Class Title: "Writing Wild! Using Nature and Place as Inspiration"
Instructor: Susan Tweit
Class Term: Winter 2008 Spring 2009
POSTPONED!
Susan's class will be postponed until the Spring term. She has received a three-month fellowship that enables her to work on the first part of her book Rooted, a sequel to her memoir, Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey, which will be published by the University of Texas Press in March, 2009.
Synopsis
This is an eight-week, individually-tailored workshop with an award-winning writer and naturalist exploring ways to write from and about nature and place, focusing on writing exercises, techniques, and markets.
Class Description
In this class, you will identify a landscape or place that inspires you and name a dozen key species that define that place. You will "listen" to the land and record what it has to say, write (personal essay, story, poem) depicting your relationship with a place or natural event and what makes it speak to you. You will identify the genre you write in and research markets for your work. I'll use e-mail and online lessons, supplemented by blog posts and podcasts of book excerpts. Time commitment: 2-4 hours per week.
Class Outline
Unit 1: Meeting the Wild. How to know the landscape around you. Learn how to identify key elements of their chosen landscape in order to understand what makes it unique, including learning how to use field guides, read maps, and find the literature of their particular place
Unit 2. Fragrance of Home. Free writing based on a memory exercise. Private comments from instructor, shared "reading" of excerpts via email if students wish..
Unit 3. Field Notes. Learning how to pay attention and take notes the way scientists do to enrich writing with real details of nature. Individual exercise, private comments from instructor, shared email "reading" if students wish
Unit 4. Writing Home. Drawing on the first three units to write a short essay, story or several poems that depict a particular place or aspect of nature, and why it speaks to you.
Unit 5. Workshop and Reading. After circulating work for constructive comment from the instructor and other workshop students, "read" the final piece via email.
Unit 6. Who Cares? A look at markets for writing rooted in nature and place - open discussion via group emails. End with a virtual closing ritual.
Student Skills, Equipment required
Intermediate writing and computer skills; ability to use and send Word files as attachments, access to high-speed internet, email, ability to listen to podcast and read a blog.
Tuition/Fees for this course
SCN members: $225. Non-SCN members: $250.
Instructor Bio
Susan Tweit has written eleven books, all of which draw on nature and the land (several have won awards); and hundreds of feature articles, essays, and columns for newspapers and magazines. She has taught dozens of workshops at colleges and universities from coast to coast (University of California - Riverside to Wofford College, South Carolina), as well as at conferences organized by groups like Story Circle Network. She has coached tens of writers individually, by mail and online.
Susan Tweit has written eleven books, all of which draw on nature and the land (several have won awards); and hundreds of feature articles, essays, and columns for newspapers and magazines. She has taught dozens of workshops at colleges and universities from coast to coast (University of California - Riverside to Wofford College, South Carolina), as well as at conferences organized by groups like Story Circle Network. She has coached tens of writers individually, by mail and online.