WORKSHOPS:
What Is “Aboutness” and Who Is This “Writer at the Desk”?
Many people assume memoir or personal essay is telling a true story from your past. Yes, it must be accurate, interesting, and engaging. It needs to incorporate some of the literary techniques used in other genres, but it also needs to go beyond that, needs to be more than just narrative; it must grapple with other deeper and more complex issues. It must have “aboutness.” In addition, the writer telling the story must function not solely as the piece’s main protagonist, but as the “writer at the desk,” a wiser and more mature guiding force. This workshop will focus on these principles and how exactly to accomplish this.
Led by Chris Cullen
A Trip to Mediterranean: Creating a Sense of Place
This workshop is all about bringing setting to life for the reader using sensory images. We will roam together in different landscapes of the Mediterranean region while you are offered a feast for your senses. You will leave the workshop with samples of your virtual travel writing.
Led by Ayşe Taşkıran
Awesomeness Through Simple Craft
Keep your reader in “the dream” of your writing by learning and practicing simple writing craft strategies at the sentence level to add depth, variety, texture, lyricism and flow to your prose.
Led by: Finn Kraemer
Behind the Best Songs
Local songwriter-musician Mark McKinnon will discuss elements and approaches to the songwriting craft, especially the marriage of lyrics to the melody, and facilitate exercises designed to help songwriters gain a better sense of how to link meter to the syllabic emphasis of their word choices, design a verse-chorus structure, and create narrative arcs for an emotional connection to the audience. Bring your questions on specific song writing concerns.
Led by Mark McKinnon
Tinker Play: Sensory Inspiration
The Literary Arts Club hosts a writing-centric workshop where we provide a plethora of tangible three-dimensional oddities and intriguing knick-knacks, along with the image of a secret location, for writers to use as major elements of a poem, short story, song, or whatever literary form strikes the creative fancy. Our goal is to inspire the muse by using varied visual and tactile sensory stimuli for as many creative, and hopefully contradictory, possibilities writers can imagine.
Led by Literay Arts Club of Butte College
