How to Prepare for your First Creative Writing Workshop:
Step 1: Assure yourself you have enough time to write a 15 page short story, even if you forget when your due date is every few days.
Step 2: Proclaim to all your friends that you’re going to be busy being an intense self loathing writer for the next few weeks until your workshop is due.
Step 3: Spend more time thinking about writing than actually writing.
Step 4: Procrastinate/seek inspiration by binge watching Netflix.
Step 5: When it’s a week before your work is due, avoid panicking and tell yourself that you “work best under pressure.”
Step 6: Spend every second of non-class time to write, write and write some more.
Step 7: Start skipping your classes to keep writing.
Step 8: Stop sleeping and showering because they take too much time.
Step 9: Despise every word you type and doubt everything you’ve ever believed in multiple times a day.
Step 10: Become a temporary recluse and live off of coffee and ramen.
Step 11: The day your workshop is due, wake up, open your laptop, and don’t stop typing until 11:59.
Step 12: Avoid reading through your entire story because it most likely will be a garbled mess of ideas too big to fix.
Step 13: Turn in your story at 11:59, close your laptop, and sleep for 12 hours.
Step 14: Shower, get your shit together, and hope to god your classmates don’t hate your work.
Step 15: On workshop day, avoid the urge to ditch class and drive to Mexico City.
Step 16: Be genuinely surprised when no one roasts you in workshop.
Step 17: Give yourself a pat on the back as you leave class with edits and get ready to do it all again for Draft #2.
But seriously, good luck to everyone workshopping. You’re going to be just fine!