Work In Progress – Getting Organized and Setting Goals

 Do you have a novel, memoir, or collection in progress? Where are you with that? Nearly done or still assembling your bits and pieces? We will work as a group to get on track and meet individual goals based on your work – where it is and where it’s going.

Note: Because this workshop fills every year, anyone choosing this, who has already taken any previous version twice, will be automatically waitlisted and should select another workshop as their first choice."

This year's WIP instructor has not yet been confirmed. 

Links to the workshops

 Here are the links to each of the morning workshops.

Creative Non Fiction with Jeff Campbell

Collage Poems with Barbara Ungar

Fiction with Clif Travers

Work in Progress - Getting Organized and Setting Goals

Collage Poems

 “Your thoughts don’t have words every day,” Emily Dickinson wrote. “I don’t get writer’s block,” William Stafford wrote, “I just lower my standards.” It isn’t always possible to write a poem, especially in times of stress. One can, however, keep up a free writing or journaling practice. In this generative workshop, we will learn to mine our own journals for lines, images, and ideas that can be selected, edited, and juxtaposed to create poetry, not necessarily logical. We will use the techniques of found poetry in order to discover and/or create poems hidden in our own writing. We will first go over the basics of a free writing practice; then some techniques of found poetry; then various editing techniques. Even on days when you think you can’t write, you may be surprised by what you find. If you keep a journal, please bring it with you; if not, we can work with free writing done during our retreat.

Barbara Ungar is the author six books, most recently, After Naming the Animals, from The Word Works, which also published Immortal Medusa and Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. Prior books include Save Our Ship, which won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Poetry Prize. She has published in Rattle, Scientific American, Salmagundi, Pedestal, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Bulgarian, and have been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is a professor emerita from The College of Saint Rose, where she taught writing for 29 years.   www.barbaraungar.net

Generative Fiction Boot Camp

 Hey, my writer cohorts!

Is your writing feeling a little stuck? Are you mid-story and lack the drive to move forward? Maybe you’re not writing at all these days and you need a swift kick in the butt. (Metaphorically, of course.) If so, you need a boot camp.

Whether you hope to discover more about a character you’ve already been working with or have no idea where to start a new story, this boot camp workshop will get you moving in some new and interesting directions. Each session will engage the writers through timed prompts of sentences, situations, and word choices. There will be lots of writing and sharing. And oh yeah…there will be sweat.

Are you ready for some hard work? Do you want to generate new ideas? Join me.

Clif Travers is a visual artist, writer, and editor living in Portland, Maine. His short fiction and essays have been featured in multiple literary magazines and anthologies, and his collection of linked stories, The Stones of Riverton, was published by Down East Books in 2023. Clif received his MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. Besides Fall Writerfest, he also teaches creative writing, literature appreciation, and self-editing at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and Maine Media.   

Creative Nonfiction: Playing with Expectations

 What makes nonfiction “creative”? When you subvert expectations, break rules, and experiment with narrative. Using in-class writing prompts, we’ll explore voice, structure, point of view, genre, humor, and other entertaining strategies that can spice up any writing for maximum impact. Prior to the retreat, participants will be asked to write and bring a short book or movie review (500 words); instructions to follow.

Jeff Campbell is a freelance author, book editor, and writing teacher. As a nonfiction editor for over 30 years, he helps authors tell their stories and shape their manuscripts in a wide variety of genres. A former Lonely Planet travel writer, Jeff has written three YA animal science books; Glowing Bunnies!?, on animal bioengineering, was a 2023 SCBWI Golden Kite Award finalist. His fourth YA science book is in production and due in spring 2026. 

2024 After Lunch Walk-In Seminars

After Lunch Walk-in Seminars – Front Room of the Lodge – 1 pm to about 2 pm.

Monday: You Fill Up My Senses - Jeff Campbell

In this craft-focused seminar, we’ll playfully give ourselves over to our senses—moving, tasting, smelling, touching, listening, looking—and explore the vividness, immediacy, and poetry of sensory language. 

Jeff Campbell is teaching “Creative Nonfiction: Not Playing by the Rules” at Fall Writerfest this year.

 

Tuesday: Love at First Line - Hollis Seamon

After the first paragraph—or maybe only the first line—of your novel, short story, memoir, creative nonfiction, or poem, are your readers well and truly hooked?  Engaged? Enchanted? Excited about forming a long-term reader/writer relationship?  Or are they already moving on to more alluring prospects?  Readers, including editors and agents, often report that they give no more than a few seconds to a piece of writing before deciding to reject it or to commit and read on, to see what possibilities it holds.  So how do you inspire instant attraction to your work? In this seminar, we’ll take a look at brilliant opening lines and discuss strategies for creating them. Bring a piece of your writing, ready to brighten its beginning.

Hollis Seamon, the author of two novels and two short story collections, is Professor Emerita at the College of Saint Rose in Albany and taught for the MFA in Creative Writing Program of Fairfield University.  She’s a Fiction Fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts and lives in Kinderhook NY.

Wednesday: What is This Thing Called Poetry? - Ellie O’Leary

Do you attend writing programs, but shy away from the poetry offerings? Do you think those are for other people? I did. We’ll discuss what makes something a poem. Is it the way it appears on the page? What are the necessary elements? Metaphor, rhythm, line breaks? What is the difference between free verse and formal verse? We’ll discuss how writing poetry can enhance your other writing.

Ellie O'Leary, co-facilitator of Fall Writerfest, is the Poet Laureate Emerita of Amesbury, Massachusetts and the Education Director of the Gloucester Writers Center. She has published Breathe Here (poetry, 2020) and Up Home Again (memoir, 2023) both with North Country Press.

Thursday:  Jumpin’ Jack Flash! It’s a gas, gas, gas! - Suzanne Strempek Shea

The flash form is a whole lot of fun and you’re invited to jump on in! This combo of lecture and
mini-generative experience will be a primer on flash fiction, flash creative nonfiction, flash
scriptwriting and flash prose poetry. How do you write compelling lyrical prose or a complete narrative within a few hundred words, or even far less than that? That, and more, will be covered in this brief lecture on a short but big form.

Suzanne Strempek Shea is teaching “Do I Know You?” at Fall Writerfest this year.

The New Workshops Are Here! The New Workshops Are Here!

Here are links to each of the four workshops for 2024. There will be lots more information to follow - including the schedule, the after-lunch walk-in seminars, evening readings, and other logistics. If you have any questions or to select your workshop. let us know at FallWriterfest@gmail.com. 

Fall Writerfest: Creating Metaphors for Writing or Personal Growth

Fall Writerfest: Do I Know You?

Fall Writerfest: Creative Nonfiction: Not Playing by the Rules

Fall Writerfest: No More Excuses: All Works in Progress