Lincoln-Sudbury Adult & Community Education

This class offers an introduction to the essential elements of fiction. We will use example texts from established writers to discuss how these elements can be used to enhance our own work. Students can expect to start the class by focusing on generating work, after which we will focus on ways to revise our stories. Our work will focus on the Short Story form, but many of the ideas and practices will translate to writing longer works. We will be workshopping stories in progress, so students should be prepared to share and discuss drafts with the class.

DATE CHANGE; THIS CLASS WILL MEET OCTOBER 30. Once your manuscript is finished, comes the next and often hardest step, getting your work published. This two-session course with Leta Serafim will outline the various options available from writing query letters to agents and publishers to signing on with self-publishing companies like Ingram-Sparks. She will provide an overview of the industry today and give you her recommendations as to how best to negotiate this every changing field and avoid the expensive mistakes many first-time authors make.

The readings supplied for this course will introduce participants to the work of several famous writers. Excerpts from Emerson’s essays, Shakespeare’s plays, and the writings of Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, and others, with annotations by the instructor, pertain to the philosophy of everyday life. The participants’ written responses to questions about the texts will prepare us for in-person discussions of aspirations, circumstances, relationships, feelings, and resources.