The Quill Driver's Workshop is all about your works in process. Got a story that needs saving? A poem still finding its rhythm? A play or screenplay not quite ready for the spotlight? The Quill Driver’s Workshop is your community pit stop for honest, constructive feedback from fellow creative writers, both students and faculty. Bring your works-in-progress, your messy first drafts, or that one piece you swear is “almost done,” and let’s figure it out together. It’s a place to polish, rethink, and occasionally laugh at the creative chaos—because great writing doesn’t happen alone.
The Quill Driver's Workshop is an ACC community of writers comprised of students, faculty, staff, and recent alumni. Our workshop sessions seek first to create and maintain connection and support between our attendees, whose writing and workshop experiences ranges from first-time writers to published faculty. Our workshop is a collaborative space in which writers can ask questions, test ideas, plan revisions, and otherwise engage in creative practices with other creative practitioners. We foster an author-controlled workshop environment in which the writer of the piece determines the kind of feedback they'd like to get. Based on the work of Felicia Rose Chavez and Matthew Salesses, we work against the traditional model of silencing the author while the audience claims the work and its revision process as their own. Writers own their work, their workshops, and their revisions--and the Quill Driver's Workshop is here to support writers' successes, however they define them for themselves.
To facilitate the most productive workshop experience for all involved, please follow these guidelines:
Email eli.ryder@austincc.edu to be added to the Quill Driver's Workshop mailing list.
Keep an eye out for the communications that come out before each session!
Reply all to the "Send Your Work Here" email with the following:
A draft or excerpt of a draft on which you’re currently working, in .docx or .pdf format
Your specific goal for that piece of writing:
Audience?
Publication market?
Theme or genre or idea?
Three to five specific questions about your work you’d like the workshop to answer
The first five submissions we get will be discussed. We read your work before the workshop date. Then we talk and we let your guidance steer the workshop. Come hang out!
*The Quill Driver's Workshop is open to current ACC students, recent ACC alumni, and current ACC faculty/staff.*
Embody a spirit of collaboration, community, inclusion, respect, and growth
Respond specifically and directly to the feedback requests the writer makes, and do not discuss comments, notes, or responses outside those arenas. General praise is always acceptable, but criticism on topics not opened for discussion by the writer should not be discussed
Exhibit supportive workshop citizenship by being available to offer feedback as well as receiving feedback. Workshops are not one-way consulting or editing services, and all attendees should support their fellow workshoppers with mindful, focused, and attentive energy.
Attend as often as possible, whether or not you've submitted work for feedback. Submission is not required for attendance, or to respond to your fellow writers.
Listen to understand and accept. Speak to be clear and expressive. Do not listen or speak to be right, to convince, to overpower, or to minimize. Agreement, being "right," persuading others, etc., are not the purpose of our discourse.
Highland Campus Room TBA
6:00pm - 8:00 PM Selected Tuesdays, Listed Below
February 3
March 3
April 7
May 5