Yearlong in Memoir [Theo Nestor]

In weekly meetings over the course of the 2020-2021 academic year, yearlong classes provide dedicated writers with an intensive path toward finishing a draft of a book. Whether you are early in the writing process or already have a rough draft, these yearlong courses will help you set active, clear goals, as well as write and revise with intention.

One-third of each course focuses on developing proficiency with the writing tools (craft elements) that you will need to use, and the remaining two-thirds are comprised of workshops and writing toward personally devised deadlines.

Yearlong classes in Prose, Memoir, and Young Adult Fiction include a full-day intensive publishing class (May 8) on the book business and finding a market for your book. The class will feature guests, including literary agents, and other individuals from the publishing business.

It is okay to miss some classes because of travel. That said, students who get the most out of yearlong classes are often very dedicated to their writing, and are eager to develop a strong and steady writing practice as well as become part of a tightly knit cohort of writers.

In this craft-focused class, we will discuss aspects of writing a memoir that has enduring value, including: expanding your story to the universal and contracting it to the stunningly specific; generating material once you’ve clarified your story’s arc and themes; writing a scene, a chapter, a section; creating momentum; making your narrator a character; what to include and what to leave out; finding the connective tissue that makes a book cohere; how to open a memoir and how to end it. Part of each class meeting will be allotted to writing.