The Muse & the Marketplace 2017

In this session we'll celebrate the daring and acrobatic nonfiction writers who innovate the genre at the limits of fact: adopting other points of view or anachronous designs for time, incorporating lyrical or fictional passages into nonfiction prose, and/or cueing the reader to flat-out inventions. Considering works by Jo Ann Beard, Annie Dillard, Michael Ondaatje, Geoff Dyer, Joan Wickersham, and the filmmaker Sarah Polley, we'll generate a toolkit of approaches that make stuck works of nonfiction seem newly possible. Come to class with an erased subject or inaccessible period of personal history that's got you stalled, and leave with an entirely new sense of how to plumb for emotional truths deeper than the facts allow.

Revision can be the most rewarding part of the writing process, but it can also be the most overwhelming. During revision, your manuscript might get worse before it gets better, so how do you go through that without getting stuck in the mess and losing your way entirely? In this workshop, we’ll talk about a layering approach to revision – sweeping through your manuscript and addressing one issue at a time. We’ll discuss a logical sequence of “layers” and experiment with different formats for creating a revision plan that works for you and your manuscript. [NOTE: An additional section of this same session is held on Friday at 10:30AM] 

Just as each musical instrument has its own pitch and timbre, so every writer has their own narrative voice. But what is voice? What makes one unique? What distinguishes Raymond Carver from Junot Diaz, Lorrie Moore from Toni Morrison or Elizabeth Strout? What makes one voice sound different from another? 

From point-of-view to diction, narrative distance to attitude to sentence structure and phrasing, we will explore some of the components of voice. Using short, practical, hands-on exercises, we will experiment with how to express the same thought or action in a myriad of different ways - by varying voice. By gaining an awareness of how voice can be altered, hopefully you will be better prepared to craft your own!

*Please bring a page of your own writing that you feel best conveys the voice of your protagonist/story/novel.

Where time period and setting intersect, we often find the most critical moment in a character's life. At these junctures, we find all of the things that make a successful narrative: conflict rises, tension mounts, decisions are made, and resolutions, ultimately, occur. Through discussion, brainstorming and writing exercises, and examination of published examples in a variety of genres, we will identify these inflection points, and figure out how they can be utilized in our writing. In short, we will be looking for the best possible way to frame our stories using time and place.