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Creative WritingJust Who’s Telling This (True) Story, Anyway?F12-C01
Time to WriteF12-C02
Wonder & The Lyric EssayF12-C03
Great Love and Great Suffering: Writing Your Spiritual AutobiographyF12-C04
2000 Word ClubF12-C05
Storyboarding: Creating the Perfect ScaffoldF12-C06
Brickworks: Writing the Perfect SceneF12-C07
Writing Your Memoirs: The Surprise Story of Your LifeF12-C08
Writing to Make a DifferenceF12-C09
Must call to register
Our Bodies, Our Lives: Memoir for WomenF12-C10
Must call to register
Stories for Seasoned CitizensF12-C11
Course Canceled
Creative Writing 102F12-C12
Writing Aerobics
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Monthly Story SlamTues., May 15, 7-8:30 p.m. Lunch Break Book TalksHosted by Steve Huff Book Discussions at Valley ManorMay 16, 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. The Culinary Reading and Discussion GroupHosted by Sandy Bosworth & Kathy Pottetti
Click here for more May Events...
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| Writers & Books, Rochester's community literary center, inspires and instructs over 25,000 people each year through a wide array of offerings in nearly every literary genre. Believing that the written and spoken word are central to our lives and culture, Writers & Books celebrates, promotes and works to make them available to all. Writers & Books is located at 740 University Avenue, near Atlantic Avenue in the Neighborhood of the Arts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
“In nonfiction, the narrator is the only thing you can make up,” my first writing teacher told me. Just who is that slim, upright pronoun poised on the page? And who isn’t s/he? In this workshop, we delve into examples of first-person narrators from master nonfiction writers – discussing the differences among the person on the page, the storyteller (narrator), and the real-life author. Then we explore ourselves on the page. If you are writing first-person nonfiction, this workshop will give you powerful tools for taming that three-headed monster: the author, the narrator, and the “I-character.”
You know you want to be writing on a regular basis--for your sanity, for your soul, to record your life, observations and ideas, to understand your own mind, to get a desired project underway or completed, or to fulfill your dream or destiny as a writer--but something is getting in the way. Maybe you have never gotten started. Maybe you need to break through a writer’s block. Every Wednesday we will gather and write, explore techniques for carving out time and silencing inner critics, and share our struggles and successes. We will read insights from artists and writers into the creative process. We will look at what motivates us, what we let get in our way, and what it takes to get a habit established. By giving each other acknowledgement and a push for each new week, we’ll work on making writing a habit for life. The last half hour of each session will be set aside to write. (And you can stay after class and keep writing.)
Is a lyric essay terse paragraphs moving through time and space? Is it discreet paragraphs called “tiles,” or is it actually a mosaic? How does reclaiming our sense of wonder liberate our writing? If you’re feeling stuck, this workshop will be wonder-ful.
What experiences of great love and great suffering have led you to a place of surrender and opening to a deeper life? In a safe environment, we will we will write about where we came from, the people and experiences that shaped us, as well as those that left us forever changed. Saints, sinners, and heretics—all are welcome in this caravan.
The most useful 2000 words in the English language may be yours. The purpose of the 2000 Word Club is to offer class members an opportunity to explore the various creative writing general fiction, memoir, creative essay, experimental forms and even chapters of larger works—to find the form most amenable to their experience and imagination. The only requirement, manuscripts must be under 2000 words. Class members manuscripts are critiqued in a cordial and supportive environment, craft issues discussed, and suggestions made to make manuscripts more readable/marketable.
Whether you write novels, short stories, memoir, or creative essays, storyboarding is an often overlooked weapon in the writer’s toolbox. It can be invaluable in planning a work or critiquing a completed draft. We will establish the essential terminology requisite to storyboarding, explore the various ways to construct a storyboard using software or paper, and examine its effectiveness in creating well-plotted, thematically coherent, and adequately developed works. Discussion will center around your works-in-progress.
Whether you write novels, short stories, memoir, or creative essays, the scene is the building block, the story within the story, the argument that supports your theme. . .in short, the brickwork of the story. The purpose of this class is to study and practice how to construct the perfect scene. We will review all the elements that belong to a scene (action, direct and indirect speech, conflict, motivation, arc, point-of-view or shot, interior voice, setting, etc.), the way scene is cobbled together with exposition, and how longer works can be plotted prior to the writing process to insure that you have established an effective throughline that sustains interest, stays on message, and engages your audience. 
If you’re interested in writing about your life but don’t know where to start, this is the class for you. We’ll discuss different forms of memoir and do writing exercises that will help you find the stories inside the flow of events in your life. Writing does more than put down what you already know; it helps you discover new meanings. We’ll learn the basics of how to “show, not tell” so that your writing can come alive. You’ll learn how to use dialog, description, action, inner thoughts and summary the way a fiction writer would to write compelling stories. 
What can we do to make a difference in this magnificent and sorry world? Write. Write your story; investigate and report another’s; write opinion pieces; write fiction. This class will help you 1. Identify your subject and theme, 2. choose a structure, and 3. learn the elements of craft that insure the greatest impact on the reader. You’ll have the opportunity to read and experiment with different forms, from letters to the editor to essays, memoir, and poetry. You can move readers to understand, care, and take action. Whatever you’re passionate about, this class will help you to get it on paper and offer something to help change the world.
Long, summer days of our youth often meant time spent day dreaming and playing all day with our friends. It was also a time when many American families hit the road for adventure, sometimes coming upon the most unexpected challenges or treasures! Why not give your children or grandchildren a picture of your past adventures by sharing your own stories of childhood friends and travels with your family? Recent findings show that children who know family stories – stories of their parents’ childhood and of their ancestors – have a stronger sense of identity and greater resiliency than those who do not.