important information

Dates: Sundays, September 1 – October 6, 2024

Location: Online

Cost: $150 We want to make this course accessible. If you are interested but need financial assistance, please mention on the form and we will do our best to accommodate.  

Syllabus

Week 1: If I didn’t write, I would... : What makes us write? What does writing do for us?

Week 2: This is water: What is the gaze our story is under? Who do we write for? The answer might surprise you.

Week 3: The story of the story: Narrative expectations vs. the story you want to tell. What’s the story you’re not writing?

Week 4: Making friends with revision: Why is revision scary? Did we just make it better or worse? What is ‘good’ anyway?

Week 5: Getting published: If no one reads our work, is it still worth writing? What can getting published do for you and, more importantly, what it cannot?

Week 6: Watering our creativity: It’s a lifelong journey, might as well get comfortable. Creating intentional, sustainable ecosystems around our writing practice.

What’s the story behind your story: A fiction short story workshop

Aim of the workshop: What makes you write short stories? Ever wondered who you write for and where does your story belong? In this workshop, we will go deeper into our short stories by exploring why we write, what is our unique writing style, what holds us back from telling the stories we really want to tell and what strategies we can use to work through these blocks. We will talk about cultivating creativity and sustainable writing practices and do speed writing bursts. We will discuss how to submit for publication, what publishing can do for a writer and, more importantly, what it cannot! This is a safe space for writers where we will create a collaborative, nurturing community to take our short stories to the next level.

Who will benefit from it: Recommended for fiction writers of colour, women and LGBTQAI+ writers and other groups under-represented in the mainstream writing world. Participants will be invited to share a 1,000 word sample of their fiction writing for registeration. This may or may not be the piece they submit to the workshop later.

Registration: Please send a 1,000 word writing sample to Alaa Elfadel, Schools Administrator: alaa{at}oysterriverpages{dot}com (alaa@oysterriverpages.com). You may also contact Alaa for inquires. The workshop is capped at 10 participants.

Deadlines: Deadline for registration has been extended to the 23rd of August, 2024. All applicants will receive confirmation by August 24th.