What’s New

In addition to the core offerings I’ve been teaching for a year, I’ve been experimenting with a couple of new classes.

One is a ‘master class’ in which a very small number of highly committed and caffeinated students bring in up to 2,000 words (that’s eight double spaced pages) a week. We spend three hours together, workshopping the pieces on the spot, and then everyone does an exercise to deepen or clarify a sticking point in their writing. Interestingly, in every class an exercise has come to mind that works for everyone. I’m just finishing up the first run of this class. It lasted six weeks and enabled every student to finish with 12,000 workshopped words, shot through with illuminating exercises. It was HARD to produce this much, but it was very, very rewarding.

Secondly, I’m developing a series of classes that more or less follows Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (liberally dosed with steps more relevant to heroines — most of my students are, after all, female.) This archetypal story line is central to innumerable books, as well as movies from Star Wars to The Full Monty. It enables students to come out of class with a more or less structured and linear narrative. And it’s SO MUCH FUN! I can’t believe how good it’s been for all of us — I’ve written a lot of stuff in this class that I didn’t even know I knew.

There will certainly be more in the future — like my regular weekly classes, a new round of these classes will likely begin in March 2012. Please contact me for more information.