In January I am starting live monthly masterclasses on Zoom. They are designed for writers who want to explore craft and process in writing while learning more about the business and culture of publishing.
Masterclasses will run live on Zoom for 90 minutes. They will include discussion on that month’s topics plus a brief writing exercise and a session of Q&A.
Every masterclass unit will also come with homework, e.g., brief preparatory readings as well as a writing exercise or two. This will be emailed to you a week before we meet on Zoom, and will be optional – you don’t need to have completed these activities to take part in the Zoom class.
Each unit will also come with a workbook that will be made available after the Zoom class. It will include notes on craft, resources, and reading suggestions, and most importantly will give you writing experiments and ideas to try out in your own work. The after-class mailing will also include any further recommendations that might arise from our class discussion.
Classes are live, so recordings will not be available if you can’t make them at their scheduled times.
The topics of the first three masterclasses are: beginnings; voice; character.
Future masterclasses for 2024 will cover: setting and situation; story and plot; point of view and narration; showing and telling; structure and form; genre and readership; endings. A prose style intensive in the summer will look at: parts of speech; sentences and paragraphs; voice and style.
I’m also hoping to run pop-up Zoom workshops on topics such as tarot and writing, the Four Elements practice, and specific genres or techniques. I might run a workshop focused on specific pieces of writing and feedback later in the year too. More on all that anon.
You can drop into individual stand-alone classes, or you can take them in sequence across the year as a comprehensive foundation in the basic tools of good writing. Think of it as a craft course for an MFA or MA in writing – you might like to sign up for some of these classes as a supplement to the DIY MA in creative writing.
The emphasis of the masterclasses is very much on craft, though January’s unit on Beginnings will pay attention to matters of process too: getting started or restarted, and maintaining a writing practice. I’m a great advocate of drafting as well as exploratory practices such as Field Work. Later classes will draw more explicitly on my experience in publishing, e.g., when we talk about genre and readership. (Note: I use the word readership rather than market.)
To pace things, I’ll probably focus each Zoom class on maybe half a dozen key tips or takeaways, though the workbooks will offer resources that will let you take things deeper at your own pace.
Beginning as well as experienced writers are welcome. I find a mix in most of the classes I now teach, and I am always a big believer in cultivating Beginner’s Mind to keep writing fresh and authentic.
I’ve been teaching online in some form or other for twenty years – Naropa’s low-residency MFA was one of the pioneers in online learning. My teaching style is informal and enthusiastic, and I welcome questions. I want to be able to help writers wherever they are in their writing, empowering them with what they need to know: questioning myths, overcoming doubts, guiding writers to understanding. I’m particularly interested in cultivating intuitive methods in writing, and my classes often bring in contemplative practices, tarot, or other approaches that take us beyond the page.
Like many teachers I feel that reading is one of the best ways to grow your instincts in writing, and I often do some close reading in my classes, or invite writers to root around their own bookshelves. I frequently use Annie Proulx’s long short story Brokeback Mountain, as it contains a novel’s worth of story while being short enough to be read in one sitting by anyone coming to a workshop, and it covers so much that’s relevant to discussions of craft: character, setting, scene, structure, prose style – basically, everything. There will be plenty of other literary references too: bestsellers, prizewinners, fan favourites, cult classics, works across genres and forms.
Also in 2024: I plan to continue my discussions of craft and publishing on Substack. As a result, I’m not sure how frequently I shall be blogging here. I’m no longer sure about blogging! Interaction has rarely been as lively as Instagram or Twitter/X (though I’m not at all active on Twitter/X any longer, and I fear my Twitter self never really came to life anyway).
Substack has potential; I worry about information overload, with lots of writers writing about writing(!). But too that denotes serious intent, and community, plus a number of people I know are active there. And I was thrilled to pieces that George Saunders chose to discuss The Child by Bobbie Louise Hawkins for his Story Club on Substack this year. The interaction really enlightened me to the possibility for engagement on Substack.
Hope to see some of you there – or on Zoom! More information on the classes can be found here. Meanwhile, I’ll be maintaining this website, not least as a home for all of these writing experiments.
