ART OF PRACTICE

Just as musicians practice scales, painters sketch, and dancers work at the barre, writers turn to exercises to build strength, technique, flexibility and fluency.

This course gives writers opportunity to isolate and deliberately practice a range of techniques, traversing the writing process from generation to revision.

In each meeting, you’ll work through a series of progressive exercises grounded in short readings and centered around a single theme. Weekly topics may include: establishing voice and point-of-view; writing beginnings and endings; playing with form; experimenting with genre; attending to sound; and drafting Big Moments.

Throughout the course, writers will experience the community, guidance and encouragement that supports risk-taking. In our final classes, you will develop and facilitate your own writing exercise, addressing questions of technique that arise from your own creative work. At semester's end, you’ll will write a reflective essay, drawing on examples from your ongoing creative writing, to demonstrate how you’ve applied these techniques.