Writing feels hard if you really don’t want to write the thing in front of you. So, don’t do it. Don’t write unless you really want to sink your teeth into a story. You need to be seduced by something calling to you. Write because you need to find out something you can only dig out by writing. It’s not going to come another way, this thing you are after. The digging is part of the pleasure.

Laurie Stone, author of six books of fiction, memoir, criticism, and hybrid writing, most recently Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening, will lead participants in guided exercises and discussions of craft and form, layering a moment, working in two time frames, and moving abstract language into a concrete image or scene. During our time together, we will also explore the concept of “coming and going” rather than “beginning and ending” and the five elements below, a checklist Stone uses to see if her work is ready to share with other people.

Copies of Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing That is Happening will be available for purchase at this event courtesy of Oblong Books.

Start in the middle
Fail to arrive.
Remember to love something.
Make the reader hot.
Make the reader laugh.

About the Instructor: 

Laurie Stone is author of six books of fiction, memoir, criticism, and hybrid writing, most recently Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening (Dottir Press 2022), longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She was a longime writer for The Village Voice, theater critic for The Nation, and critic-at-large on Fresh Air. More recently, she has written regularly for N+1, Paris Review, and Evergreen Review. She writes the literary Substack Everything is Personal, with over 11,500 subscribers, that Lit Hub recently named one of the seven best literary publications on Substack. She frequently collaborates on writing and teaching projects with her life partner Richard Toon. You can subscribe to her Substack for free or with paid support at: lauriestone.substack.com/subscribe.