Past

And if you need a little more, or a little less, please join us in Miami Shores for three stand-alone Saturday morning workshops: July 9, July 23 and August 13, 9 a.m.-noon.

We’ll be writing about summer–in all its Miami glory.

5 weeks at the Miami Shores Community Center

Begins June 1 (Wednesday) and continues June 9 (Thursday), then (back to Wednesdays) June 15, 22, and 29. 6:30-8:30 p.m.

: The Senses by Hans Makart

Writing the Five Senses

I’m smitten with Diane Ackerman’s Natural History of the Senses, and we’ll be drawing inspiration from it for (at least) five weeks.

Week 1: Sight

Prompts:

Spend 15 minutes wearing a blindfold. Walk outside with a partner if possible. Be aware of how your “other” senses are heightened when you cover your eyes. Touch things, sniff the air, listen.
Write for 10 minutes on various colors–what they remind you of, memories they bring up.

Week 2: Touch

Prompts:

Write for 10 minutes about a vice or beloved pastime, in terms of touch.
Write for 10 minutes about an experience with a professional “toucher”–a doctor, a hairdresser, an aesthetician, a massage therapist.
Write for 10 minutes about how a germaphobe thinks of touch.
Write for 10 minutes about a memorable kiss.

Week 3: Hearing

Prompts:

Ackerman: “Music, the perfume of hearing, probably began as a religious act, to arouse groups of people.” Let us get to know a character through her favorite music.
Ackerman: “We rarely hear the inner workings of our bodies.” Write about a time when you were (maybe a little too, uncomfortably) aware

Week 4: Smell

Prompts:

Write for 10 minutes about a person with a distinct smell.
Write for 10 minutes about the worst smell you can think of.
Write for 10 minutes about a smell that evokes a memory.

Week 5: Taste

Prompts:

Write for 10 minutes about a taste that you can’t recreate, no matter how hard you try.
Write for 10 minutes about food as a means of seduction.
Write for 10 minutes about food as an alternative language, a way of expressing the unexpressable.

Each week we will write in class as well as share work written and edited between sessions.

Come join a lively group of writers–all genres and experience levels welcome.

To register, call the Community Center at 305-758-8103 or join us on the first night.

Beginning April 2011 in the Shores:

For Week 1, on Point of View, here’s a post from Men with Pens.

And if you think you can’t write memoir from the second-person point of view, check out Much to Your Chagrin.

And third person is also a rarely used option: Against the Grain.

For Week 2, we’ll focus on Character, using this exercise.

For Week 3, we’ll focus on Dialogue and also a little grammar.

Week 4 will be all about Setting.

New workshop at the Miami Shores Community Center starts March 2!

We’ll meet on the five Wednesday nights of March: 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30, from 6:30-9 pm.

We’ll be focusing on some “basics”–Plot, Setting, Character, and Dialogue–as well as daily writing, in-class writing, and workshopping student work.

Resources:

Peter Guber on The Art of Purposeful Storytelling

Stephen King Excerpts on Plot, Dialogue, Character, and More

Stella Cameron on Plot

Tommy McSummary Video on Plots in Mel Gibson Movies

Mary Carroll Moore’s list of books to learn from and enjoy

Jane Friedman on Showing and Telling in Dialogue

Write Anything on Dialogue

Dialogue Tips from The Blood-Red Pencil

From the New Yorker: A Cure for Blocked Screenwriters

Joyce Carol Oates on character

Character Questionnaire

In January, 2011, I’ll be teaching at the Miami Shores Community Center:

Does this look like your 2011 New Years Resolution list?

√ Write the great American Novel

√ Finish that memoir

√ Share your family history

√ Launch your blog

Turn your resolutions into reality and join me at the Miami Shores Community Center for a five-week writing workshop beginning Wednesday, January 19, 2011, at 6:30 p.m.

For more information, call the Community Center at 305-795-2241.

