Autumn 2002 Workshops at Writers & Books

Nonfiction

Writing From Life: Short Story & Essay

• #F3172
• Instructor: Stacy Freed [ bio ]
• Eight Wednesdays, starting September 18, 7–9 pm
• $121 W&B Members/$146 General Public
• Limit: 12

Let’s take all those scraps—bits of overheard conversations, newspaper headlines, photographs, memories, and turn them into short stories and essays with strong narratives. We’ll work on the basic elements, creating a scene, writing dialogue, using examples, and getting color, texture, and sound into your work.

Using the workshop method, participants will share their writing with everyone in the workshop. Along with discussion, we’ll be writing and—gasp—there will be assignments. Bring your notebooks and be prepared to explore.

Journaling and Its Sources

• #F3173
• Instructor: L. John Cieslinski [ bio ]
• Eight Thursdays, starting September 26, 7–9 pm
• $121 W&B Members/$146 General Public
• Limit: 12

In this eight-week long workshop, we will examine the many approaches to journaling: literature, poetry, response, games, questioning, diary-finding, different techniques to jump start writing-taking material out of the journal to form a finished piece of writing.

Memoir Writing

• #F3128
• Instructor: Camy Sorbello [ bio ]
• Ten Tuesdays, starting September 24, 4–6 pm
• $149 W&B Members/$178 General Public
• Limit: 12

Everyone has a story to tell. Turn memory into memoir and create a legacy of your life.

Join us in an atmosphere of mutual support, encouragement, and constructive ideas, with writing exercises and suggested reading to help you get started. Find the focus of your story and the thread of truth woven throughout it. Balance pithy dialogue with descriptive narration to bring people and places to life.

Don’t wait until the details fade away. Write now!

Introduction to Technical Writing

• #F3131
• Instructor: Mary Anne Donovan [ bio ]
• Six Mondays, starting September 30, 7–9 pm
• $121 W&B Members/$146 General Public
• Limit: 12

This course will discuss common uses for technical writing, writing proposals, procedural approaches and styles, writing for the web, and finding work, whether it’s freelance or full-time.

Students should have basic computer knowledge, be at home with word processing and have a working familiarity with the Internet. You will produce at least one proposal and one procedure based document.

Essays to Live by: Reading & Writing Creative Nonfiction

• #F3111
• Instructor: Anaïs Salibian [ bio ]
• Eight Wednesdays, starting (TBA), noon–2 pm
• $121 W&B Members/$146 General Public
• Limit: 15

This class will help you answer these questions and immerse you in the study of the genre with many faces:

• What is “creative nonfiction”?
• Why pick nonfiction?
• What do I have to say?
• How can I shape my writing to create good essays?

In Part One we’ll study essays that will amaze you, make you laugh and make you cry. We’ll do writing exercises designed to help you generate three different drafts:

1. A memoir
2. Exposition and reflection on a topic outside yourself
3. A “personal essay” about self in relation to the world

We’ll examine various authors and our own manuscripts for the elements of good writing. The feedback in part one will not be to “fix” your writing but to help you find topics and themes, expand and deepen your drafts, and learn ways to organize your essays.

Part Two is for revising and editing. The prerequisite is to have at least one draft ready for fine-tuning. This is when we pay attention to the nitty-gritty of sentence structure, diction, and the elements of creating vivid, clear prose. Writing exercises will focus on skill building.

We’ll use Getting the Words Right: How to Rewrite, Edit & Revise by Theodore A. Rees Cheney as a text. (Buy this book—it’ll make you laugh; it’ll make you cry…)

Creative Nonfiction: Nature, Movies, You Name it

• #F3144
• Instructor: Lois Gresh [ bio ]
• Saturday, September 14, 10 am–1 pm
• $34 W&B Members/$43 General Public
• Limit: 15

Kick off fall by exploring fun ways to write about your family, yourself, flowers, birds, streams, clouds; the stuff of creative nonfiction. We’ll look at samples of today’s creative nonfiction and discuss technique.

• How do you write about movies, television, comics, and cartoons?
• How do you write about your family and your life without offending Mom?
• How do you write about heavily trademarked and copyrighted properties?

Students will write and share their own creative nonfiction with the rest of the class.

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