A class has a basic contract between participants and teacher/facilitator: The environment will be a safe place in which to learn, to take important risks, and to try out new possibilities. We learn when we feel safe enough to experiment and play with our vulnerabilities. The teacher/facilitator is always responsible for maintaining that atmosphere. The participants make the most of that climate to grow and stretch. When a teacher fails to maintain that set of circumstances, or when a group member uses class participants as a captive audience for a particular agenda, an essential act of trust in the learning environment is breached. The group or class then deteriorates in effectiveness.

What I want for you is to take risks with your writing. The riskier you are as a writer, the better you will become as a writer. Your piece may turn out better as well. Do consider one aspect about risk though: The risk should be to realize a writer's personal truth and not to catalyze gratuitous emotion or shock in the reader. "Guerrilla writing" serve no one in the long run, though the writer may feel that he or she has catalyzed a desired emotional or intellectual response. Instead successful writing groups and classes serve to extend and enhance writing craft and skills-not to further a particular individual's sense of theater.

Then, too, consider that taking a writing class to learn how to get published and not how to write better means that the class will probably fail your expectations. In the movie "I Remember Mama," Mama approaches a famous published writer to ask her to read the short stories of Mama's daughter. The writer asks Mama a key question before she will take the manuscripts: "Does your daughter want to write or to be published?" I consider this question often, and each participant needs to consider it for herself or himself. I think the best answer is: I want to write as well as I can, and then I want to get published. Keep the two goals separate and in chronological order. That will lead to a greater likelihood of accomplishing both.