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Title | |
FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP | |
GETTING INTO WRITING | |
WRITING PROMPT WORKSHOP | |
CREATIVE NONFICTION WORKSHOP | |
NOVEL-WRITING WORKSHOP | |
BEGINNING FICTION | |
ART OF REVIEWING | |
CREATIVE NONFICTION WORKSHOP | |
INTRODUCTION TO POETRY WRITING | |
LEARNING THE UNDISCIPLINED | |
POETRY AND TRANSLATION | |
POETRY, SONG AND RITUAL | |
WORKING YOUR ENDS FROM THE BEGINNING | |
WRITING FROM NATURE, BUT LEAVING NATURE ALONE | |
WRITING THE URBAN LANDSCAPE | |
Mystery Writing Workshop | |
Writing Poems From A Trigger Point |
These popular classes are for the fiction writer who is ready to work on short stories or novels with the goal of publication. This specialized chat format will give you the closest possible thing to a “live” writers’ workshop, with the convenience of the online class. Class A: 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. CST Class B: 9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. CST Each week, two students will submit up to 2500 words of a fiction project. This could be a short story, a chapter from a novel, or an excerpt. Projects will be emailed to the instructor and to all of the students in the class. Each student is expected to send an email critique back to the authors. The instructor will send each author a line-by-line edit and a thematic critique. Then, on Thursday nights, the instructor and students will meet in an online AOL chatroom. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BELONG TO AOL TO BE IN THIS CLASS. If you aren’t on AOL, just go to www.aol.com and download their FREE Instant Messenger. This will allow you into the classroom. In these Thursday night sessions, the submitting students will get to watch as their fiction projects are discussed by the class and the instructor. Each discussion will last for twenty-five minutes, and then the student will have five minutes to respond. This is a great way to get feedback on your work and to prepare it for submission. The class size will be no less than six students and no more than eight. If the class has six students, it will last ten weeks, and if there are eight students, it will last twelve. The price of the class remains the same, regardless of the length. Currently, there are two sessions of this workshop offered. If enough students register, more sessions will be added. Session A: 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time Session B: 9:00 - 10:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time We will open another class if we get 6 applicants. Go to our Contact Us Page and let us know if you're interested. |
This is an online, e-mail interactive workshop for the would-be writer trying to find his or her writing voice. Utilizing a combination of themed creative exercises, personal writing opportunities, and peer and instructor critique, participants will experience the benefits of the writing workshop while still receiving the topical information the just-starting writer needs most. The first four weeks of the workshop will feature a short writing exercise (500 words or less) on the week’s topic of discussion. The final four weeks will give the participant an opportunity to produce one longer work or partial work (up to 2,500 words) for peer and instructor critique. Topics will change each session, with the goal of students working toward eventual participation in a fiction or non-fiction workshop. |
Get ready to get your creativity in gear and the words overflowing your page! This workshop is especially designed to help you jump head-first into the world of fiction writing. The prompts offered each week will provide you with launch pads for ten short stories, or possibly even a novel! The prompts will challenge your imagination and get those creative juices flowing. Each week, all students will be given the same writing prompt. It might be a first line, a general idea, a title, or anything your instructor comes up with. For example, "Write to the opening line, 'There were days when the wall was too big." Students will write 500 words to the prompt. This might be a complete short-short story, or it could be the beginning to a longer piece. Students will then email their prompt to their instructor and all of the other students in the class. Students are expected to critique everyone's prompt via email. Instructor will provide a line-by-line edit and an overall thematic critique. Then all of the students and instructor will get together in a private chatroom one evening per week for an hour to discuss the prompt and the writing process. Learn how other writers write, what sets their brains on fire, what keeps them going. Chatroom is provided through AOL, but students do not have to be members of AOL to participate. |
