Description
Four Tuesdays, Apr 7-Apr 28, 5:45-7:45pm
Open to all
Limited to 12 participants
Hybrid Workshop*
How do you get that “being there” feeling? How much do you need to know about a particular time and place you’re after before launching yourself into a writing project? And what are the differing needs for fiction and nonfiction writers?
The objective in this workshop is two-fold: finding out what you need to bring your project to completion, and listening to what you are discovering and letting your discoveries guide you. The art of the accident, the coincidence, changing on the fly, is very much part of the research process.
A quick note for potential participants: Is this workshop for fiction or nonfiction writers? Both. I have reported as a journalist from the same zones of conflict I later used in a novel, and getting the necessary information on events there was the same for both types of writing. As a novelist, I was free to mix and match and fantasize about what I had found, whereas as a journalist, I was bound by the facts.
This is how the workshop will proceed, respecting the needs of the participants, of course. We will bring in our research issues, resolved or not, pending or not, real or imagined (“what if I wanted to know this?”). We’ll then turn to the work of learning what we want to know, and how. Always with the question in mind: why? Why do we want to know such-and-such? How will it fit into the story we need to tell? How can we avoid over-researching, or failing to assimilate our research into our writing?
We’ll pay special attention to the moral aspects of turning over stones when writing about friends, family, people we are or have been intimate with. We’ll look into topics very much on page 1 of people’s work, like PTSD, family violence, etc. And no workshop can be carried out without looking at the technological advances (such as the Global Investigative Journalism Network) that allow us to gaze upon a landscape or a battlefield from the comfort of our living rooms.
Participants should bring in their own work to the group, but also examples from other books and articles they feel provided the “being there” feeling. As a group, we will create a community of fellow writers that will hopefully outlive this short workshop.
*This workshop will take place at the QWF Office (Room 3, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec) with up to 2 virtual spots for participants who are unable to attend in-person because of distance or disability. By default, all workshop registrations are for in-person spots. If you would like to request a virtual slot, contact Riley at riley@qwf.org stating the reason for which you would need the virtual spot, then wait for a response before registering. Please do not register until you receive confirmation of a virtual spot for you.
