This workshop will teach you how to keep a journal with the intent of extracting ideas and materials for creative writing projects. By keeping a record of regular everyday observations, your stories and poems will contain the texture of reality. Whether writing fiction, drama, or poetry, a journal can build your writing muscles and generate ideas. It can be a laboratory where you experiment with different approaches. Here are some of the journal ideas for creative writers used in this workshop:
- People watch: The people around you can become fictional characters. You can give them roles in your writing, or just borrow details: your neighbor's nervous laugh, the shiny makeup that makes your mother's friend look like she's made out of plastic... Make notes about people you know; take your journal to a coffeehouse or a hotel lobby and describe them - their appearance, body language, voices, the way they relate to each other. Then, begin to go beyond mere reporting and write what you imagine as well. Name the people you see. What are they thinking, hiding, dreaming? What longings, disappointments, desires are they harboring.
- Listen. Eavesdrop constantly and really listen to people, not just to what they're saying but to the words they use, the pauses, the unique rhythms of their speech. Write it down. Learning to capture different voices on paper will help you with dialogue for stories and scripts.
- Watch. Learn to describe your experiences, the weather, colors and textures, light and shadow. Go beyond what you see. Describe the sounds, smells, the feeling of the air, the light. These details will give authenticity to your writing.
- Field trips. Police stations, city dumps, funeral parlors, aquariums... Visit different places to fatten up your writing with details that will make the setting come alive on the page.
Memoir Writing:
When the time has arrived for you to commit your life story to paper, this workshop will supply the tools and techniques necessary to bring your project to fruition. You will:
- Understand how memoirs focus on an aspect of life rather than an entire life
- See that memoirs can be written by anyone
- Understand why memoirs require effective use of language
- Understand that memoirs must tell a good story
- Start contemplating ideas for your own memoir
Short Story Workshop:
