I was workshopped today 

and nobody likes workshops - no matter how long they’ve been writing, no matter how good they are - because there aren’t many people who enjoy opening themselves up to the possibility that something they have created and loved and nourished might look shitty and sloppy to someone else. But: you open yourself up to that risk anyway and sometimes you land in the middle of a group of people that take workshops and writing and words seriously and tack an extra forty-five minutes onto a three hour class on a Monday because they find it important to study and argue about the merit of this sentence for fifteen minutes:

Takes a swig of Listerine, pauses, and then swallows.

and argue about the “and then,” part. Should it be there? Should ‘and’ be omitted, but ‘then’ left untouched?  Or, should the sentence read: Takes a swig of Listerine, pauses, swallows.

And the best best best part of this whole thing is not the fact that they stayed late on a Monday, and it’s not the fact that my professor - who, I think, is the best professor I’ve ever had - barely had to ask them to stay late, and it’s not the fact that some of them even liked my essay.

It is this: not one of them looked at the sentence, the “and then,” and said, “Does this question actually matter?” Or, “Who cares?”

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5. rocketlauncher said: Jaaaaaaaaaaames
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11. mightyflynn said: Good question. Did you decide what you’re going to do? An extra 40 minutes would probably just make me think about it a lot longer when I was alone!
12. jheath said: Hang on…am I the only person concerned about why this character is swallowing Listerine?
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