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1. Words that Sing and Words that Sing II: It matters little how profound your thoughts, how wise your insights, how researched your subject matter. Unless your sentences sing, unless your words give rise to image, your wisdom will never reach your readers or listeners, enter their minds and hearts, create in them a new song. Powerful writing - writing that touches and changes the hearts and minds of readers and listeners - is 90% craft. And craft is teachable and learnable. These intensive workshops focus on craft - learning how to write and use prose rhythms, learning how to find and shape metaphor. Sessions include skill learning and practicing and then workshopping written assignments. These classes are designed specifically for pastors, teachers of creative writing, or anyone with a passion for language and faith. After taking the first class, one can enroll in Words that Sing II. Cost: $5,000 plus travel and other direct expenses. This price includes a course packet for each participant containing instruction, exercises and many examples of the various literary techniques. This course is currently being taught at the Collegeville Institute Summer Program.
2. Memoir Writing: Writing Around My Life, and Finding a Way In While biography and autobiography attempt to capture for the reader the span of a life, memoirs allow readers to peer into a window of a life -the writer's life. But a life, like a house, has many windows, some large and some small, some looking into the orderly living room and some that reveal a very messy basement or attic. Thousands of pages of memoir have been written, only to land in the dumpster, when memoirists discover, far into the project, that they had chosen the wrong window. Perhaps they picked a span of time that was too flat or a relationship that was too stereotypical. Maybe they wrote in present tense when past would have been better, or vice versa. Maybe they stood too close to the subject or too far away. This week is for anyone who wants to capture something of themselves in language, language that will interest, amuse or edify generations to come. Participants will study various kinds of memoirs and then begin doing exercises, experimenting with various windows into their lives. Their responses to the exercises will be workshopped by the group. Cost: $5,000 plus travel and other direct expenses. This price includes a course packet for each participant containing instruction, exercises and many examples of the various literary techniques. Questions? Contact Mary Nilsen
3. Fiction in General, The Short Story in Particular The writer and poet Mary Oliver says that writers "stand between two marvelous and complex things - an experience (or an idea, or a feeling [or a character]), and the urge to tell about it in the best possible conjunction of words." This course will stimulate the first, while focusing on the second - finding the best possible way to tell a story. Early in the week participants will study several published short stories noting how fiction writers create and deepen their characters, shape their stories, use point of view, integrate foreshadowing and flashbacks, and layer their stories with metaphor. They will also work on several short exercises. The last days of the week will be spent workshopping early drafts of short stories written by participants. Cost: $5,000 plus travel and other direct expenses. This price includes a course packet for each participant containing information about the parts of a short story, writing exercises, and examples of various literary techniques. Questions? Contact Mary Nilsen 4. Drawing With Words the People You Know A camera or a paintbrush, even in the hands of a superb artist, can only tell us some things about a person. Our words have much greater flexibility, and in the hands of an artist can give us a multi-dimensional picture of both the subject of the portrait and of the person doing the writing. The subject could be a parent or a grandparent, or perhaps a child, grandchild, neighbor or friend. It might be someone we respect, or maybe someone who has been very problematic to us. Or both. During
the week, participants will study portraits others have written. Then they will workshop
what they write, working particularly on the skill of showing, not telling -
learning to write sharp, gripping vignettes that reveal key characteristics
and peccadilloes about their subject. In addition, they will learn to gather
relevant data and present it in an interesting way. And finally, they will
grapple with how best to present the complexities and paradoxes of human
nature. Come ready to wrestle with the most interesting person in your life. Cost: $5,000 plus travel and other direct expenses. This price includes a course packet for each participant containing a number of personal portraits containing examples of various literary techniques. Questions? Contact Mary Nilsen
5. Spiritual Web Writing: Claiming Your Gifts, Honing Your Craft, Sharing you Truths More and more congregations are discovering how to use their websites in ways that will edify their congregations. Spiritual Web Writing teaches a small group of learners how to write meditations for the congregation's website by helping them clarify their theologies and then learning how to shape their prose and hone their ideas into short powerful web meditations. This course can be a one week intensive or extend over six weeks - an evening each week. Participants, using a biblical text for each writing, will be introduced to sentence rhythms and metaphor, along with idea clarification. During each session, the writing they have done ahead of time will be workshopped. In the process, their writing craft is honed, their theological understandings sharpened and their insights shared. Cost: $5,000 plus travel and other direct expenses. This price includes a course packet for each participant containing instruction, exercises and many examples of the various literary techniques. |