Workshops
Prose Workshops

We are offering 12 prose workshops at this year's Getaway. Although it may be hard to choose, you'll need to select just one to participate in. By spending the entire weekend in one workshop, you will go deeper with your writing, making more progress than you thought possible. Each workshop will meet for 15 hours over the course of the weekend and will offer craft discussion, writing prompts, writing time, and feedback.

"This Beginning Your Novel workshop helped me grow as a writer, teacher, and person. I would encourage anyone needing inspiration to attend whether they consider themselves a writer or not."
   ~ Jean, Mullica Hill, NJ, 2012 Participant

Fiction | Creative Nonfiction | Memoir | Multi-genre Workshops | Tutorials

Fiction

Beginning Your Novel - Filled*
This workshop will help you begin the novel you've always wanted to write. Come with ideas and notes, and develop a plan for writing a must-read book. Learn how to structure your plot, develop your characters, explore different points of view and improve your dialogue-writing skills. Discussions, writing prompts, and supportive feedback will get your big project off to an energized start.
   Limited to 10 participants - Led by Michelle Cameron

Finishing Your Novel - 1 seat remaining (1/7/13)
Stuck? This workshop is for writers who are mired in a long prose piece and need a spark to advance. If you're serious about publishing your novel and want to overcome the changing dynamics of the industry, this is the workshop for you. The motivating workshop leader will coach you with exercises, analyses, and thoughtful encouragement. She will discuss steps for finishing your manuscript and the process of finding an agent. Be ready to submit up to 20 pages of your novel plus a 2 page synopsis by Dec. 20. The workshop leader and participants will read each manuscript before the Getaway. There is a $200 surcharge for this workshop.
   Limited to just 4 participants - Led by Carol Plum-Ucci

Visions and Revision: Creative Nonfiction & Novel - 2 seats remaining (12/19/12)
What will keep an editor reading? How can you make your writing stand out? This workshop will help you focus and polish your prose, whether creative nonfiction or novel, so it rings true to your vision. Feedback and encouragement will help make your writing stronger, and revising will lead to even greater vision. Be ready to submit 2-5 pages on which you need feedback a week or so after you register. This workshop will focus intensely on revising and you will benefit more by submitting work-in-progress rather than a piece that is nearly complete. The workshop leader and participants will read each submission before the Getaway.
   Limited to 8 participants - Led by Robbie Clipper

Writing and Publishing Your Fiction
Remember the story of the three little pigs? Without a strong foundation, their houses didn't stand a chance against the wolf. Editors and agents tell us the same principles apply to writing. This workshop will help you master three fundamentals of fiction: character, setting, and dialogue. With craft instruction and examples to lead the way, you'll do exercises that address the challenges of each element, leading to a story that uses them all. The class will conclude with a brief overview of the publishing process and tips on how to get started sending your work out.
   Limited to 10 participants - Led by Richard K. Weems

Writing and Publishing Your Fiction - Advanced - No seats available
This is a generative class for fiction writers who already have workshop experience and a clear sense of the fundamentals of the form. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, we'll look at excerpts from published stories to inspire new writing. Later in the afternoons you'll receive constructive feedback. Monday morning will be reserved for larger questions about craft and finding an audience for your work. Along the way, we'll work hard, have fun, and make sure delight isn't an enemy to seriousness.

Writing for the YA & Crossover Markets - No seats available
Does your teen protagonist belong in a young adult or adult story, or both? This workshop will explore what distinguishes crossover books from those written strictly for one market. Discussion, writing exercises and constructive feedback will help you focus on the key elements of young adult literature. Topics will include choosing the right setting, crafting an engaging plot, developing complex characters, and writing convincing dialogue. Works in progress welcome.

Creative Writing Sampler: Fiction
If you are eager to try your hand at writing fiction, here’s your chance. You will engage with key elements of the genre, practice techniques that will turn your writing into a sensory experience, and develop and refine your own style. Stimulating prompts will provide springboards for writing, sharing, and discussion. Whether you're seasoned or haven't put pen to paper in far too long, this workshop will energize your writing. This workshop is one of three genres featured in the Creative Writing Sampler. Learn more about this workshop.
   Led by Renée Ashley

Can't wait to attend the Getaway?
Register today!

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Creative Nonfiction

The Art & Craft of Creative Nonfiction - Filled*
Creative nonfiction has been called "the music of what happened" (Blake Morrison) and "the hum of perpetual noticing" (Cynthia Ozick). It starts with writing many small moments—a childhood memory, a dream, an image from the TV news, a funny remark overheard, even a stubbed toe. In this workshop, we'll do exercises to evoke moments that might become stories. We'll practice strategies that draw readers in. As we share material generated in class, we'll look for narrative potential and implicit themes and discuss ways of turning these pieces into larger works such as memoirs, humor essays, travel stories, or contemplative essays.
   Limited to 10 participants - Led by Judy Copeland

The Art & Craft of Creative Nonfiction - Advanced - 3 seats remaining (12/19/12)
This generative class is designed for those who have previous workshop experience and have already mastered the fundamentals of creative nonfiction. Working from exercises, discussions, feedback, and revisions, we will focus on how to turn facts into truth that will leap from the page and engage your reader. We will look at the architecture of prose, its shape and narrative, and discuss the structure of longer form nonfiction. Be ready to submit 2-3 pages of your work in progress a week or so after you register, not for critique, but to give the workshop leader a sense of the project you're working on. After you register you will receive a suggested reading list which will help you benefit more from the workshop.
   Limited to 10 participants - Led by Thomas Peele

Visions and Revision: Creative Nonfiction & Novel - 2 seats remaining (12/19/12)
What will keep an editor reading? How can you make your writing stand out? This workshop will help you focus and polish your prose, whether creative nonfiction or novel, so it rings true to your vision. Feedback and encouragement will help make your writing stronger, and revising will lead to even greater vision. Be ready to submit 2-5 pages on which you need feedback a week or so after you register. This workshop will focus intensely on revising and you will benefit more by submitting work-in-progress rather than a piece that is nearly complete. The workshop leader and participants will read each submission before the Getaway.
   Limited to 8 participants - Led by Robbie Clipper

Can't wait to attend the Getaway?
Register today!

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Memoir

Turning Memory into Memoir
Transform significant life experiences and important moments into well-crafted literary prose. We'll open our senses, dig into memory and use the tools of imagery, detail, tone, pacing and structure to write vivid, meaningful memoirs. Exquisite excerpts by a range of writers will give us inspiration and a close look at the "clockworks"—that is, what makes a strong memoir tick. In exploring the "heart" of memoir, we'll also touch on questions of authenticity, memory, truth-telling and the ethics of writing about living people.
   Limited to 10 participants - Led by Anndee Hochman

What Matters is Not What Happened: Advanced Memoir - Filled*
Using Vivian Gornick's famous line about "what matters," we'll investigate the best way to tell your story in this advanced memoir workshop. With your own memoir-in-progress as a springboard, you will explore the importance of seeing your first-person narrator as a character in your story, experiment with writing exercises, and discuss your new work. Be ready to submit 2-3 pages on which you need feedback by Dec. 20. The workshop leader and participants will read each submission before the Getaway.
   Limited to 10 participants - Led by Barbara Hurd

Creative Writing Sampler: Memoir
If you are eager to try your hand at writing memoir, here’s your chance. You will engage with key elements of the genre, practice techniques that will turn your writing into a sensory experience, and develop and refine your own style. Stimulating prompts will provide springboards for writing, sharing, and discussion. Whether you're seasoned or haven't put pen to paper in far too long, this workshop will energize your writing. This workshop is one of three genres featured in the Creative Writing Sampler. Learn more about this workshop.
   Led by Mimi Schwartz

Can't wait to attend the Getaway?
Register today!

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Multi-genre Workshops

Creative Writing Sampler
Hemingway joked that writing was easy, "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." If you are eager to explore three different genres under the tutelage of award-winning writers and teachers, here's your chance. Over the long weekend, you will engage with key elements of each genre, practice techniques that will turn your writing into a sensory experience, and develop and refine your own style. Stimulating prompts will provide springboards for writing, sharing, and discussion. Whether you're seasoned or haven't put pen to paper in far too long, this workshop will energize your writing without Hemingway's blood and bandages. The Sampler will offer:
    ● Fiction--Saturday with Renée Ashley
    ● Memoir--Sunday with Mimi Schwartz
    ● Poetry--Monday with BJ Ward

Free-Writing Intensive: A Generative Workshop for All Genres
Free-writing can be the most important tool in a writer's arsenal, the one that gives us the best chance of surprising ourselves. It is also the first way we honor an impulse to write, and the act during which the impulse catches fire or peters out. Many writers know this, but few approach free-writing as a practice, one with a wide range of methods and purposes. This workshop will open the vault to the theory and practice of free-writing, giving participants techniques for getting out of mental and stylistic ruts, expanding the range of available subjects, and generating a bounty of new material. Both poets and prose writers will benefit from this workshop.
   Led by Douglas Goetsch

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Prose Tutorials

Tutorial in Prose
  Saturday & Sunday starting at 4:40 pm
Prose tutorials offer a constructive critique on a work in progress, manuscript, essay, or story that you're not sharing in your workshop. These one-on-one-sessions last twenty minutes each. You have the option of requesting a tutorial with your workshop leader to get one-on-one feedback on the topic of your choosing, such as crafting a strong book proposal. Either way, be ready to submit your piece a week or so after you register (Up to 15 pages double-spaced with 1" margins and a 12 point font plus a 1 page synopsis). There is a $100 fee for each Tutorial in Prose you add-on. Open to all participants, regardless of what workshop you are taking.

Learn more about our other Tutorials and Add-ons

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