Scaling the Mountain: Unleashing Wildness in Your Writing

On November 5th from 2-4, join us by the fireplace for a free writing workshop –  Scaling the Mountain: Unleashing Wildness in Your Writing. The workshop will be led by local poet and fiction writer Lisa C. Taylor.

All are welcome. Bring a notebook and pen or a computer/tablet.

Does your writing follow predicable patterns? Are there places you won’t go because you are uncertain of how to leap into the wild landscape? How you tell your story depends upon your vision for the writing as well as the audience. When you have a conversation, you add and subtract, exaggerate or tamp down, tolerate or condemn, depending on the person to whom you are speaking. In writing, you can take more risks, trusting that your words will find an audience and resonate.

Life experiences inform art but it is up to the writer to translate, not relate the literal truth. You can start at the end, write a hybrid piece combining poetry and prose, or have an unreliable main character who pulls the reader into his or her fantasy. In this two-hour workshop, we will explore ways in which our lives compel us to write with our resulting pieces containing only the dust of the true events that may have sparked an idea or character. We will read excerpts of unconventional stories, poems and flash fictions, and reinvent what is possible for your own writing.

Lisa C. Taylor holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She has five published collections of poetry and two published collections of short fiction. Lisa has taught students from age 5-85. She believes all of us have stories and all of our stories matter.