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Gotham Writers’ Workshop

Gotham Writers’ Workshop offers several one hour workshops throughout NYC in partnership with area booksellers. I’ve signed up for the Creative Writing Class with Kimberlee Auerbach, Sunday Oct 4 from 6-7pm at McNally Jackson Books (52 Prince Street). Do any fellow writers have experience with these workshops? It should be interesting to see what I can learn in an hour.

Some other free workshops coming up include a Dialogue Writing Class with Kuros Charney on Thursday Oct 22, 730-830p at Barnes & Noble Greenwich Village; and a Children’s Book Writing Class with Michael Leviton, Sunday Nov 1, 6-7p at McNally Jackson Books (52 Prince Street).

For more information, check out Gotham Writers’ Workshop Community Events.

Writing 101

I was in college for a total of 13 semesters over the course of 4 and a half years, plus an additional two semesters of painting & drawing at the Toledo Museum of Art thrown in the mix. That entire time, I’ve worked at least part time, but sometimes as much as 70 hours a week while attending school full time along with the art museum classes. It’s almost insane that I’m even considering going back to school at this point. But I feel like I spent the majority of my educational career pursuing the artistic side of advertising, I didn’t focus enough on the writing aspect. And since I aspire to be a phenomenal copywriter, I think it’s important to master these skills.

I’ve been looking into a Master’s degree in Professional Writing. I can’t seem to find much in NYC though. Everyone seems to offer creative writing classes, which while they may somewhat interest me, I’m not interested in learning how to write poetry and make up stories right now. I need to sharpen my skills and abilities, and expand my tone. Perhaps the answer right now is simply searching for singular writing courses…

Please, any and all suggestions welcome on how to take this next step in my slowly advancing career.

Dreaming fiction

Is it strange to wake up from a dead sleep with the first few lines of a book forming in your head? I literally woke up at what must’ve been 4:30 in the morning, with a killer opening sentence to a book and a pretty good idea for a story to follow. I could see the opening intro starting half way down the page so vividly in my mind. And the strange part is, I don’t think I was dreaming this before waking up It just happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about this one sentence and where to go from there. So I think I might be starting a short story! This is just proof that my brain literally never turns off.

Books

I just purchased:

THE CRAFT OF COPYWRITING: HOW TO WRITE GREAT COPY THAT SELLS by Alastair Crompton
and
MOVIES IN THE MIND, HOW TO BUILD A SHORT STORY by Colleen Mariah Rae

I’m on my way to Borders to pick up THE COPYWRITER’S HANDBOOK: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO WRITING COPY THAT SELLS by Robert W. Bly, and possible a fictional book if I see an interesting one!