If you’ve taken a writing workshop, you’ve likely encountered that classic bit of feedback: “Put it in the body!” So much of narrative is about thought—memories of the past, ideas about right and wrong, and lived lessons that deliver new kinds of understanding. We can easily forget that our written characters are, like us, bodies. They, like us, are differently abled, and move through shared worlds with their own perceptual practices, physical proclivities, comforts, and pains. Nothing gets more directly to the truth of the human condition like our aging, aching, and above all changing bodies. And thus we chant, “Show! Show! Don’t merely tell!” To that end, let us center the body, so that we might make our prose as evocative as it can be. This weeklong generative writing lab will balance the work of pens and laptops with exercises designed to explore the lived experiences of bodies in the world. In class, we’ll look closely at fiction, essays, and other prose in which the human body is central to meaning making. Out of class assignments will center your and your characters’ real and imagined embodiments as they move through space and time. We’ll write toward new work, revisit work in progress, and, if we choose, share our efforts in a generous and enthusiastic environment. All bodies and all prose writers are welcome, of any ability. The only requirement is that you have lived and aged inside a body. Which, we’ll see, is a most magical bridge between what is written and what a reader feels, thinks, and carries away. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week. For one-on-one meetings, I will invite students to submit new or old work for discussion.

How useful the emoji! Beyond their charm, these little images clarify tone, save us time and sometimes trouble, and offer pops of flair to our otherwise mundane communication (fireworks! dancing lady in red!). How, we wonder, did we ever communicate without them? And now that they’re here, how can written language hope to keep up? Well, consider this two-day bootcamp a celebration of that most incredible of human technologies—the sentence. We all have our patterns for sentence-making, our go-tos of syntax and diction. Which means that we’re all at risk of settling into ruts. This class aims to diversify our toolkits, starting with a clean distinction between two primary types of sentences. From there, we’ll move among in-class, generative writing exercises, brief craft lessons, and close-reading discussions about exemplary sentences drawn from novels, stories, essays, and poems. Because the best way to become a better sentence writer is to become a better sentence appreciator. We will emulate, appropriate, and absorb from literature’s best teachers. This course will benefit new and experienced writers alike–any sharing of work will be voluntary and the critical atmosphere will be one of discovery, exploration, and mutual support. All students will leave this weekend with a richer understanding of diction, syntax, and the interplay between speaker and voice. And, perhaps, a better understanding of what we mean by that elusive, slippery thing we call “style.” In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend.