Last night’s workshop has left me so befuddled that I don’t even know how to begin to explain what in the hell happened. I’ve started writing about it about four times and have deleted each attempt about three sentences in.

It’s tough. Trying to find the line between honest and diplomatic tends to be a bit stifling.

I started taking classes at The Loft in 2003 and by my estimation have participated in roughly 115 workshops. Last night’s workshop was by far the most contentious, stressful, and argumentative discussion I’ve ever participated in. This workshop was even more intense than the time the UN Navy Freakshow told NBFB that “you better never fucking tell me to shut up again” or something to that effect.

Columbia, so dubbed because she told us not once, not twice, but three times in class last week that she went to Columbia, is the kind of person who doesn’t have that “I’m dominating the conversation so I better pipe down” meter that most people are born with. You couple this with the inability to discern constructive criticism from condescension and you have a recipe for disaster.

She accused the author of stealing from Crime and Punishment, all American military of being stupid, baseball-cap-wearing frat boys, and most of the class of being ignorant.

It was brutal.

But the class didn’t take it sitting down. They stood up for themselves and the story. People even called her presumptuous and condescending. Right there in class! And Jags, who beat me to the punch, pointed out that she was contradicting herself quite egregiously.

I’ve never seen so many people get so angry in a workshop, none of whom were the writer being workshopped. I didn’t get a chance to ask him how he thought things went.

And this was only our first workshop. This is going to be the best class ever.