Meredith Sue Willis's Blog, page 9
September 10, 2019
Online Writing Class With Meredith Sue Willis Now Registering
Fall 2019 Four SessionONLINE Prose Narrative Class
with Meredith Sue Willis
Starts October 7, 2019--deadline to apply is October 4, 2019.
For the first time in several years, Meredith Sue Willis, author of 22 published books and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at NYU's School of Professional Studies, is offering a private online course for both advanced and beginning writers of prose narrative: novel, short story, memoir, and more.
This four session online writing course is asynchronous (you work whenever you like) with short lectures and readings posted at two week intervals.
Each student gets individual attention and responses for up to 40 pages of prose (approximately 10,000 words) from MSW. You can get feedback on your novel or short stories or personal narrative or memoir. There will also be starters to get you going on a new project--or restarted on an old one.
See https://meredithsuewillis.com/mswclasses.html
The sessions will be posted every two weeks, with work due before the next posting, two weeks later.
The Fall 2019 schedule is as follows:
Friday, October 4, 2019 Registration ends.
Monday October 7, Session One posted.
Monday October 21, Session Two posted.
Monday November 4, Session Three posted.
Monday November 18, Session Four posted.
Monday December 2: All work for response must be turned in by this date.
The fee is $200, payable in advance by personal check.
To apply, e-mail meredithsuewillis@gmail.com with a description of how you think this online class would help you. If you are accepted into the class, you will receive more details, including where to find the sessions when they are posted and a snail-mail address for payment.
Enrollment is limited. Registration ends Friday, October 4, 2019.
MSW's general web page is https://www.meredithsuewillis.com.
with Meredith Sue Willis
Starts October 7, 2019--deadline to apply is October 4, 2019.
For the first time in several years, Meredith Sue Willis, author of 22 published books and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at NYU's School of Professional Studies, is offering a private online course for both advanced and beginning writers of prose narrative: novel, short story, memoir, and more.
This four session online writing course is asynchronous (you work whenever you like) with short lectures and readings posted at two week intervals.
Each student gets individual attention and responses for up to 40 pages of prose (approximately 10,000 words) from MSW. You can get feedback on your novel or short stories or personal narrative or memoir. There will also be starters to get you going on a new project--or restarted on an old one.
See https://meredithsuewillis.com/mswclasses.html
The sessions will be posted every two weeks, with work due before the next posting, two weeks later.
The Fall 2019 schedule is as follows:
Friday, October 4, 2019 Registration ends.
Monday October 7, Session One posted.
Monday October 21, Session Two posted.
Monday November 4, Session Three posted.
Monday November 18, Session Four posted.
Monday December 2: All work for response must be turned in by this date.
The fee is $200, payable in advance by personal check.
To apply, e-mail meredithsuewillis@gmail.com with a description of how you think this online class would help you. If you are accepted into the class, you will receive more details, including where to find the sessions when they are posted and a snail-mail address for payment.
Enrollment is limited. Registration ends Friday, October 4, 2019.
MSW's general web page is https://www.meredithsuewillis.com.
July 20, 2019
Books for Readers Issue #203 Now Available Online!
Books for Readers #203 is now available-- It has reviews of books by Tana French, Burt Kimmelman, Ann Petry, Mario Puzo, Anna Egan Smucker, Virginia Woolf, Val Nieman, Idra Novey, Roger Wall, and more!
April 18, 2019
New Books for Readers # 202!
New Books for Readers #202! Reviews of books by J.G. Ballard, Arthur Dobrin, Birgit Mazareth, Roger Mitchell, Natalie Sypolt, and more. See the issue at https://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive201-205.html#issue202
April 1, 2019
Edith Konecky Dies
Edith Konecky 1922--2019Edith Konecky, a member of my writing group and author of many wonderful novels and stories, died on March 28, 2019. Read more about her here. See some of her books here.
February 28, 2019
New Review of My Website!
I got a nice review and recommendation for my Website from an online editing services company. It actually appears that the reviewer looked closely at the website! Please take a look at https://www.servicescape.com/blog/master-your-writing-with-meredith-sue-willis …
February 9, 2019
The Raised Relief Map Method of Drafting Prose
The Raised Relief Map DraftFor short stories and even novellas, I have begun drafting in a new way. I always try to read over and organize my notes and put them in a single digital file, but I've begun to do this in a more formal and disciplined way. It is certainly a part of the process of writing, but it feels different from writing to me. It is primarily left brain work that doesn't sink into the creative depths.That not-sinking into the deepest creative place is the discipline. Rather, I try to get the material tidied into piles first. I scrape any notes I have into digital heaps and shove them around so that I have a little landscape of homemade hills. I often give the piles temporary names: The Book Club; Bobby One; The Psychiatrist; Bobby Two. I use the heaps of material as a genre writer uses the standard genre format or as a biographer uses the chronology of a life. The form is not a choke collar or a cage, but a landscape to explore.One I have the heaps, after I've laid it aside for a while, I come back and write from the beginning, letting one thing lead to another, letting myself sink into the scenes and ideas and sensations. This is not the same as a clean start, something I recommend when there seems to be too much material to revise. In a clean start, you start the beginning with an empty screen or blank sheet of paper. Having no notes in front of you allows your mind to bring back only the best parts, and you usually get a leaner, cleaner, altogether better draft.The raised relief map technique groups the materials as a structure, as a map. You can make side trips, stop to smell the flowers. You can be surprised by what is hiding in a cave or an old mine shaft. You can excavate or wander off, usually to come back to the path, or at least to sight of it.This technique is pretty straightforward with a short story or even a long story or essay, because I usually only have maybe half a dozen of the heaps of ideas and materials. It is more challenging, or at the very least more time-consuming, with a novel. Need I reiterate that this is something to play off of, not get stuck in? The plan may change radically before you're done, but for the moment, you have (1) an excellent way to see what you have, the lay of the land; (2) a direction and at least a hypothetical structure; and (3) lots of material to explore--and explode.
