9 Weeks, 7-9:30 p.m. (this class is not on the current schedule of classes)
$335 members/$365 others San Francisco
If you’re generating new ideas for a project that’s been in your head for awhile, this class is the perfect place for you. “Getting feedback on a printed manuscript is a helpful process,” says instructor Chris DeLorenzo, “but writers also need a place to explore ideas and generate first draft writing. This class is the perfect place to do that.”
Based on the Amherst Writers and Artists method, this class provides a safe, fun environment, utilizing spontaneous writing exercises that help unlock ideas for poems, stories, and dialogue. You’ll have a chance to focus on the building blocks of effective writing: description, sensory details, and narration, and you’ll find yourself actually enjoying the process!
Each class offers students several writing sessions. After writing, students volunteer to read their work out loud and receive feedback. “What’s unique about this method,” says DeLorenzo, “is that students only offer positive feedback on what’s read out loud: no criticism. This really helps writers to grow their new projects.”
The writing exercises in this class with help you to stretch as a writer, to expand on your ideas, or return to past ideas and help you to develop them. Feedback from the instructor, as well as the other students, allows each writer to really hear what’s working in these first drafts for the first time. “That’s something writers can’t do on their own,” DeLorenzo reminds us. “We need other ears; we need other writers.”
Chris DeLorenzo has an MA in creative writing and is a certified Amherst Writers and Artists method (AWA) facilitator. He teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and has published poetry, prose and personal essays in numerous publications. He has also written two novels, Certain Sacred Places and All That Remains.
“. . . what a gift Chris DeLorenzo has been. . .”