Covid special: Early bird prices extended!
Plus: Self-guided course on flash memoir opens today
Well, July was a wash. I mostly stayed inside hiding from the heat and having Covid. And I didn’t get a chance to promote our upcoming courses as much as I wanted to. So, I’m extending the early bird prices on The Writer as Researcher and Shapes of Stories until August 20th. (See below for more information.)
Also, the group self-guided version of Approaching Mystery opens today, and I’ll leave enrollment open this week. Students go through this flash memoir course together, providing each other feedback and community. I originally designed this class for Creative Nonfiction in 2017, and I’ve received lots of nice feedback on this class when I’ve offered the guided version in the past!
I hope August is going well for all of you. I’m doing my own, slightly pared-down version of the poetry reading extravaganza that is the Sealey Challenge, taking my kid swimming and to the library, and eagerly awaiting the beginning of the school year in a couple weeks!
Stay cool,
Joanna
The Writer as Researcher (Sept 10th - Oct 14th)
Early bird price through August 20th.
Award-winning essayist Megan Baxter has developed this 5-week online class which combines two of her truest loves, writing and researching.
Here's the course description: A 5-week introduction to the techniques, tools, and use of research in creative writing, open to all genres. Through weekly lessons which include written lectures, reading, research activities, and writing prompts, this course is designed to help any writer who is embarking on a research journey. We’ll begin by examining brainstorming and associative techniques to help jump-start research then detail the best practices, and practical consideration for conducting interviews, traveling as a researcher, and using source material from books, archives, and online sources.
Finally, we’ll explore how we can use research creatively through world-building, conversation, and collaboration. Each week you’ll receive instructor feedback on your research activity and creative writing prompts. You’ll also get the chance to participate in an online peer workshop with fellow writers and researchers. This course is a great guide for writers of all genres who are considering conducting creative research.
The course is entirely asynchronous, through the Wet Ink platform. Log on according to your own schedule to participate in weekly activities and discussions.
Payment plans are available through PayPal. See more information at checkout. You can register at musewriting.com!
Shapes of Stories (Sept. 10th-Nov. 11th)
Early bird price through August 20th.
This 10-week master class in essay forms from multi-genre writer Nancy Baxter was originally designed for Creative Nonfiction. Nancy’s students wholeheartedly endorse the class. Don’t miss this chance to work with a beloved instructor!
You can read a wonderful interview I did with Nancy here to learn more about her writing, her thoughts on craft, and her teaching.
See below for a detailed description of weekly lessons. Payment plans are available through PayPal. See more information at checkout. You can register at musewriting.com!
WEEK 1: NARRATIVE ARC
Storytelling expectations that date all the way back to Aristotle can inform our creative nonfiction, helping us to dig deep into the significance of our experience and shape our work to foster connections with our audience. This week, we’ll look at the elements of a typical story arc as defined by Aristotle and reinterpreted by a variety of writers, and experiment with how it might apply to a story you want to tell.
WEEK 2: MODELS, DIAGRAMS, PATTERNS, AND METAPHORS
Writers including Janet Burroway, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jerome Stern have proposed methods of looking at story structure. We’ll explore a number of models, diagrams, patterns, and metaphors, many of which draw from fiction and all of which offer us varied and flexible approaches to thinking about our stories.
WEEK 3: FRAME
A frame story begins with an introduction that may disappear altogether or reappear only at the end, providing an entry into a story that might otherwise seem foreign to the reader. A really complex frame story might contain several nested stories, like a Russian doll. You will explore this technique by writing a frame story.
WEEK 4: LYRIC
John D’Agata and Deborah Tall describe the lyric essay as a form that “takes from the prose poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language.” This week, we will look at how our essays can take structural cues from poetry.
WEEK 5: BRAID
The braid weaves together complementary or contrasting threads. It can be an artful way to switch between past and present, to offer two perspectives, or to introduce a metaphor that takes the story deeper. Explore what happens when you interweave complementary or contrasting topics or time periods or perspectives through reading examples and trying it yourself.
WEEK 6: COLLAGE
The fragmented essay relies on contrast and resonance to achieve a sense of continuity, and often incorporates external material: photos, quoted material, lists, etc. This week, you may choose to turn in for feedback an essay that employs any techniques we have discussed so far.
WEEK 7: HERMIT CRAB: INTRO TO BORROWED FORMS
The term hermit crab was coined by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola to describe an essay that “appropriates existing forms as an outer covering, to protect its soft, vulnerable underbelly. It is an essay that deals with material that seems born without its own carapace—material that is soft, exposed, and tender, and must look elsewhere to find the form that will best contain it.” Also called found, borrowed, or appropriated, these essay forms take their shapes from other written texts, such quizzes, recipes, liner notes, questionnaires, field guides, bibliographies, reviews, footnotes, indexes, or letters.
WEEK 8: HERMIT CRAB: INSTRUCTION MANUAL
A particularly popular form of the hermit crab essay takes its form from the instruction manual. We will look at offshoots of this form and play with them in our own work.
WEEK 9: HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT FORM
Read the essay by John McPhee about how he finds the structures for his essays and write about what shape you find most attuned to your style of writing. This week you will choose another essay to complete and turn it in for feedback.
WEEK 10: RETURNING TO THE NARRATIVE ARC AND THE FLEXIBILITY OF FORM
We’ve isolated these shapes for the purpose of learning how to use them, but they inform and merge with each other when used skillfully. This week, we’ll revisit the traditional story arc and consider how it is enhanced, transformed, or even challenged by the other forms and shapes we’ve explored.
Instructor bio: Nancy McCabe is the author of the connected hermit crab and narrative essays Can This Marriage Be Saved? and the memoir From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood, in addition to four previous books. Her debut YA novel Vaulting through Time is forthcoming from CatCat Books, and her debut middle-grade novel Fires Burning Undergroundis forthcoming from Fitzroy/Regal House. Her work has appeared in Salon, Prairie Schooner, LARB, Newsweek, Writer's Digest, Gulf Coast, Fourth Genre, and many others. Her work has received a Pushcart and made nine appearances on notable lists of Best American anthologies. She directs the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford and teaches in the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University.