The LONG Project: The Finished Novel w/Miah Arnold

Mon xTBA // 6:30-8:30 p.m.

The LONG Project is a 4-5 person class for writers who have completely or nearly finished a draft book or long project, and want the whole thing read for workshop.  Your peers will serve as beta readers, cheerleaders, and critics.

In the first hour we will discuss questions all the writers have, and we will have a writing prompt meant to help add scenes, ideas, and fill out a work. The second hour is reserved for workshopping.  We’ll have twenty minutes of breaks/snack/lunch so those skipping out on the workday don’t return hungry, and I’ll be available to chat with during that time. Every week we will have one workshop.

Workshops may help writers seriously face problems of structure, character arcs, and forward momentum. We help reconceptualize the story that may have come out in fits and starts, with an eye for the end. We will discuss plot holes, sags in the pacing, and problems with characters who may seem one thing in the writers eyes but seem something else to early readers. Again, we will talk out problems the writers face as they iron out the flaws and problems they identified in their earlier drafts.  This is a time for tightening, for writers to discover where readers find themselves most engaged, and when they lose interest or belief in the story and why. To see if the story they intended is the story that is received.

This class meets 6 or 7 times, depending on whether 4 or 5 people sign up. During the weeks of full novel workshopping, it focuses on one novel, every other week.  The last class involves turning in outlines and early revisions for a new draft, and during the first class we’ll discuss outside reading, how to give each other feedback, and we’ll make a schedule for our work.

Week One: 1.5 hours for schedule & introductions
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later: 2.25 hours novel workshop
2 weeks later:  2.25 hours (revision; possible last class, depending on number of students)

At least two weeks before the first class:

a) Buy Hyssop by Kevin McIlvoy. Read it before class. It is a short, imperfect novel not everybody will like, but that has a lot of great lessons everybody could learn from. It has elements to teach both memoir and fiction within it.
b) your title, the word count, and what draft this is (first, third, seventh…don’t overthink it, just tell me what you think it is)
c) genre (literary, adventure, romance, sci fi, coming of age, ya, etc, maybe a mix)
d) form (book of essays or short stories, memoir, novel, play, other…
e) audience (who you expect will enjoy and buy the book)
f) a one page summary of your work
g) assurance you have read the cost.

COST:
If you have not taken a previous LONG Project class, it costs $750; if your novel is longer than 350 double-spaced, 1.5 inch margins, 12 point font Times New Roman pages, it is $1 a page extra. Email me if it is longer.

If you have taken a previous LONG Project class for this novel, it costs $600.  You can bring a check to the first class or pay by Venmo. Email me if you have problems.

This class will have 4 or 5 students.

Miah Arnold is the principal and founder of Grackle and Grackle. She has taught creative writing for over twenty years at nonprofits and she has also taught in universities including the University of Houston (where she received her Ph.D. in Creative Writing). Her essay “You Owe Me”, about teaching children at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, was collected in Best American Essays in 2012. Her first novel, Sweet Land of Bigamy, was published in 2012. She is currently working on a book of essays and a book of poetry.


GRACKLE IMAGE by artist Phillip Wade.