Writing Co-Lab

Time to revise your draft! Get out your scissors, your matches, your most brutal thinking cap, the echoes of every reader who told you to cut cut cut till you whip that baby into a smaller, leaner version of itself, right?

Wrong.

What if I told you the best way to strengthen your draft was by rejecting the mindset of trimming, fixing, and slashing (and the language of diet culture to boot)? That the best way to revise was writing more, writing in, to think in expansion rather than contraction? What if I also told you revision could be fun? That you could still make discoveries, the kind that set you on fire during your first stage of your project?

In this six week hands-on craft class, I'll teach you how to refine your draft through addition. An underutilized tool of revision, generative work is as necessary for completed drafts — fiction that already has made its preliminary choices regarding setting, characters, voice, timeframe, and so on — as it is in early drafting stages. I'll help you find the same freedom and play you felt when starting a project at this stage when you're trying to bring it closer to the finish line. 

First, we'll identify opportunities for generative revision in completed drafts using your existing text, your instincts, and a few new tricks. Then we'll dive into the work of deliberate experimentation, deepening and layering those drafts by paying close attention to their potential and parameters (and when necessary, blowing them open). Though not a workshop, the group serves as a space for accountability and sharing process, ideas, and of course, support and guidance. We'll read the occasional craft essay, learn concrete strategies for revision via generation, and put them into practice during our sessions. This course works best for students who have a draft of a novel or multiple short stories ready for revision.