Upcoming Classes
MY PRIVATE WRITING LABS:
I've been asked, "When are you going to teach a private writing class?" by all sorts of people over the years.
My former students from SF State who'd finished their formal study of creative writing still yearned for original prompts and exciting readings to keep their writing going for the long haul. They asked for a casual place where they could WRITE and commune with other writerly types without being bogged down with the traditional commitment of reading and critiquing dozens of pages before coming to a group.
People I've met with 9-5 jobs as well as artists in other disciplines also expressed interest in a non-academic place they could go and write. Not for the goal of publishing a book, necessarily, but to explore creative writing as a personal form of artistic expression.
These people know me. They know that I'm not a traditionalist. Nor am I interested in the old-school workshop method whereby a group tells an individual how they should make something they've written better. I also didn't want to come and lecture to people about what "is" and "isn't" fiction and memoir. So I kept thinking about it what I could offer that would be completely unique and stimulating in a city with so many choices for writers.
It clicked once I started working as an Artist Mentor at Performing Arts Workshop. I paid attention to how electric the group dynamic is when creative people of multiple disciplines and backgrounds come together to talk about art. There, dancers learn from writers. Writers learn from Actors. Actors learn from drummers. And vice versa. Theory is useful. Craft is vital. But it can also be boring when it's presented as a set of rules (like in so many classes about writing). What about the experiment?
I wanted to create a learning environment that was at once experimental and technically useful. Where people are welcome and encouraged to bring all of their personal experiences, desires, fears, wants, needs, and passions to the group and to their pages.
So I started "The Labs" as "a place to experiment with prose" for "people who love words." This turns out to be a broad and lively community. At The Labs we take our commitment to writing, not ourselves, seriously. People who are also gardeners and lawyers and bookkeepers and web designers and writers come together to write. We open our minds to every single thing (visual art, architecture, music theory, and brain science have been a few of the topics offered to ponder in previous sessions of The Lab) that can deepen our writing and our way of seeing the world.
For more information, you have to try it!
8-Week Lab:
- 8 affordable, fun and provocative 2.5 hour sessions held from 7-9:30 pm on a weeknight.
1-Day Lab:
UPDATE: 1-Day Labs are available for pre-organized groups of 5 or more. If you have a group, I have a beautiful venue. However, I am not planning any 1-Day Labs at this time.
- 3-hour affordable, fun and provocative 1-time session with unique takes on a specific topics such as Characterization, Setting, Dialogue, etc.
I hope you'll join me for which ever might work best for you and your desire to write.
Next 8-week Lab Starts 1/19/2010*
*exact date subject to change
