Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things: Patterns, Poetry... - Softcover

Gabriel, Richard P.

9780201721836: Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things: Patterns, Poetry...

Softcover

ISBN 10: 020172183X ISBN 13: 9780201721836

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 2002

Provides business and technical professionals with a new and effective alternative to impersonal peer reviews and scientific workshops. Describes in detail how to conduct and participate in a successful workshop. Softcover.

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From the Back Cover:

"Richard Gabriel explains clearly and thoughtfully why and how the workshop approach can methodically enhance individual vision through communal creativity. Poets, come down from your lonely garrets! Programmers, emerge from your cubicles! Read this book. Your friends can help you and your art may be the better for it."

—Guy L. Steele Jr., Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

"This comprehensive guide to the practice is packed with anecdotes and examples, entertaining reading threaded with lots of useful, practical information. I think it's destined to be an indispensable sourcebook for creators of all kinds, regardless of their fields."

—Janet Holmes, MFA Program for Writers, Boise State University, author of Humanophone

"After reading this book I'm eager to fully experience workshopping and see what the process really can bring to me and to others. Gabriel's extension of the workshop format to refining other types of work sets the wheels spinning for me. How many other 'things that need refinement' can benefit from the same treatment?"

—Kent Beck, Director, Three Rivers Institute

"Richard Gabriel writes with insight, experience, and a wry sense of humor that casts light on this little explored creative activity and kept me reading from the first page to the last."

—Richard Schmitt, author of The Aerialist

The writers' workshop provides creative writers with a time-tested teaching and revision tool, and business and technical professionals with a new and effective alternative to impersonal peer reviews and scientific workshops. In this intense, interactive, gift-based forum, writers help each other hone their craft and improve individual pieces of work.

Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things describes in detail how to conduct and participate in a successful creative or technical workshop. You will learn from the author's own struggles, as well as from the collective experience of the software patterns and creative writing communities.

Topics include:

Origins of the writers' workshop

How the workshop works

The nature of creative work

Workshop players and settings

Workshop preparation

The author's initial presentation

Restating and summarizing the work

Providing positive feedback

Suggestions for improvements

The author's response and revision

Whether you write poems, short stories, documentation, or software, the collective energy of a writers' workshop can significantly enhance innovation, clarity, and effectiveness in your writing. Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things will help you get the most from a workshop experience.

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About the Author:

Poet and computer scientist Richard P. Gabriel, Ph.D., M.F.A., introduced the writers' workshop to the software patterns community. He is the author of Patterns of Software (Oxford University Press, 1996) and Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems (MIT Press, 1985). His poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines.

020172183XAB05312002

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