Writing Past the Page with Josh Krigman (Zoom)

This is a 6-week course that will meet on Zoom, from 7:00-9:00 p.m. (ET), on June 18, 25, July 2, 9, 16, and 23.

It’s often hard to make time for your writing, and even harder to feel like you’re using that time well. Too often, once you’ve finally warmed up, you have to stop and return to the rest of your life. But what if you could stay warmed up all the time? 

In this six-week, generative course, we’ll explore ways of taking your writing practice beyond your desk, starting with building your own writing sketchbook. Unlike a notebook, a sketchbook isn’t for ideas to be used and developed later, but a place where you can practice writing for its own sake. Your writing sketchbook is a space for you to observe the world through language, and a tool that encourages you to stay open to those observations more often. 

Through in-class prompts and ongoing assignments, we’ll slowly build our sketchbooks, expanding your relationship to writing from the status of your current project to the way you interact with the world and producing plenty of new pages in the process. We’ll read selections like “May” (Ali Smith) and Teaching A Stone To Talk (Annie Dillard). Then, when it is time for your project, you’ll be warmed up and ready to go. All genres are welcome, and no experience is necessary.

Course Outline: 

Week 1: Building your notebook 

Week 2: Observational writing 

Week 3: Using your assumptions 

Week 4: Finding new sentences 

Week 5: Tableaus and still lives 

Week 6: Looking back to look forward