Participants in this hands-on, intensive workshop will focus on creating new work during their week at Split Rock, so they'll begin by considering the rewards and difficulties of invention. They'll also discuss the value of revision, and practice revising some of the work they create during the week. The group will examine craft issues, such as dialogue, point of view, evocative setting, and narrative structuring, and spend some time each day discussing published work. There will be lectures, exercises, critiques of participants' developing work, and time to write. The workshop welcomes participants from a range of backgrounds who are working in various forms and styles.
Literary invention requires a taste for grandeur and humility.
Although I am zealously secular, I think the best writing is prayer. Prayer to ourselves and our audiences. An expression of our wisest, most frightened, wittiest selves. Profane prophecy emerging from a diaphragm of faith. Sometimes these prayers fail because we lack courage or will to voice them coherently and audibly.