Are you working your way through a novel and wish you had a workshop where all of your chapters would be read in a timely basis? This novel-writing workshop is developed specifically for the novelist. Class size is limited to allow every student to receive critique time each week. Up to twenty pages (5000 words) can be handed in on a weekly basis, and the pages will be emailed a week ahead of time so that all of the material is already read prior to each class. This intense twelve-week workshop will allow you to consistently move forward on your novel, providing you with support, honest and helpful critique, and a positive community. Students will also receive a line-by-line edit and a thematic critique of their work from the instructor. |
Fiction writing is supposed to be just telling stories, making stuff up, right? Well…almost. Writing fiction is very similar to building with blocks, the good old-fashioned wooden kind. Stack them up right, and you can get some creative and fun shapes. But do one thing wrong, and the whole tower topples down. In fiction, the blocks are the characters, dialogue, setting, opening lines, and plot. In this class, you will learn how to stack these building blocks into a short story. Even if you have a novel in mind, start here, with small steps. |
With dozens of online magazines and millions of personal blogs, it's never been easier to find a publisher for your work, even if the publisher ends up being you. But once you make a contact at a magazine or register for your own blog, how can you distinguish your writing from everyone else's? What can you write beyond your daily journal? Well, if you love art (movies, albums, books, paintings, plays, exhibits, newspaper articles, meals...) and you love to express your opinions, then writing reviews could become your new outlet. This workshop aims to familiarize you with the market for reviews (as well as with the numerous, easy-to-use online databases that professional critics visit for information) and help you find your own voice as a reviewer. Participants will read and discuss reviews from both print and online sources and begin to write their own reviews on any artworks of their choosing. The instructor will offer constructive critiques of the writing and oftentimes suggest readings or similar artworks to help an aspiring critic or blogger develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of both the art of reviewing and art itself. Aspiring columnists are also welcome to join, as the workshop will discuss conducting research, making comparisons and contrasts, and using analogies and other examples of figurative language, all while observing a low word count. |
Autobiography, memoir, personal essay... The term "creative nonfiction" encompasses them all. This course will examine the differences between fiction and nonfiction and help writers put onto paper their thoughts, feelings, observations, memories, and much, much more in a way that reads as entertainingly as fiction but remains truthful, accurate, and not made up. (In other words, James Frey need not apply.) There will be no prompts here, only your own lives. Thus, the possible topics are infinite. This workshop is for the aspiring David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, or Annie Dillard, or for any other writer with his or her own story to tell. Each week, two students will submit their work for class critique and discussion. All students receive email critiques from their peers and an email critique with a line by line edit from their instructor. Then, once a week, students gather in a chatroom to further discuss the work in a workshop environment. |
“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.” ~Allen Ginsberg This course focuses on writing creative, thoughtful, and evocative poems in a variety of forms, as well as active reading of and critical thinking about the work of other poets. Although to many people, poetry is a deeply personal art, this course will be taught with an emphasis on writing for publication. Week 1: Story, Structure, Music, and Imagination: Reading Others’ Work & Shaping Our Own Week 2: Where Do Poems Come From?: Drawing on Experience, Surrealism, and Writing Prompts Week 3: You Wrote That?: Writing What You Feel, Not What You Should Feel, or Writing Poetry You Wouldn’t Want Your Mother to Read Week 4: Inspiration vs. Perspiration: What’s It Take to Be a Writer, Anyway? Week 5: Revision: How Do You Know When a Poem’s Ready? Week 6: Sending Your Poems Out Into the World: Accepting Rejection and Living with Success |
This workshop is designed to inspire. Students will be offered weekly "snapshots" of poetry by a range of contemporary writers and provided with assignments which stimulate the imagination. Assignments may include establishing a collection of pet rocks, interviewing a parakeet, throwing a birthday party for your favorite tree, making demands from a piece of lint... Be prepared for adventure! Try something new, write poems straight from your unconcious! Through the six week workshop, suggestions on sculpting raw material and asking questions of your work will be provided! Week 1: Introduction: Exploring the Outskirts of Your Imagination Week 2: Exploring Ekphrastic Poetry Week 3: Adpoting A Character, Inventing Voice Week 4: Amplifying the Accidental Week 5: Writing From Dream Week 6: Considering Content, Considering Theme |
