Hohle: I'm currently reading Hothouse Bloom by Austyn Wohlers for my book club and Held: Essays in Belonging by Kathryn Nuernberger. The former has been described as a "millennial pastoral" and the latter is kind of a lyric, science communication memoir about symbiotic mutualism. Both are great!
Ready to stop taming your fiction and start leaning into your creative impulses? Join Lauren for eight weeks of expansion-focused workshopping.
Enroll in Grey Gardens →Writing Workshops: How do you choose what you're working on? When do you know it's the next thing you want to write all the way to the end?
Lauren Hohle: This is a hard question to answer because I've been working on a novel-in-stories for so long. I've really learned to write through pushing myself with each of these stories, and the problem is, the more I learn, the more I'm tempted to go back and revise everything all over again. The epigraph for the novel is a quote from a Mavis Gallant story: "Everything I could not decipher, I turned to fiction, which was my way of untangling knots." I think this sums up my approach. If I have knots to untangle, I'll keep going.
Writing Workshops: Where do you find inspiration?
Lauren Hohle: I rarely start with a plot idea. It's usually a feeling or slice of scene or a memory.
Writing Workshops: What is the best piece of writing wisdom you've received?
Lauren Hohle: Krys Lee did a guest workshop during my MFA and said something along the lines of, "Sometimes the answer is more connective tissue, versus taking an element out of a story." This is something we will explore in the class.
The other best piece of advice, and I wish I remember who said this to me, but it was, "Pay attention to yourself as a reader." I think this came out of a conversation about being resistant to plot, and this person was right, writing plot proved to be way more frustrating than reading plot, or, in paying more attention to my reading, I found more resonant choices available to me.
There are plots I find myself more drawn toward. I enjoy following a crush. I like coming-of-age stories. I love how Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes tie neatly together in the end. I love femme fatales and noir. I like those episodes of Star Trek where time moves differently for the away mission. I find stories that compile different character's rehashing of the same scene a little slow. I hate super hero stories and when New Yorker stories end with a character waiting for death. I love interiority. Voice can often carry me anywhere. And I find that if a character is going to be emotionally withholding, I need their actions to surprise me. I love "foreign films where characters stare out of windows," as my late professor used to say. I love the New Yorker stories where the opening is thematic but separate, a moment turned over like a tarot card. Collective action always makes me weepy. I love spare, vibrating sentences, and I love exuberant sentences that do back handsprings for an entire page. I love emdashes and commas. I love a list.
Writing Workshops: What is the worst piece of writing advice you've received?
Lauren Hohle: Show don't tell. It's storytelling, after all! I'm interested in not just what happens in a story, but how characters think and make meaning from it. I also prickle at resistance to passive characters. I've said this elsewhere, but passive people are people too. I don't believe stories only happen to people who feel equipped to leap over obstacles. I think this definition of story is limiting and exclusionary.
Writing Workshops: What is your favorite book to recommend on the craft of writing?
Lauren Hohle: How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo. This book is incredible and was impossible to read before bed. I found myself pumping my fist, pacing, angry all over again about the most unsavory moments from my MFA. Castillo's introduction to the concept of the "unexpected reader" alone makes this required reading for everyone interested in writing.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe?
Lauren Hohle: Engaged, curious, collaborative. I'm very earnest, and I make a lot of jokes.
Lauren's philosophy — that the answer is often more connective tissue rather than less material — runs through every element of Grey Gardens: Embracing the Unwieldy in Fiction. With readings from Ursula K. Le Guin, Joy Williams, Haruki Murakami, and others, this is a workshop for writers who want to expand what their fiction can hold rather than pare it down. If you've ever been told your story is too weird, too quiet, too plotless, or too much — this is your class. It begins April 29.
Bring your most unyielding fiction. Lauren will help you make it wilder, sharper, and more intentionally yours.
Save Your Seat in Grey Gardens →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
