Fiction Workshop

Here’s a confession: I don’t believe in the Muse. I believe in hard work, determination, and stubbornness. I believe in discipline and calluses on the hands. I believe in bleary-eyed exhaustion and getting dirty and sweaty. I believe in words. Putting together sentences. Those sentences forming a paragraph. That paragraph turning into the beginning of a story. The beginning of a story finding its end. Then tearing that all down and building it again. I believe in revision. And I believe in more revision. I believe that a story is a house. And for every story that you want to tell, I want to help you build it. We will set foundations, we will discover rooms, we will climb floors and find hiding places, we will decorate the walls and carry furniture and build roofs. This will be a nuts and bolts workshop on the art of writing short fiction. Throughout the semester you will write your own short stories and you will study an eclectic range of contemporary short fiction. You will learn to read as writers and develop the language to talk about fiction. Prepare to write. And to read. And to share. I don’t believe in the Muse. But I believe in support and practice and a home. Bring your imagination, your courage, and your pens. Open to all students, though a background in previous workshops is recommended.