The Scalpel and the Thread
A Master Workshop for Writers
writer, writing mentor and instructor
*Rediscover how to weave threads of color back into your writing
You’ve written for a while, but you need more than a jumpstart, more than free-writing. You want to take your work deeper. Join Mary Sojourner, writer, writing mentor and instructor, and NPR commentator, for a two-part writing circle focused on craft.
The workshop is a Southwest Festival of the Written Word Prologue Event and will take place on Saturday, October 4, 2014, from 9:00am-3:00pm, in Pinos Altos, seven miles north of Silver City NM.
The cost is $95/participant. Space is limited to 10 participants.
To register, email [email protected] or call 520-850-0014.
- In the morning, you’ll work on developing honing skills, re-structuring passive writing into active and making room for the rhythm of your voice. You’ll learn the beauty of taking the scalpel to your words.
- During lunch, you’ll work by yourself with your five pages using what you’ve learned in the morning.
- In the afternoon, you’ll play with adding powerful (and just enough) detail, playing some more with flat sentences and narratives, and creating dialogue that grabs your reader by the throat and heart. You’ll rediscover threads of color in your writing and weave them in.
You’ll need to bring with you,
- 5 pages of your writing, double-spaced in 12 pt. Times New Roman font
- your questions about your work, and
- a lunch.
Mary honors story and she honors the importance of craft. She teaches the same way she writes-by paying attention to story, then craft. You choose from her cabinet of tools and techniques. You try them out and discover what works for you.
With her help, you discover what is missing in your writing life, not just when you’re at your computer and with your notebook, but in the whole of your life. She writes, “We are in relationship with our writing as we are in relationship with our lives.”
Mary Sojourner is the author of three novels, Sisters of the Dream (1989); Going Through Ghosts (2010) and 29 (2014); the short story collection, Delicate (2001, 2004); essay collection, Bonelight: ruin and grace in the New Southwest (2002); memoir, Solace: rituals of loss and desire (2004) and memoir/self-help guide, She Bets Her Life (2010).
She is an NPR commentator and the author of countless pieces for High Country News, Yoga Journal, Writers on the Range, Matador Network and dozens of other publications.
She was chosen as a Distinguished Writer in Residence in 2007 by the Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing,at Arizona State University in Tempe.
Mary has presented several writing workshops in Silver City, through the Gila River Festival and Aldo Leopold Charter School.
She teaches writing in private circles, one-on-one, at writing conferences and book festivals, and through an on-line course for Matador University.
For Mary, writing is the most powerful tool she has found for doing what is necessary to mend oneself and one’s greater world.
Visit Mary’s website, www.breakthroughwriting.net for more information about her and her work. And check out her blog while you’re there.
