Writers Gym

“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.”—Jack London

Writers Gym is a first-year creative writing “gymnasium.” Our focus is on weekly writing exercises that develop characters and stories—whether for the stage, screenplay, or fiction/memoir prose narration. In addition, we study theories about the nature of creativity and explore strategies for improving writing discipline and for working writing blocks. Our goals are as follows: to study writing methods that help to inspire, nurture, encourage, and sustain our urge/need to write; to concentrate on building the inner lives of our characters through in-depth character work, in order to create stronger stories; to explore—that is to say, investigate—and gain access into our spontaneous ideas; to articulate and gain a more conscious relationship to the “inner territory” from which we draw ideas; to confront issues that block the writing process; and to gain greater confidence in revision, as we pursue clarification of the work. Our yearlong class procedure will include weekly writing exercises, writing and revising multiple short pieces that the students generate—plays, prose fiction and nonfiction, or short screenplay. Students will be assigned selected readings from the aforementioned genres plus a variety of essay excerpts concerning the creative process. In addition, one class a week will focus on the history of theatre.