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The Writer’s Center offers hundreds of writing workshops and classes every year. Workshops cover all genres and all experience levels. Join us in person and online.
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Event views navigation, november 2024, wisdom, joy, gratitude—giving and receiving through poetry.
Reading and writing poetry is soul-work. Each class will include discussion of inspiring poems, guided free-writes, and sharing. Between classes you will have life-enhancing reading and journal assignments. Our last class will be a formal and friendly workshop to celebrate the gifts we have shared throughout the course. Note: No meeting November 28.
Creative Journaling: Words + Art
Have you ever wanted to create art along with your writing–but felt you lacked skills or direction? Participants begin with personal-writing prompts, which then become the basis for mixed-media art pieces. The co-leaders are an author and an artist who love the process of creative discovery and, through specific strategies, can help you to explore and shape your material. The work created may become part of an ongoing unique memoir, a creative journal, or individual pieces.
Setting Intensive
In this workshop we will learn to use setting as a map, as a structure for storytelling. Setting can be a situation, a tone, a time, an atmosphere, a relationship, and more. It can be as broad as a country, as small as a porch swing. At its best, setting becomes a character in and of itself. In short, setting is the most versatile and under-utilized of all the elements of craft. This interactive and dynamic workshop will give you the means to improve both your fiction and nonfiction stories.
Writing the Body
This generative workshop will have participants review and discuss poems that look at the body in all its glamour and gore, everything you love, hate, worry about, hold close, and pretend not to notice. We’ll then write our own body-inspired poems. Participants can expect to leave with 2-4 new drafts of poems.
Whole-Brain Poetry
“Whole-Brain Poetry” is an opportunity to explore some of the ways poetry interacts with the brain, and to enrich your writing with that knowledge. This includes but goes beyond the use of metaphor. Through writing exercises, close examination of time-honored and recent poems, workshopping of participant poems, and brief reading assignments, we will examine the neurology and psychology of poetry, the relationship between time and memory, how science has influenced well-known poets, how poetry can heal trauma and prevent PTSD, and more. Readings include essays by Frederick Turner, Ruth Padel, Frederick Feirstein, and others.
Storytelling Workshop: Unleash Your Narrative Power
In this workshop, you’ll gain the tools and techniques to craft engaging and powerful stories. Through interactive activities and collaborative exercises, you’ll learn the essentials of story structure, develop compelling characters, and create immersive settings. Our workshop will guide you in plotting your story, writing dynamic scenes, and refining your narrative skills. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced writer, this workshop will provide valuable insights and practical strategies to help you bring your stories to life.
Perspective (aka POV)
Perhaps the most challenging fiction technique is perspective. The Point of View Plan that you choose for your story will often dictate its success. Learn to develop an effective and consistent POV that will enable readers to follow a story’s progress and avoid confusing “head hopping” that often condemns an otherwise good story to rejection. Give your fiction a professional edge and increase your publication chances.
How to Publish
Do you want to get your writing published (in literary journals and as books), but don’t know where to start? Are you already publishing but want to publish in more competitive markets? In this workshop we’ll learn about the business of submitting to editors of literary journals and presses. We’ll also discuss tips for finding appropriate markets for your writing.
DIY Novel Revision
Do you have a finished draft of a novel but don’t know what to do next? This workshop will take you through the revision and editing process step-by-step. From large-picture issues like plot and structure, characterization, etc… to line editing, we will look at what it takes to revise your own novel without the assistance of a professional editor.
December 2024
Memoir intensive with raquel gutiérrez.
Complete your memoir in one year! Work with award-winning author Raquel Gutiérrez to turn your draft into a finished manuscript. This intensive workshop is geared toward writers with either a […]
Finish Your Novel!
How great would it feel to finish your novel? Have you been working and reworking the beginning of your book but can’t seem to move past a certain point? In this one-day workshop, we’ll talk about the different road-blocks writers face and practical tips for overcoming them. After a discussion about what’s holding you back, you’ll create a loose outline, make a plan for finishing your novel, set deadlines, and learn ways to hold yourself accountable to your goals. You may even find another member of the workshop to be your accountability partner. If you’re ready to finally type “the end,” this class is for you.