[image error]
February 7, 2019
New Issue of Books for Readers!
See Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers Issue #201 at: https://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive201-205.html#issue%20201
Reviews by MSW, Eddy Pendarvis, and George Brosi. Books by Marc Kaminsky, Jessica Wilkerson, Jaqueline Woodson, Eliot Parker, Barbara Kingsolver. Philip Roth, George Eliot and more.
Reviews by MSW, Eddy Pendarvis, and George Brosi. Books by Marc Kaminsky, Jessica Wilkerson, Jaqueline Woodson, Eliot Parker, Barbara Kingsolver. Philip Roth, George Eliot and more.
January 12, 2019
Copyright Issues
Here's a discussion of property and copyright with David Weinberger that I found really interesting. The basic question is, why is owning a copyright or patent not the same as owning a house or a piece of heirloom lace? I've been participating in a mostly polite discussion of this on the Authors Guild listserv. David, by the way, is about to publish his fifth book on issues of the meaning of the Internet. And he's my husband's brother!
December 30, 2018
December 29, 2018
Issue #200 of Meredith Sue Willis's BOOKS FOR READERS!
Have a look at the 200th issue of Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers Newsletter. I wrote, "This is the last issue of Books for Readers Newsletter for 2018, and it is the 200th issue overall since I began it in December, 2000. At that time, I was trying to figure out how to participate in the World Wide Web and the
digital age. It started as a way to have a place for reviews of books I and my friends wrote and for publicizing books from small publishers and independently published books. It was abundantly clear even then that there were big changes coming in publishing. The number of outlets for book reviews was already plunging. Many of the great print newspaper book pages have folded, as have many of the great newspapers. In their place, we have multiple small, specialized literary blogs, and a plethora of literary newsletters, as described in an interesting article in Wired. The article asserts that the "futurebook" is already here. The future of the book is here, says the article, and it's a plain old paperback or a Kindle that looks the way Kindles have looked for years. In other words, the future has already happened, and the object we read from is less changed than the steps leading up it-- print-on-demand, indie publishing, etc. The article also talks about major changes in related technologies like audiobooks listened to on smartphones, e-mail newsletters, and more.Books for Readers Newsletter now has a pretty solid mailing list of just under a thousand-- not an enormous number of people, and they don't all open every issue, but they tend to be writers and readers, and it pleases me to know they are taking a look.Please do tell your friends about it--it's free, and you can always ignore it if you're not in the mood.So Happy Issue # 200, and Happy 2019 to all. Send me your reviews, announcements, lists of favorite books, lists of least favorite books, links to your work online, and links to things you think other people would enjoy. Join the conversation! Read more here....
digital age. It started as a way to have a place for reviews of books I and my friends wrote and for publicizing books from small publishers and independently published books. It was abundantly clear even then that there were big changes coming in publishing. The number of outlets for book reviews was already plunging. Many of the great print newspaper book pages have folded, as have many of the great newspapers. In their place, we have multiple small, specialized literary blogs, and a plethora of literary newsletters, as described in an interesting article in Wired. The article asserts that the "futurebook" is already here. The future of the book is here, says the article, and it's a plain old paperback or a Kindle that looks the way Kindles have looked for years. In other words, the future has already happened, and the object we read from is less changed than the steps leading up it-- print-on-demand, indie publishing, etc. The article also talks about major changes in related technologies like audiobooks listened to on smartphones, e-mail newsletters, and more.Books for Readers Newsletter now has a pretty solid mailing list of just under a thousand-- not an enormous number of people, and they don't all open every issue, but they tend to be writers and readers, and it pleases me to know they are taking a look.Please do tell your friends about it--it's free, and you can always ignore it if you're not in the mood.So Happy Issue # 200, and Happy 2019 to all. Send me your reviews, announcements, lists of favorite books, lists of least favorite books, links to your work online, and links to things you think other people would enjoy. Join the conversation! Read more here....
