Here’s the course description for my course: Advanced Fiction: Novel Writing
According to a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them. I figure you’re here today because you’re one of those people. Good for you. Please understand, however, that you’re not going to “write a novel” this semester, meaning you’re not going to finish one, but you will start one. You will also learn what it will take to finish one and maybe even publish it. Continue reading
This week, I’ve invited my friend Sherrie Flick to describe the novel workshop she taught this past semester at Chatham University, and my former student Ben Gwin to talk about being a student in that course. A little backstory: in the fall of 2006, Ben was a student in my senior seminar in fiction at the University of Pittsburgh. I talk more about that class here. Ben started his novel, his Big Thing in my class, then kept writing, and was eventually accepted into the MFA program at Chatham University. Now he’s getting ready to graduate, and Sherrie is his thesis director, and she’s been keeping me updated on Ben’s progress and that of another former student of mine, Rich Gegick.
By Sherrie Flick and Ben Gwin
SF: This semester I taught a novel writing workshop for the MFA students at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. My goals for this class were four-fold: Generate writing. Learn craft. Make progress as a group. Think and talk about novels, applying the discussions to the work at hand.
I wanted the class to operate less like a workshop and more like a studio (thinking toward a visual arts model, where craft and practice and modeling are pursued/explored actively each class). Continue reading
Last week, I talked to Kim Barnes, who teaches a novel-writing course. This week, I’m talking to students who’ve taken (or are about to take) that course at the University of Idaho, a program which regularly offers a year-long novel workshop capped at six students.
Did you need this course in order to write a novel? If it hadn’t been offered, or if you’d ended up at a different program, would you have written your novel anyway?
Anesa: The pages I produced for Novel Workshop became part of the third novel I’ve written (the previous two still unpublished but dreaming of resurrection). So it’s likely I would’ve written the novel I recently completed even without the support and structure of workshop. It also would probably have been a longer and more agonizing process.
Annie: I came to the program with a novel in mind, and a short start to it, but without this class I think it would have taken me 15 years to actually write it. Continue reading
Recently, a former student emailed to say he’d been accepted into a few MFA programs, but ultimately, he’d decided on the University of Idaho. When I asked him what made the difference, he cited the beauty of the location, the full funding. “And,” he said, “Kim Barnes has created a multi-semester novel workshop, and I think it sounds fantastic.”
I knew this was one person I definitely needed to talk to. So I emailed her out of the blue and asked her if she would mind sharing this experience with the readers of my blog. She was kind enough to say yes. Continue reading