How to Write a Lot
You may think you don’t have the time, energy, or inspiration to write because of your hectic lifestyle. Wrong! Learn what Kathryn Johnson’s Extreme Novelists know about organizing their time, establishing a productive writing routine, and getting their stories written. We’ll share methods EN Grads (and many professional writers) use to complete their books in months instead of years, their short stories in mere weeks. Become the dedicated author you’ve always dreamed of being. (Ideal for writers who don’t have 8 weeks to dedicate to the Extreme Novelist course.)
Writing Linked Memoir-Micros
Develop one or more linked micro memoirs (short, short stories of 250 words or less). Lean into the lyrical and use poetic techniques to enhance your writing. Write to guided exercises and prompts to connect your micro memoirs to your larger life themes. Ultimately, a generative workshop with time to write, reflect, and share your work.
Beads on a String: Organizing a Poetry Manuscript
Poets who are putting together their first chapbook or full-length book often agonize over what they can do to make their manuscript grab the attention of an editor or contest judge. But there is no one approach to arranging a sequence of poems that is inherently superior. Instead, it has more to do with gaining some perspective on your own work and identifying the themes, images, and impulses that certain poems share. In this workshop, we will gather advice from a number of successful poets and then take a close look at how a Pulitzer Prize-winning volume was put together.
Write Like the News
Lead with the future — not background — for lead-ership, especially in a crisis. That’s the most important of eight journalism skills that will transform your writing. The others: write your readers’ language, be positive (to be both clear and upbeat), lay out logically, be consistent, be precise, be concise and choose strong verbs. (Plus a Speak Like the News skill: avoid “uptalk?”) Emulate the vivid news examples you’ll see in this workshop, and you’ll strengthen your writing voice with lively, engaging news style. At 7 sharp, we’ll critique TheWallStreetJournal.com, seeing how to communicate your main point in just a few words. To cover as much ground as possible, we’ll have just a few writing exercises and most of them will take less than a minute each.
How—and Where—to Pitch Your Personal Essays
Personal essays are perhaps the genre that has the largest array of publication possibilities—literary journals, newspapers, magazines, alumni publications, and more all publish this form. That’s the good news! The challenge: finding the right publications for your story, along with submission guidelines, pay rates, and style preferences. In this workshop, you’ll learn where to find writer’s guidelines for popular newspaper and magazine essay columns (many with tips from the editor), how to create a submission plan to increase your success, and the pros and cons of submitting essays to newspapers and magazines vs. literary journals. By the end, you’ll have a list of resources and actionable tips to move your submissions forward. Give that essay on your hard drive (or in your journal) a chance to be published.
Troubleshoot Your Fiction
Revision is a dirty word to some writers. But you needn’t fear the challenges of polishing a manuscript before submission and publication. This fast-paced, half-day class focuses on the ten most common mistakes and concerns, often overlooked by authors before they send their story out into the world. Everything you do to your manuscript after the first draft is what makes the difference between a ho-hum story and a powerful tale that lingers in readers’ minds. Join us for a painless look at the major revision issues for fiction.
Creative Spirit: Infusing Your Writing with Energy
Are you struggling to find your voice as a writer? Do you have a story to tell but feel stuck in the creative process? Let’s face it. Writing can be a confusing and challenging process. Whether you are a beginner or have been writing for years, chances are you go through ups and downs—sometimes you have so much to write about that you can hardly get it on the page fast enough, and other days you blankly stare at your computer screen unsure of where to start. No matter your beliefs, spirituality and open-mindedness can play a critical role in the creative process if we allow it and nurture it. In a safe and supportive space, reintroduce your childlike wonder around creativity so you can write freely, authentically reclaim your power, and uncover your true gifts. Unleash your brilliance and honor the impact of your stories, lessons, and innermost thoughts. Tap into a higher source of inspiration, whether viewed as the highest self, inner wisdom, or any other entity. You will walk away with efficient ways to set intentions for different writing projects, stay in the present, trust your process, set healthy boundaries, and follow signs and intuition. You will have the information necessary to create a sacred space and ritual for your writing practice, motivating you to enrich your content and deepen your message.
Writing Characters: A Generative Workshop
Each writer can expect to leave this course with new work and a new or enhanced awareness of essential craft elements of character development that they can use in their current and future works-in-progress.
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