Lets summarize how these seven weeks are going to be structured.
In week 1 we'll talk about where we've been and where we're going.
I'll lay out the structure of the class.
We'll the discuss the end product and we'll start to gather the materials for
the first draft.
The milestone for that week will be this pile of materials, the thoughts,
the scraps of prose.
And most importantly the exercises and
excerpts that you've already written in the other courses that you've
been thinking maybe you will want to use in the construction of this final piece.
Those things will be the seeds of the story on the page.
In week 2, we'll talk about composition strategies through conversations with
Amy Bloom and national book award winning novelist Jaimy Gordon.
We'll discuss a variety of strategies for
gathering those materials into a coherent home.
For the first two weeks of the class, you're going to be working on trying to
gather those materials into a complete piece.
The milestone here would be, will take two weeks finally.
It would be a complete draft of your first story available for
the review of your peers.
In that third week we'll talk about finishing the first draft.
In that week, all of your efforts will be focused on bringing the thing across
the finish line in a form that's able to be reviewed by your fellow writers.
It will be due at the end of the third week.
So if you're starting to work now, get going.
You've got three weeks to get this first draft in order.
Meantime, we'll get some advice from a variety of writers In that third week,
most of them former Wesleyan students who have gone on to careers as writers and
have been at this stage before.
In the fourth week, we'll talk about peer review.
We'll discuss the best way to give critiques,
including an the example of a work shop.
The milestone for this week will be to provide those three important
detailed critiques of the macro level,
the large decisions that the writer's made in his first draft.
Week five, we'll talk about how to sift the critiques you've received, learn how
to best use them, how to take difficult advice, and when to put it aside.
We'll also get a demonstration of fine grain editorial work.
Line by line editing, this is what we'll call the sanding critique.
And once you've seen a demonstration of it you'll begin the work of revision
while you also do some fine grain editing of your own.
Word by word critique of the first page or two of several of your peers' stories.
In week 6 we'll talk about rewriting and publishing.
While your at work rewriting and making the final draft of your story, we'll have
a discussion with Professor Skyhorse who's a former senior editor at Grove Atlantic.
About publishing and what editors of magazines and
books look for in a manuscript.
The milestone that you'll be pointing to here will, again, be two weeks,
pointing to the end of the seventh week, so all hands will be on deck for
you to put together the final version of your story.
Finally, week 7, the final version of your story and where to go from here.
As you get ready to meet your deadline, and turn in the final version of your
story for peer evaluation, we'll discuss practices for continuing the creative
momentum that you've built up over the course of the specialization.
Among the options that you might entertain include writer's conferences,
or writer's workshops, and we'll talk with a couple of professionals in those fields.
The milestone for that week is the whole enchilada, your final piece.
Once you turn in the final evaluations of three of your peers work,
you'll be certified as having completed the specialization, and
you'll be able to see what they've said about your work in the end.
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