A Practical Course

Approval has been granted for my proposal for this new and very practical three-credit course at University College (Wash U), to be taught in Fall 2010. No course number has yet been assigned. Writers must do this work anyway, so why not with us?

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION AND PUBLICATION

This practical course guides writers who are ready to face the challenges of preparing their completed manuscripts for submission to publishers. Focusing on their individual manuscripts, students will learn the industry standards for presentation and formatting, perform market research, practice writing queries and synopses for editors and agents, and explore conventional and new approaches to publication and other forms of dissemination. Students will share and discuss their findings. Authors and editors of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and features will speak to the class about manuscript submission and acceptance. Manuscripts may consist of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, and range from feature length to book-length, but they must be complete and ready for submission; this is not a workshop for developing works as yet unwritten or for furthering works in progress. The course encourages a businesslike and committed approach. Not for writers of technical, scholarly, or foreign-language manuscripts, or works consisting largely of illustrations.

Wash. U. Summer Writers Institute 2010

Please let every writer know that applications will be available shortly for:

The15th annual Washington University Summer Writers Institute, in St. Louis June 14-25, 2010. Workshops will include fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and the Young Writers Institute (for high-school sophomores, juniors and seniors). See the Writers Institute website, or telephone (314) 935-6720.

Instructors for 2010 are: Poetry, Sally Van Doren

Fiction, Rebecca Rasmusssen

Creative Nonfiction, Kathleen Finneran

Young Writers Institute, Mathew Smith.

The keynote speaker will be poet and SLU professor Devin Johnston.

Read what Summer Writers Institute Alumni from past years have been publishing, winning, and so forth.

The Young Writers Institute is a workshop for high-school sophomores, juniors and seniors who write poetry or creative prose.

Adult and youth writers meet in group workshop sessions, held Mondays through Fridays in the mornings. In the afternoons accomplished writers and editors from Missouri and Illinois read from their work and discuss writing and publishing. Participants have weekends free for writing. Traditionally, Institute participants finish up the two weeks with an open-mike reading of their own work. Tuition this year is $845 noncredit or $1795 to earn three college credits. Is that a lot? I guarantee it won't get any cheaper! Maybe this is your year!

Parting with Students

Dear Class:

You were beginners. A seasoned writer would sputter, "That's impossible!" if assigned in 16 weeks to produce and craft a package of 3 to 5 poems, a personal essay, and a short story. But you did it. Congratulations. I am proud of you.

Each so different, age 17 to 55, you got along beautifully because you were generous and vulnerable and imperfect -- and in order to get you that way I had to be that way first, and it was a BEAR, because those are traits I don't like to display; I never planned to become a teacher. . . I think I was sent into it so I would learn humility. Thanks for teaching me.

You wrote some freaking awesome things and you know it.

I hope there's at least one helpful thing about writing that you discovered in here that you will remember, whatever that might be.

Here's my card, and let me know how you fare and how your writing goes, and if you need a reference. I've been teaching this class for 12 years and apparently am not going anywhere, so if you need to look me up you know where I am.

Go get 'em,

Catherine

What Your Cr.Wrt . Prof. is Thinking

-Wish I'd written that.
-This is freaking amazing.
-I just won't tell the class that no experienced writer would ever even TRY to write four essays (or a portfolio of poems) in 16 weeks.
-Man, the difference between the first draft and the third, like night and day!
-You're showing your depths and I really like that.
-I bow to your greater experience.
-I'm really sorry that you had to suffer _________. But it may help to write about it.
-LOL
-I know of something you've just got to read!
-I know where this might be published!

Spring Course in Advanced Creative Nonfiction

If you're working on nonfiction and need a workshop, I'm teaching an evening workshop called Nonfiction Seminar at University College, Washington University, this spring. It's a 3-credit workshop course for memoir, essay, biography, travelogues, and nature writing; or narrative, as-told-to and other forms of creative nonfiction. The course emphasizes professionalism and publishability.

The course meets Tuesdays, 6:00-8:30 p.m., begins January 13 and ends May 5. I am happy
to answer any questions. Please pass the word. Thank you.

To register, go to ucollege.wustl.edu and click "Courses and Registration" The
course number is U11 313, under English Composition, and tuition is $1495.

I'm also teaching a course Thursday evenings, same place, U11 323, called The Art of the
Personal Essay.

Where to Get Good Advice About Your Writing

-your writing group.
-your writing teacher or former writing teacher.
-a writing workshop, course or critique group (online is fine).
-a classmate from one of your writing courses, past or present.
-a professional writer or editor whose credentials and references you have thoroughly
checked.
-a peer whose writing and moral character have earned your respect.
-a mature and well-read platonic friend whom you know will not fail to give you an honest opinion.
-books and handbooks for writers.
. . .Or any combination of the above. If you are unsatisfied or made uneasy by a response, do your mental health a favor and get a second opinion.

Objections to the Workshop Method

While the classic "writing workshop" peer-critique method is used widely and successfully, it has its detractors. Objections to this classic workshop model include those listed below:

Asking the writer to stay silent and listen during discussion of her work is a form of oppression.
Maybe that’s true. If you think so, try "reverse workshop" variations: Have the writer speak for 10 minutes about the work in question while everyone else listens. Or have everyone write out one question for the writer, hand the questions to the writer, and let her read aloud and answer the questions.

A workshop is really a kind of peer pressure for everyone to “dumb down” their writing and make it bland and politically correct.
Caving in to “peer pressure” is a choice. Those who will do it merely to get praise and acceptance are either overdependent on praise or are in the wrong workshop.

The group-workshop process homogenizes people’s writing styles, and/or destroys their originality.
You were born unique, and have unique things to say, but originality, like wisdom, develops over time, and once developed it cannot be destroyed. Associations among artists do not automatically lead to compromise. Take for example writer Gertrude Stein and her salon, or the works of painters such as Picasso, Kandinsky, or Klee, whose works became more original and radical as they matured. If in your workshop you aren’t being encouraged and challenged to do yourself one better, you are in the wrong group.

Writing workshops aren’t for everybody.
That’s true, especially for young writers, under age 18. They should avoid workshops unless they are held in a school and moderated by a helpful and sympathetic teacher. Young people’s creative experiments should be shielded from the remarks and reactions of careless peers, or adults who hold standards that are anti-creative or punishingly high.

A workshop is basically a bunch of bad writers sitting around reading each other’s bad writing. Therefore it can be of no help to anyone.
Let’s pretend that’s true. If so, the only thing a writer could ever get out of a workshop is seeing what other writers do badly. And that by itself is an absolutely priceless lesson for any writer. This “basically a bunch of bad writers” remark came from a celebrated writer famously incapable of editing his own writing. He sent editors manuscripts thousands of words longer than the editors had asked for or could possibly publish. The editors were forced to craft and finalize his manuscripts by cutting excesses and repetitions. Such extensive editing annoyed the writer, but he had never learned to see his work as a reader might see it, and therefore had to cede to editors the power he should have wielded over his own writing. The ability to assess and craft one’s own work is precisely the power that develops most rapidly in a workshop setting.