A useful workshop considers who “the reader” is for each particular writer and therefore approaches each particular story on its own terms. Otherwise, intentions are not reflected back to the author but forced on her. A common complaint about the proliferation of MFA programs is that they breed generic writing. The real danger is not a single style, it’s a single audience. It is effectively a kind of colonization to assume that we all write for the same audience or that we should do so if we want our fiction to sell.
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