Fall workshops with Ethan
Classes I'm offering this fall include:
- So You Wanna Be a Writer, Friday, October 1st, 10:30am-1:30pm (EST)
- The Hermit Crab Essay, Friday, October 15th, 10:30am-1:30pm (EST)
- Seaport Free Writes, Wednesday, October 6th, 12:30pm-1:15pm
- 6 Weeks, 6 Essays, 6 Tuesdays from 10:30am-1:30pm (EST), starting September 14th
- Developing Your Personal Essay, 8 Mondays from 6-9pm (EST) starting October 18th (to Dec 6)
- Writing the Short, Publishable Personal Essay: Online, 8 weeks online; NO LIVE MEETINGS. Class opens September 9th.
Writing and the Literary Life in Rhode Island
Over 100 folks came out to the ”Writing and the Literary Life in Rhode Island" roundtable and meet-and-greet on Monday, September 17, that I helped organized with GrubStreet and SchoolOne. The event featured representatives from literary and writing organizations across the state including Frequency Writers, What Cheer Writers Club, Reading with Robin/Point Street Reading Series, Rhode Island Center for the Book, Association of Rhode Island Authors, Ocean State Review, and others.
here are some photos from the event itself, and you can watch my video interview preview of the event here on GoLocal Prov LIVE below. 
Preview of the event here on GoLocal Prov LIVE below.
My first foray into online teaching
June/July classes at Grub Street
Here is the current schedule of adult writing workskops and seminars I'm offering at Grub Street (in Boston) this summer. These are open the public and do not require enrollment in a degree program.
Some of these are part of my Freelance Essentials Series, which teaches students the skills and craft to become working freelance journalists Details and registration information here.
Hope to see you in the classroom!
Freelance Essentials: Navigating the Freelancer's Market in Boston
4 Wednesdays from 6:00-9:00pm, starting June 4th
Freelance Essentials: The Ethics, Practice and Business of the Freelance Life
Tuesday, June 10th, 6:00-9:00pm
Kickstart Your Writing Mojo with A Random Exercise
Friday, June 20th, from 10:00am-5:00pm
Freelance Essentials: Writing Commentaries, Op-eds & Personal Essays for Publication
6 Tuesdays from 10:30am-1:30pm, starting June 24th
Workshop That Pitch Letter!
Friday, June 27th, 10:00am-5:00pm
Freelance Essentials: Gonzo, Stunt and Immersion Writing Boot Camp
Saturday, June 28th, 10:00am-5:00pm
Freelance Essentials: Freelance Writing 101
Saturday, July 12th, 10:00am-5:00pm
More details and registration info here.
Free Teen Creative Writing Program at Somerville Public Library
Are you a teen who likes to write stories about aliens, blogs, flash fiction, or poems? Are you interested in becoming a novelist, short story writer or poet?
Somerville Public Library's Teen Creative Writing Program will offer teens writing exercises to flex their writing muscles in a fun, low-pressure, supportive environment.
February 21, 2013--For Immediate Release
For more information, contact Marita Coombs, Somerville Public Library,
617-623-5000 x 2942, mcoombs@minlib.net
More info here: http://www.somervillepubliclibrary.org/blog/?p=1563
"Teens have something important to say":
Free Teen Creative Writing Program at Somerville Public Library
Are you a teen who likes to write stories about aliens, blogs, flash fiction, or poems? Are you interested in becoming a novelist, short story writer or poet?
Somerville Public Library's Teen Creative Writing Program will offer teens writing exercises to flex their writing muscles in a fun, low-pressure, supportive environment.
The Somerville Public Library is pleased to announce the start of a free Teen Creative Writing Program, designed for any teen aged 13-17. The program will be offered once per month on Sundays, beginning Sunday, March 24, from 1pm to 4pm. Seven three-hour, stand-alone sessions will be offered.
The sessions will be run by Somerville writers Ethan Gilsdorf and Becky Tuch, who will lead writing exercises in a variety of genres, from fantasy fiction to lyric poetry.
No previous writing experience is needed. Students are encouraged to come as they are and need not attend all seven sessions. Materials and lunch will be provided.
Advance sign-up is requested. To register, please contact Marita Coombs, Somerville Public Library, 617-623-5000 x 2942, mcoombs@minlib.net. Additional program dates are Sunday, April 14, Sunday May 19, and Sunday, June 9. The final three session dates will be announced at a future time.
More info here: http://www.somervillepubliclibrary.org/blog/?p=1563
"We'll provide unexpected writing prompts to get teens to generate as much new work in as short a time as possible," said Gilsdorf, an essayist, journalist and author of the book "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks." "Teens have something important to say."
Both Gilsdorf and Tuch are published writers, and teach at Grub Street Writers, Boston's independent creative writing center. Both have extensive experience teaching teens creative writing.
"Nothing inspires me more than my students, at all ages and all stages of their writing careers," said Becky Tuch, a fiction writer whose work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and has taught fiction to kids, teens, and adults throughout Boston. "As a Somerville resident myself, I can't wait to teach and learn from the young writers in the area."
The Teen Creative Writing Program is funded by the Somerville Arts Council, a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council, as well as the Friends of the Library.
More information about the instructors:
Becky Tuch has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Somerville Arts Council, awards from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine, and The Tennessee Writers Alliance, and her fiction has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize and Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award. Other stories and essays have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Hobart, Quarter After Eight, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website which has twice been listed by Writer's Digest as "Best of the Best" among 101 Best Websites for Writers. She is also one of the founders of the writing and publishing blog, Beyond the Margins.
