Grackle image by artist Anant Ronen.
Of course, the hardest part of writing a book is every part: making sense of an idea, translating ideas into words, fighting to see who the characters really are and what they need and want, rearranging words and scenes and images, doing this over and over again, draft after draft, and then beginning the arduous process of scouting agents for your work, sending query letters. This is a class for people somewhere in the middle part of this process. To be in this class, you should have at least 40 pages written (maybe not in order) by the time the class begins, and commit to writing ten pages a week. It is for people in the early drafts of their novels so that they can get the novel, or a solid draft, finished.
This is an online class for writers who have either not written to the end of their books yet. The novels we read encompass all the genres — including memoirs. This class will include weekly writing time, weekly workshopping, and time discussing the dead ends and corners writers find themselves in. The goal of this workshop is forward momentum: helping writers reaching the end of their drafts. Every writer has one big workshop of up to 30,000 words, one small workshop in which we discuss new work they may have written, up to two chapters.
In the first hour of each class we will discuss questions the writers have, and we will have a writing prompt meant to help add scenes, ideas, and fill out a novel/memoir/book of essays or stories. We will discuss ways to outline or plan your novel and your characters. If there is only one person being discussed on a given week, we will spend more time writing. We’ll also have an informal snack/lunch so those skipping out on the workday don’t return hungry. Every week we will have one or two workshops, depending on how many people are in the class, and aim to write twice.
Early draft workshops will aim at helping writers make it through to the ending of their draft: to get the pages down, to untangle problems they have come up with, to talk out their problems in a group with readers that desperately look forward to reading to the end — to show themselves they can write to the end of a novel. We will focus on what is working well, what aspects of the story we find most intriguing, what questions we hope will be answered, and what the mystery is. Writers generally workshop around 15-45 pages in the long workshop.
This is not a class for people who need people to read their full, completed draft. That class is called: THE FINISHED DRAFT.
Everybody offers something important because we engage with each other’s work seriously. This workshop has a lot of writing, a lot of discussing, and a couple workshops per person. It is here to cheer you on to the end of your project, to help you work your ideas out.
This class is limited to 8 students. Each student has one workshop of their work (up to 30,000 words), and a second workshop (up to 7,000 words or just discussion of new ideas).
Georgina Key will facilitate this group.
Georgina Key is an award winning writer and artist who splits her time between homes in Texas and the UK. After moving to the states from England, Georgina and her family would vacation in Galveston, Texas each summer. Her dream of owning her own little house by the sea came true years later. The nearby community of Bolivar Peninsula was so different from where she was raised, but she quickly fell in love with the authentic beauty of the landscape and its inhabitants. Her novels Shiny Bits in Between and the sequel, Syllables of the Briny World, are her love letters to Bolivar Peninsula.