Revision Intensive: A Six-Month Series, with Emily Lackey
Writing and revising are two processes that are often mistaken for the same thing. Some writers get sucked into revising when they mean to write, while others spend hours writing when what they mean to be doing is revise.
Revision—or re-seeing a draft, being able to see its strengths and identify its weaknesses—is a completely different process. It requires distance. It requires perspective. It requires a critical eye that, in the generative phase of our work, would be stifling to the creative process. Revising a draft requires radically different techniques and strategies than writing, and the process of revising makes entirely different emotional demands on us as writers. It is a critical step of every writer’s writing process. It’s where meaning is made, stories are shaped, and craft is refined. Ask any writer worth their salt, and they will say that revision is where the real writing happens.
But why then is it so hard to revise the thing we’ve already written? In this six-month Revision Intensive, writers will meet twice a month to study strategies for mastering the parts of their drafts that need the most work, discuss innovative ways to see their drafts anew, set goals for the month ahead, and dive deep into the work of revision. This intensive will help writers of all genres to master the craft elements that will make their drafts stronger (such as character desire, narrative structure, pacing, theme, and purpose), give them time and space to put these lessons to use, and provide the accountability and support to get their drafts done.
At the end of the six-month intensive, writers have the opportunity to sign on for another six-month session or turn in their completed drafts for one-on-one editing.
This workshop will be held online.
Second and fourth Sunday of each month, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.; next six-month session begins October 9 ($500)
Emily Lackey is the Assistant Director of Writers in Progress. Her stories and essays have been published in Glimmer Train, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, Third Coast, The Literary Review, Longreads, The Rumpus, The Huffington Post, Bustle, and Hobart, among others. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Newnan ArtRez. After receiving her MFA from the University of New Hampshire, she taught writing at the University of New Hampshire and in the graduate writing program at Southern New Hampshire University. She is at work on a collection of linked stories and a memoir.