We’ll divide the five weeks’ workshop time and writing assignments this way:

Week 1: Beginning the Writing Process: prompts, morning pages, brainstorming

Some resources: Joanna Paterson on Developing a Writing Practice

Anne Lamott on Finding Time

I’m Only Really Having Fun When I’m Writing

Week 2: The Importance of Consistency: the daily care and feeding of a writer

Cynthia Morris on the Benefits of Daily Creative Practice

Abbey Ryan’s A Painting A Day

Law and Fiction: Getting the Facts Straight

Week 3: Breaking it Down: revision and polishing

Lesser-Known Editing Marks

Gut Editing

The Four-Window Method

Easy on the Adverbs

Steven Pressfield’s site

Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia

Week 4: The In-Between: back to the drawing board and filling in the gaps

The Rumpus Interview with Nick Flynn

Graham Strong on the Second Draft of the Novel

Week 5: Putting it All Together: finishing a piece of writing, and what to do with it

Alison Bechdel interview from Wag’s Revue

New Yorker review of J. R. Ackerley’s Memoirs

Books on Writing

In Fall, 2010, I taught at the Florida Center for the Literary Arts.

Here’s what one student said about the class:

Dear Angela,

I want to thank you again for your effort and guidance during your course “Place”. The time you took in preparation and your constructive feedback were invaluable. Personally, I felt supported in what was for me an important serious first step into the creative writing process. I have the curse of the dilettante, you know, and this course helped focus a years long yearning into a reality. You have a genius for applying just the right amount of pressure to make us write and the consideration given to each student each week stimulated our imaginations. I would look forward each week to someone’s, if not necessarily my own, fresh creative production. I also think you opened up the group and fostered a spirit of support and collaboration. I hope you will continue to teach at FCLA. See you in Jan.

The class was called “Beginning with Place: How to Research and Create Setting.”

Here’s some of what we talked about:

What is the function of place/setting in fiction and nonfiction writing?

What are your favorite examples of writing about place? Why do you like them? How do they serve the work, fiction or nonfiction, that you’re reading?

What are some of the ways our minds remember place? Now I’m listening to Pat Metheny Radio. How does music evoke place and how can we model music’s techniques in our writing? For a great site about writers and their playlists, check out the music blog Largehearted Boy: Book Notes.

What happens in your memory and imagination when you think of a place? Do you use other senses as well? I took the picture above on a recent evening walk across the Venetian Causeway in Miami Beach. I could write about how the air felt, what I smelled, the taste of the water I drank, the sounds of thunder and water and traffic. What role do the senses play in memory and imagination about place?

In A Lie That Tells the Truth, John Dufresne writes,

Place connects characters to a collective and a personal past, and so place is the emotional center of a story. And by place, I don’t simply mean location. A location is a dot on a map, a set of coordinates. Place is a location with narrative, with memory and imagination, with a history. We transform a location to a place by telling its stories.

The syllabus: Download Beginning with Place

Week 1 Starting Points: A Map in-class reading: Download Mary Karr Liars’ Club and Download Rick Bragg Prince of Frogtown.

Week 2 Where I’m From in-class reading: Download Kathleen Norris Dakotaand Download Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian.

If you want more on McCarthy and place, here’s an article from Writers Chronicle: Download Matrix for Meaning.

Also, regarding revision, take a look at this blog post by Alice Elliott Dark.

In class, we’ll be working on our own versions of George Ella Lyon’s “Where I’m From.”

Week 3 Internet: A New Frontier in-class reading: Download Patricia Engel Vida and Download The Importance of Place and Download Tobias Wolff This Boy’s Life.

Regarding research in general, this quote from Zora Neale Hurston:

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.” (via www.reckon.posterous.com)

Also, regarding internet research, the following links:

Exploring Government Documents

How to Find Anything Online

Virtual Space is the Place

Is the Internet Killing Proper Research?

Week 4 Field Trip in-class reading: Download William Zinsser On Writing Well and Download Carolyn See Making a Literary Life.

Links:Michael Cunningham’s Found in Translation

Michael Cunningham’s Advice for Young Writers

Amy Knichols Observe the World

How Handwriting Boosts the Brain

All In

Week 5 Interviews and Photographs in-class reading: Download Eudora Welty On Writing and Download FAULKNER-Wild Palms-Placeand Download Dorothy Allison The Writer’s Notebook.