Translation is a very hot topic in the poetry world right now, and using it to illustrate the myriad choices a poet must make in the creation of a poem is an incredibly powerful and germane way to learn about the craft. Many writers find that translating from one language into another is not so different from translating the subconscious into words. Students will examine bi-lingual translations, read critical statements about the nature of translation, and ultimately create a few of their own translations to share with the class. We'll be focusing on a handful of German, French and Spanish poets, but students are welcome to choose other languages for their own translations. **Only a basic knowledge of a secondary language is needed to participate.** |
What is the purpose of ritual and how does poetry serve in that role? Over thousands of years, the role of poetry and song as a vehicle has, at root, remained almost the same. By reducing words to a deliberate order, language takes on a significantly different role than common speech or prose; it becomes poetry. This class will explore how meter and rhythm function in poetry and work to emphasize meaning, explicit or implied. We will also survey world literatures, examining some of the roots of poetry in primitive song and how that language is employed as a function of ritual in ceremonies that celebrate birth, coming of age, marriage and death. |
This is a poetry class designed to help poets develop a sense of line, understand the power of beginning and ending words in a line, and come to grips with the “line break” dilemma. Participants will submit assignments by email to the instructor and to one another (as desired). No textbook required. Week 1: Getting Comfortable with the Line Week 2: Lead With Your Beginnings Week 3: Let's Write! Week 4: Let's Write! Week 5: Let's Write! Week 6: Portfolio Reveiw |
This is a poetry class that focuses on writing poems obliquely. Participants will craft poems and “poem parts” that seem to be about Nature (with the capital “N”) while actually being about nature (with the small “n” which is human nature). We will work on combining the “parts” to come up with a new “whole.” Some old “forms” will be explored. No textbook required. 6 weeks Week 1: Introduction to Nature Poetry and Anti-Pastoral Poetry Week 2: Writing Humanity as natural landscape Week 3. Writing Exercises using concrete images from nature in poems not at all ABOUT nature. Week 4: Writing from the "I" Week 5 "It's all about water." Week 6 Portfolio Review |
This is a poetry class that focuses on writing anti-pastoral poems, such as the “eclogue” and “city-scape.” Primary focus will be on observing and writing about the “where” you live that is surprising and perhaps uncelebrated. Many of the exercises will require you to go for a walk downtown, by the factory, to a playground basketball court, etc. No textbook required. 10 weeks (workshop format) |
This workshop is for the mystery writer who is working on short mystery stories or novels with the goal of publication. This specialized chat format will give you the closest possible thing to a “live” writers’ workshop, with the convenience of the online class. Each week, two students will submit up to 2500 words of a fiction project. This could be a short story, a chapter from a novel, or an excerpt. Projects will be emailed to the instructor and to all of the students in the class. Each student is expected to send an email critique back to the authors. The instructor will send each author a line-by-line edit and a thematic critique. Then, on Sunday nights 9 - 10 PM, the instructor and students will meet in an online AOL chatroom. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BELONG TO AOL TO BE IN THIS CLASS. If you aren’t on AOL, just go to www.aol.com and download their FREE Instant Messenger. This will allow you into the classroom. In these Friday night sessions, the submitting students will get to watch as their fiction projects are discussed by the class and the instructor. Each discussion will last for twenty-five minutes, and then the student will have five minutes to respond. This is a great way to get feedback on your work and to prepare it for submission. The class size will be no more than eight students and will run for ten weeks. If there are more than eight registrants, a second session of the workshop will be added. |
Often what presents itself as an urge to write is only the trigger for what the poem wants to be about, a higher level of engagement with the subject that is the inspiration. This class focuses on how to take a poem beyond basic inspiration for the poem, something that provided the impetus to write. Come leap into the world of poetic surprise and excitement! The class will use materials from Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town and Robert Bly's Leaping Poetry, though neither book is a purchase requirement for the class. Extensive handouts will be provided by the instructor. |
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