Ethan Gilsdorf is a journalist, memoirist, critic, poet, teacher and geek. He wrote the award-winning travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories, essays and reviews regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, wired.com, PsychologyToday.com, and WBUR's Cognescenti blog. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe and is the film columnist for Art New England. An award-winning poet, he has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, and The North American Review, and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) and teaches creative writing workshops at Grub Street, where he also serves on the Board of Directors.
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Cold, blue-white-lit, MacBook-fueled terror. AKA writer’s block.
[This post originally appeared on Grub Street's Grub Street Daily]
If you are a writer, you know about magical thinking. About the power of procrastination. About the very attractive, rational idea that if your pencils — OK, my pencils — are lined up by descending size, and if I’ve placed my garbage safely on the curb each Monday night, and sorted the recyclables according to the City of Somerville’s strict regulations, and if I’ve had that one extra, perfect cup of [insert beverage of choice here] — but not TOO much, of course — now, yes, only now, at last, under these special conditions and only under these conditions, will the dark clouds finally part to reveal a clear view to Mount Olympus, Asgard, Nirvana, or the god-home or muse-home of your choice.
If and only if … then, and only then … the writing can begin.
Ah, that kooky reason of the writerly mind. I barely scraped by in my math classes and never took logic, but this OCD-borne, ADD-driven hocus-pocus makes perfect sense to me. It always does.
Because, you see, sans these magical, mystical or practical conditions, writer’s block rules with a dark chocolate fist. (I was going to say “iron fist,” but my students’ Cliché-O-Meters would go through the roof and they’d rightfully nail me for not practicing what I preach, i.e. being a lazy writer and relying on received language. There’s also a better reason for this odd image: Only a dark chocolate fist could truly lord over me. I would laugh at all other fists. Except maybe a mithril fist. But I digress.)
Back to writer’s block, from which I suffer. Of course, writer’s block is a fabrication. It’s balderdash, malarkey, baloney, bunk, hogwash, bull, hokum. To quote Woody Allen, “It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.” Because anyone can write. Yes, even you. Now.
Here: I’ll give you an assignment:
There’s a wedding cake smashed on the side of I-93. After what chain of events did this come to pass? Take 10 minutes to write. Explain the backstory. Oh, you want more time? You’re not done yet? See — writing is easy.
Oh, you mean write something great?
Ba-da-bingo.
It’s under these conditions of greatness, the desire for greatness, that writer’s block truly thrives. Because, of course, writer’s block is fear. Cold, blue-white-lit, MacBook-fueled terror. Paralyzing, blizzard-white dread, wrought in 8-and-a-half-inch-by-11-inch rectangles. Sharp, deadly, cruel. Aye, cut you to the core, they will, matey.
As we talked about in my recent class “So You Want To Be a Writer,” this fear can strike at any time, at any hour in a writer’s day or week or career. I think it’s partly fear of failure. And partly fear of success. As Sonya Larson recently and so wisely wrote in the pages of this blog, “So long as my novel lives with just me, I’m okay … But once it’s out in the world, I can’t help it anymore, I can’t make it better. What if people think, ‘Really? You spent five years making that?’” [In the place of "novel," insert "poem," "essay," "story," "book idea," etc.]
Ipso fatso: That overwhelming urge to not write, to slink into the den for another night of baseball and reality TV and one-bite brownies, is fear of exposure of being a fraud. Of risking greatness.
So how do you prevail? You learn to live with that fear. You learn to not pay attention to the voices that strive to defeat you. I can tell you, after more than 23 years of trying to take myself seriously as a writer, these petty panics, agitations, trepidations, consternations, distresses, anxieties, worries, angsts, and uneases never quite, well, ease up.
Like a loud neighbor living in the third floor of your Somerville triple-decker (whostill stomps around like a six year old), you learn to live with it. You say to yourself, “Oh yeah, I know you.” You think, “I’ve seen and heard you before.” And you grumble to yourself, “I know you’re going to make me feel lousy. Ha, I already feel lousy. So there.”
You hear, but you don’t listen. You slip in your ear buds. You cast a spell.
You keep writing.
And maybe not worry about greatness so much, OK?
[If you're looking for a practical, non-emotional, peanuts-and-bolts, guaranteed writer's block-free class, I'm teaching this one-night seminar "How to Pitch Your Articles, Op-eds, and Essays for Publication" on Monday, September 12th, 6:30-9:30pm. In three hours, I'll pass on all I know about how to write killer pitch letters (aka “query letters” or “cover letters”) for submitting essays, op-eds, articles and feature stories to editors of magazines, newspapers, literary magazines, and online publications. There are a few slots left. I hope you can join us.]
A Grub instructor and Board member, Ethan Gilsdorf not only suffers from writer’s block. He also teaches a lot of different classes. He writes for places like Salon.com, the Boston Globe, wired.com, Playboy, National Geographic Traveler, Poetry, The Southern Review, Psychology Today, and the New York Times. Some people have enjoyed his book, a travel memoir investigation called Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. He has interviewed Sir Ben Kingsley, David Carradine and Sister Helen Prejean; taste-tested caffeinated beer; worked as an extra on a Merchant-Ivory film; walked across Scotland; and embarked on a quest for the perfect French fry.