Write with Me: Late Summer/Fall 2021
Creative Writing Basics with Story Studio Chicago
For a late summer get-down, you can join me for an eight-week CREATIVE ESSENTIALS online course. The class starts MONDAY, like, 8/2/2021, which is right around the corner, so if you was doing a little “I Shall/I Shain’t/I Shall/I Shain’t/I Shall” then go ahead and sign up because we clearly just landed on “I Shall.”
Creative Writing Essentials
Because writing is so ubiquitous in our lives—from emails and reports to social media and text messages—it’s easy to forget that writing, in the way that we are called to it, is an art.
We’ll explore our writer selves as artists, taking time to discover the basic elements of fiction and nonfiction craft and holding space to better understand who we are as inspired, dedicated creatives called to the literary arts.
Running it Back with The Porch!
I’m so excited to teach You Are the Protagonist once again with my favorite Nashville-based literary arts center, The Porch! I’ve taught this class twice, and each time I fall in love with writing, meeting new writers, and storytelling all the more. And, because YATP has gone so well, we’ve added a follow-up!
The new class is Going There: Memoir and Scene, which is kinda like a sequel to YATP, and I felt compelled just then to write “This Time, It’s Personal.” But it’s memoir, so it’s like, always personal?
Anyway, I’m excited to debut the class with writers who’ve taken YATP, or writers who are just ready to dig into exploring scene in memoir-writing.
I also feel compelled to say, given the image, that we are not doing revenge writing. I mean, sometimes writing can feel like revenge but uh… you ain’t heard that from me.
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” - Anne Lamott
What’s also really exciting is we’re debuting another workshop: Surviving Submissions! This is a one-day workshop, and as someone who submits works regularly and has a wide variety of stories about the different responses a writer can get when submitting work—from the triumphant and promising to the disappointing and rude—I can’t wait to share my experience and best practices with you!
Dig all the course details below! Hope to see you online!
You Are the Protagonist: Memory and Memoir
WEDNESDAYS, 4 WEEKS
AUG 25-SEP 15 from 6 - 8 PM CT
Memory can be a tricky thing, and when you're writing memoir, memory can either set your writing on fire or douse it in self-doubt. In this four week workshop-based class, we'll explore the science of memory, its strengths and weaknesses, the ways it helps us make sense of our lives and the ways it complicates our feelings. We'll use what we learn as an opportunity to retool our memories as writing prompts, setting the foundation to see ourselves as the protagonists of our own lives. REGISTER HERE.
Going There: Memoir and Scene
WEDNESDAYS, 8 WEEKS
SEP 29-NOV 17 from 6 - 8 PM CT
When crafting a memoir, writers must strike a delicate balance between exposition and scene. This balance is made all the more difficult when we consider the fallibility of memory, which brings to the fore multiple challenges related to the elements of a scene—setting, dialogue, and showing rather than telling. What if we don’t remember it exactly? How can we write a scene when details aren’t clear? In this eight-week class, we’ll explore those questions and use them as starting points for (re)imagining scene within our memoir-writing.
In this follow-up to You Are the Protagonist, this class encourages us to take creative risks in our work through readings and exercises that help us further develop our narrative voice and lean more fully into the craft of storytelling that drives compelling memoir. REGISTER HERE.
Surviving Submissions
SATURDAY, OCT 2 from 2 - 5 PM CENTRAL
Submitting your work to literary magazines and contests requires investigation, organization, and determination, work that isn’t always discussed in creative writing classes and workshops. Until now... (sounds so dramatic, amirite?!)
This one-day interactive workshop offers insights and strategies for researching publications and contests that best fit your work and experience, organizing submission calls and drafts, and designing a personal submissions process that keeps you excited and engaged through acceptances and rejections. Writers are encouraged to participate in submission-related research and organization activities in real time, as well as share their experiences and best practices through group discussions. REGISTER HERE.
Character Matters
Last month, I facilitated my first webinar with Free Expressions as part of its Writing Sucess Series. Fun was had. Writing was wrote. Smiles were smiled. The turnout and the experience was so great, Lorin and I are teaming up again for another one! This one is a really laid-back, one night webinar that focuses on a specific element of craft. Every time we learn together and write together, we deepen and broaden our sense of literary community. Join us!
AUGUST 26, 2021: CHARACTER MATTERS WITH SHEREE L. GREER
7:15-9:45 PM ET, on Zoom
There are characters we love and characters we love to hate. To love or hate a character, we have to be invested in the character; we have to know them to have feelings about them. In this workshop, writers will explore what it takes to craft compelling, complex characters who come alive on the page. With in-session writing prompts and small group exercises, writers will take a deep dive into their characters, learning what makes them tick, what makes them sick, and what makes them smile. You'll get to know your characters from the inside-out, giving you the flexibility, the compassion, and the patience to see them through the personal journey or exciting adventure that is your novel or short story.
Kitchen Table Literary Arts Events
After an excellent collaboration with Art2Action, you already know Kitchen Table Literary Arts is keeping the good work flowing this fall… there are workshops and book club meetings, our bi-monthly weekday writing get-downs, and you know Sips and Stories is coming back! The Sips and Stories curation is in progress, and I cannot wait to see what short stories we’re reading this fall. Be sure to check back for more updates and in the meantime, dig KTLA’s online calendar for the latest.
