HOME STUDY
What and Why?

Our pre-workshop prep, self-paced over the summer, aims to maximize your benefits at the event. These early assignments are a distinctive feature of our seminar, making it highly interactive. The more time you invest in our prep, the more rewards you’ll reap.

Home study consists of the following:

1) FOCUS SESSION ASSIGNMENTS (based on our weekend theme)

Complete our faculty author’s novel-writing worksheets. Use them to help you envision a new story or revise a completed draft. Time commitment at your discretion.

2) PEER CRITIQUESI

Critique selected peer manuscripts from our e-anthology, starting in July. Ten samples will be discussed in faculty-led master classes (open clinics). Read as many of these 10- to 15-page manuscripts as you can. Commit to a written critique of at least four of your choice, and to at least one manuscript by a teen enrollee. Guidelines and critique forms are provided to encourage useful feedback. Then, in our master classes, compare your reviews with those of the pros. This format helps develop your self-editing skills—invaluable in improving your own novel.

Tips: Typically, allow 45 to 60 minutes per manuscript, including your initial critique. Review each a second time, on a different day. Pace yourself; one or two critiques per week may be ideal. Give each manuscript the careful, thorough consideration (and tactful responses) that you yourself would want to receive.

3) RECOMMENDED READING LIST

Optional nonfiction, and/or possibly a short novel, to supplement focus sessions on craft and for other discussion.

Other summer “prep” may include peer-generated dialogues on our website’s bulletin board (open to enrollees and alumni).

To read 2010 focus session content and assignments, click here.