You can write a narrative all the way to the end and still not be able to say what it is about. Uh-oh. Learn how to capture the essence of a story in a few clear sentences. That analysis becomes your North Star. It is your way into drafting or revising a story, and it's your way into convincing someone they really should read it, with a pitch, synopsis, or flap copy. Learn to articulate the subject and idea of your story as a guide to its development and promotion. The workshop is fast-paced and fun and very practical. You will: 1.develop an umbrella statement of the action and its impact; 2. describe the vision and the world of the story, and 3. say how the fate of your protagonist proves your concept of the story world. Go away with a veritable banner of intention and focus!

In this workshop, you will generate new material through discussion and exercises, and you will receive feedback from peers and the instructor throughout the two days.

Writing a short story can seem confusing, especially when there’s so much you want to say and so little space to say it in. What do you do with all those important details, those great side characters, and those pages of history? And how do you tie it all up in a meaningful way?

This weekend course is designed to give you a simple, clear roadmap to the writing of the short story, and to travel that road with you step by step, so that you become familiar with each twist and turn. Through a series of in-class exercises, you will develop a character, design a world for her/him to inhabit, discover a plot, and then write a narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end. By the end of the course, you should have a complete first draft of a short story to revise—and to serve as a model for future stories.

Read more...

As any writing instructor worth her salt will tell you, the key to developing as a writer is devoting your time and energy to the craft. But, as any busy budding writer might attest, that time can often be difficult to come by in the hustle and bustle of modern life. In this weekend workshop, writers will learn strategies for cultivating a healthy writing practice. Specially-designed writing prompts will challenge you to make the time in your everyday life for your creative ambitions; feedback from fellow writers will help you to sharpen your skills; and group discussions of a variety of different published works will help you to become more aware of the literary community that awaits you.

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments; provide feedback on writing you produce in our weekend.

Ready to write stories you had no idea you’d ever write, explore subjects you never thought you’d explore, take risks, experiment, and surprise yourself in the process? Ready to write a lot? This class will be more of a fiction workout than workshop (although we’ll do a bit of that, too) that will challenge you to write a complete, 300-500-word flash fiction by the end of the weekend, one that is ready to go out into the world.

How will we do that? By thinking of our writing as an exercise. An exercise in dialogue, tone, imagery, point-of-view, setting, characterization—you name it, just don’t call it a “story” quite yet. That comes later. Together we will explore the world of flash fiction (stories of 500 words or fewer) through discussion of published examples and through multiple writing exercises that will break you out of your comfort zone. We’ll roll up our sleeves together and think of art as exercise. Whether you have a dozen story ideas in mind or none whatsoever, you will leave this class with a greater appreciation of the flash form.

Read more...

Creating a public display of emotion is one way to describe “making a scene.” We’ve all been there, usually as onlookers, occasionally as participants. Most often, public spectacles are spontaneous, but scenes on paper are anything but. Particularly in the early stages of the writing process, scenes require considerable planning and forethought. In The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer, author Sandra Scofield defines scenes as “those passages in narrative when we slow down and focus on an event in the story so that we are ‘in the moment’ with characters in action.” If the scene is compelling enough, the reader becomes a bystander of sorts, and characters come to life.

Anyone who writes short stories, novellas, novels, memoirs, screenplays or dramatic plays must be proficient at creating compelling scenes. Think about it: All the significant moments in any narrative get conveyed through scene. Scenes are the building blocks of narrative, regardless of the form that narrative takes. If the event or moment is significant in the life of the story, chances are you will develop it through scene. What’s less important tends to be summarized.

Read more...

“Voice”—what poet Tony Hoagland has called “the distinctive presentation of an individual speaker”—can be among the more difficult elements of poetic craft to define or teach, but it’s also one of the most important: a compelling poetic voice engages and connects us to the reader. Developing our voices into what poets Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux have called “a more flexible instrument” also can be an exciting key to generating poems in which we make discoveries that surprise both us and our readers. In this workshop we’ll focus on the concept of voice, both with an eye to expanding what Hoagland calls our poetic “repertoire” and as a mode of generating new poems. We’ll spend our week together writing and sharing new work, in a supportive, no-pressure exchange, in response to exercises designed for voice, as well as reading and discussing the work of other poets for inspiration and models. Our goal will be to spend the week in pleasurable creative activity as we explore the possibilities thinking about voice opens for us, and to discover the gifts that can lead to new poems from the exercises we draft. This is a generative workshop, open to poets at all levels of experience.

