Please note that this is an online workshop conducted via Zoom. Participants will be provided information on how to join the online sessions.
This six-week generative workshop is designed to get the creative juices flowing and onto the page. For our first four meetings, we will look at a variety of short prose pieces, identify and examine the strategies being employed by their authors, and respond to fun writing prompts that engage with some of the techniques being exercised in the published work we explore. Throughout this “crash course” in generating short prose material, we will also strive to identify the writing “obsessions” (e.g. images, voices, themes, etc.) that “haunt” our writing, and use this knowledge toward looking at the world around us to inspire yet more work—in and beyond the workshop.
After we reach the halfway mark of our six-week workshop, writers wishing to discuss and receive feedback for one of the brief prose pieces they have written during weeks 1-3 will have the option to share a draft of this piece with fellow participants and the instructor for a mini workshop, for which time will be set aside in weeks 5 and 6. During these final two sessions, we will also discuss approaches for compressing and expanding individual pieces, for sustaining one’s writing, as well as for revising and sharing one’s work beyond the class.
Intended for novice and veteran writers alike, the aim of ‘Jumpstart Your Prose Portfolio’ is to generate a swath of new material that participants can choose to revise, or even—for those with a propensity for the long(er) narrative form(s)—expand into larger projects. Participants can expect both a variety of engaging in-class exercises as well as optional “take-home” exercises to try out between sessions. By the end of our six weeks together, writers will walk away having generated a mini portfolio to use as a foundation for projects to keep them writing through summer and beyond.