Next Bootcamp: How to Survive Writing Your Book (August 20, held via Zoom).
Writing a book — whether a novel, memoir, or non-fiction project — is a hell of a task. It involves years of being alone, wrestling with your aloneness. Friends, spouses, lovers, kids, all want to know, when will you be done? It’s easy, natural even, to want results. Just finishing a first draft is a major accomplishment — the truth is, when I finish a first draft of something, I’m ready for the parade in my honor. But agents don’t want first drafts. Submit to an agent — let alone to a publisher — too quickly, your work gets a polite form letter.
This workshop is all about staying in the chair, and more: learning how to live with writing your book, so you can write the best version of your novel, a physical manuscript that is the closest incarnation of what is in your head. The book that you need to write. Writing beautiful sentences are one thing, but how do you learn to live with the evolving, changing structure of a book? After you have that MFA but don’t have the structure of a workshop? When friends can only offer so much advice? When life’s commitments push at you, while on the page there are so many problems? How do you keep your best habits, stay connected to what your vision can be, and forge on into the teeth of your doubts?
Conducted over Zoom, this Boot Camp allows writers everywhere access to top-notch instruction: how to work on the book’s structure as a regular part of the manuscript’s evolving life; how to organize time and your computer files; the classic structure of what goes into a story, and in particular what is demanded from the beginning, middle, and ends of stories. I will apply my own journey, how I wrote my first two novels, and how they were structured. There will be class exercises, handouts, discussions. Pease join me as we tackle these big questions. My goal is to help you move toward the answers that allow you to write and work at your best.
Workshop will be Thursday, August 20 6-9 pm. (If people insist on a weekend, I can also do: Saturday, Aug 22, 12-3 pm)
$300 registration fee (30 dollar discount if you register before Aug 1)
Paypal to @Cbockstar
Venmo to : @Charles-Bock-2
Boot camps are open to all levels of experience.
If demand exists, there will be more writing boot camps, focusing on various structural and technical issues.
Similarly, if there is a demand, I will start (and teach) a workshop for people iworking on a manuscript (novel/ collection/ non-fiction project).
Current teaching calendar:
July 17/18: Center for Fiction — Dialogue Bootcamp (sold out).
August 20: How to Survive Writing Your Book
More dates to come.
Any questions, interest, or if you would like to be kept informed about future classes and workshops: cbock1999@gmail.com
About Charles: I am the author of the novels Beautiful Children, which was a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Alice & Oliver (which got me interviewed byTerri Gross on Fresh Air). My fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Believer, Vice, the Los Angeles Times, and Slate, as well as in numerous anthologies. I have received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Yaddo, UCross, and the Vermont Studio Center. I am a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, teach writing workshops at NYU, have taught in the Columbia University MFA program for fiction, and have lectured about writing and craft all over the nation and world. I live with my daughter in Brooklyn.
