Write a Slow Scene: A Generative Nonfiction Writing Workshop
It’s the most everyday of challenges while writing nonfiction: when and how to slow down and write en scene, at the pace of life, so it’ll feel real, like it’s happening. But it can get tricky fast. And strange things can happen, like the more true and real you try to write it, the more you’re writing fiction–especially if memory doesn’t serve. In this workshop we’ll look at slow, fact-based scenes in nonfiction, and discuss useful conventional ways of thinking about pacing. I’ll offer a series of strange concepts that may be useful for opening the aperture, even when the facts seem thin. We’ll write, inviting the physical world in, attending to hyperobjects, and accessing worlds beyond the implied “we” that constricts your personal vision, in order to write trustworthy and vivid slow scenes.
$100 (or before August 1st, $75 with code SLOW)
Monday, August 12, 7-9 p.m. • Register HERE
Monday, September 9, 7-9 p.m. • Register HERE
Turn Your Disgust at Your Own Writing Into A Reason to Live: Working With Your Inner Critics–and the Art of Beginnings
But seriously–what if the particular head voices criticizing a certain project, or your whole endeavor, have a clue after all? Then, the secret is to invite them to work for, rather than against, your writing. This workshop isn’t therapy, but it’ll put you through a process of identifying and working with blocks and internal critical voices. It’s not that hard, so the rest will be about art: we’ll ask what our particular fears of writing have to teach us about how to know what we’re doing, and therefore begin, i.e. how to craft beginnings, so we don’t have to worry so much that our actual readers will ask “why am I reading this,” or “so what”?
$100 (or before August 15th, $75 with code DISGUST):
Monday, September 16, 7-9 p.m • Register HERE
Friday, September 20, 10 a.m. - noon • Register HERE
What Comes Next: A Revision Workshop About Structure and Order
Bring a draft of a chapter or essay whose structure is puzzling you, and we’ll introduce it to a series of fresh ways of thinking about what should come first, and next, and so on. We’ll relax about conflict and rising action for a couple of hours, and view the challenge in terms of change, revolution, mystery, and surprise.
$125 - Limited enrollment - Email me
Monday, October 7, 7-9 pm
Friday, October 11, 10 a.m. - noon