with Claire Anderson
Saturdays Sept 10 – Nov 12
from 10 to 1
If you’ve hit a road block in your writing, workshopped the same story four times but never really revised it, or are finally ready to submit the masterpiece that’s been living in a drawer to literary journals, this workshop will give you a chance to polish a single story until it gleams. Rather than a traditional writing workshop in which each person’s writing is discussed each week, this course will consist of rigorous weekly exercises guiding each writer through a new draft of a story. The specific revision tasks each week will range from overhauling the structure to writing new scenes to changing point of view to sharpening dialogue, and they will depend on goals tailored to your particular story. This workshop is designed to give you concrete and applicable tools for revision so you can conquer the fear of messing up, elevate and open up your writing, fulfill the potential of what you’ve laid to the page, and (hopefully) get your submissions out of slush piles. Bring a draft of the story you want to revise to the first class.
Claire Fuqua Anderson is a Writing Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Houston, where she received her MFA in fiction. She teaches first-year writing and literature, and she has served as Assistant Editor of fiction and nonfiction at Gulf Coast. She is currently working on a novel.