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

As anyone who has engaged with writing in any serious way knows, writing itself is essentially a spiritual endeavor. In order to write well it’s necessary to tap into the flow of spiritual energy inside each of us, whether we call that energy creativity or inspiration or something else. In this class, we’ll generate new work in an energizing, strictly positive environment, using prompts and in-class writing to explore the places in our lives where the moments and details intersect with meaning. We’ll use my easy, fool-proof method for tapping into the inner wellspring from which all good writing comes. And we’ll spend time working on editing the writing we get, using spiritual skills such as listening to intuition and briefly dropping down into the silence beyond thought, to improve our editing skills and finish some writing we’ve generated. Together we’ll create a small, close-knit community that fosters creativity, engenders fresh material and new ideas, and results in writing that shines from within. This class will be useful for anyone writing essays, a memoir, or a spiritual autobiography; for anyone struggling with perfectionism; and for anyone who’s just getting started or trying to locate their true material. The class welcomes writers at all levels.

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

Experience the thrill of creative effort! Do you long to jumpstart – or bolster – your writing practice? Need submission guidance? This workshop checks those boxes and more! Our goal by week’s end is for you to write and share (always optional) two to three “brave, unflinching” concise essays to submit to The Sun Magazine’s Readers Write section. The Sun is an outstanding literary magazine that reaches more than 70,000 readers. The overall goal for the publication, as stated by editor and co-founder, Sy Safransky, is to create a feeling of connection between contributors and readers.

We’ll work energetically, remembering that serious work takes serious play. We’ll first look deeply into The Sun Magazine, whose issues “evoke the splendor and heartache of being human.” We’ll then have several focused mini-lessons with guided writing prompts that elicit your best writing, followed by constructive group feedback. Expect lively, interactive sessions and breakthroughs aplenty.

Read more...

There’s nothing new
under the sun,
but there are new suns.

––Octavia Butler

In this workshop, open to writers at any level of experience, we’ll focus on fiction that breaches the parameters of strict realism by incorporating the supernatural, the surprising, and the absurd. We’ll consider why writers invent alternative realities and discuss the challenges of constructing imagined worlds. We’ll also examine how surreal narratives can illuminate real-life issues and tensions by framing them through a different lens. How do the altered realities portrayed in our fiction intersect with the reality we’re living in now?

In our first meeting, you’ll submit a short story or novel chapter you’ve previously written that includes surreal or speculative elements. This might be a piece influenced by sci fi, fantasy, fairy tale, or horror, or a narrative that skews reality through exaggeration, experimentation, or satire. Throughout the week, we’ll have in-depth conversations about each writer’s submission, in unsilenced workshops guided by the writer’s questions and aims. We’ll also complete generative writing exercises when we meet, inspired by the pieces workshop members submit. By the end of the week, you’ll have concrete feedback to fuel revision of your work-in-progress and a portfolio of strange scenes and sketches you might expand in the future.

In this workshop, we will critique writing you bring from home and generate new writing through exercises and assignments.

This workshop is based on the premise that the whole story is made up of parts, that writing a memoir starts with a compilation of many pieces—episodes or anecdotes or vignettes or moments held in memory. Designed for those who are in the process of sketching out these moments, this workshop will look at ways to “fashion a text” as Annie Dillard says, from “fragmentary patches of color and feeling,” especially for those trying to write about family with its many competing voices. We will look for narrative potential in the fragmentary material, the narrative potential in family artifacts, and vividness in language and detail. We will spend some time looking at short nonfiction examples to discover the possibility of form and narrative structures, but the majority of the workshop will be given to reading your work by an informed and sympathetic audience.

In this workshop, we will critique writing you bring from home. Please bring two short pieces of your work in progress, a variety of questions, and a curiosity about how all this is done.