Two Upcoming Fall 2010 Writing Classes

The last session this year for Adair Lara’s popular writing class…

First-Person Writing that Sells

Tuesday Evenings, Sept 7 through Nov 23 – San Francisco

In this class, you will learn how to…

• decide which stories to tell
• shape your story so that it makes a universal point
• use “ordinary” details and events to create extraordinary insights
• find the resonance in everyday events
• use the techniques of fiction (dialogue, scene-setting, suspense) to tell a true tale
• find the right markets for your essays
• pitch your writing to editors

Students who have taken this class have been published in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers – including The New York Times, The Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Self, Runner’s World, San Francisco Chronicle, More Magazine, Vanity Fair – and have published dozens of memoirs.

Course Info

Where: 97 Scott Street, San Francisco (parking is easier than you think) [Google Maps]

When: 6:45 pm to 9:45, Tuesdays – for 10 Tuesdays between Sept 7 and Nov 23 (there will be weeks with no class during that period)

Fee: $675

The Course

This class, which has launched hundreds of writers on successful careers, is for those interested in writing and selling essays or a memoir. You will come out knowing how to make yourself write, how to nail a piece. And how to sell it. Around 95% of my students have been published (for one thing, I make you send your work out). It is gratifyingly rare for anyone to drop, gratifyingly common for writers to come back and take the course for fresh stimulation and encouragement.

Each class begins with a new element – angle, scene, revision, publishing, etc. – discussed in a brief lecture (and further in handouts), followed by readings and in-class exercises. Weekly assignments are designed to pull a lot of great pieces out of you and stretch your notions of what you can do as a writer, but you are always encouraged to substitute ideas or projects of your own. Each evening will include at least one 15 minute in-class writing exercise, many of them designed to give you a head start on the weekly assignment.

I read and provide feedback on five pieces from each writer, in addition to class readings, and am available for private conferences before class. And, in addition to growing and stretching as a writer, you will have had a series of stimulating evenings and made new friends.

Textbook

Naked, Drunk and Writing. It’s my book on writing essay and memoir, coming out from Random House at the end of August, but available here now — just click on the book in the upper right.

To Apply

Contact me by email. If you haven’t been in the class before, include a writing sample—2 or 3 pages of first-person writing. I’ll accept the first 12 qualified applicants; subsequent qualified applications will be placed on a waiting list.

A $100 nonrefundable deposit holds your place, with the balance of the course fee ($575) payable before or at first meeting. Once I receive the deposit, your place is guaranteed

PS: As soon as you sign up, put your writing schedule, as well as class times, on your calendar. Make it a priority, just for ten weeks out of your life.

See what happens.

About me

I started my career writing for local magazines – first San Francisco Focus, the city magazine, and then SF, a design magazine where I successfully passed myself off as someone passionately interested in interior design. I wrote freelance humor pieces for the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday section and in 1989 joined the staff as a columnist, in which role I won a number of awards, including the Associated Press award for Best Columnist in California. I write for a number of national magazines, including More and Reader’s Digest. My essays have been anthologized upwards of fifty times. I’ve published a number of books, including a memoir (Hold Me Close, Let Me Go), collections of my columns, and most recently a book on the process of writing and selling memoirs, Naked, Drunk and Writing: Writing essays and memoirs for love and for money.

Some comments on my work…

Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird

Half the people I know seem to haven take classes and workshops with San Francisco’s legendary writer and teacher Adair Lara. She is very savvy and smart and hugely entertaining. I admire her greatly.

Jacqueline Winspear, author of the bestselling Maisie Dobbs series

Without Adair’s insightful guidance and encouragement, Maisie Dobbs might be just a couple of chapters collecting dust in a drawer.

Elaine Petrocelli, owner of Book Passage

Adair Lara is one of our best selling authors. Her books are wise, witty and wonderful. We love to put them in our customers’ hands, but it isn’t hard because customers tell each other about her books.

Adair teaches writing classes at Book Passage and the only problem we have is dealing with the disappointed people who can’t get in—her classes sell out. This is an author who understands humanity.

And some feedback from past participants in the course…

I never knew how to revise before, and now I’ve got a firm grip on the process. I like that we revised on a macro and micro level–both expanding material and then digging into sentences. As a result of your classes, I’ve become a better reader as well as a writer, which is a bonus I wasn’t expecting.

I dug up stuff I’d put away as crap and found out it wasn’t so bad, and the other stuff that I was stuck on also found new life.

I appreciate your addressing the psychological, as well as the technical side of things, as when you advised me to sit back, look over the piece, and ask myself: ‘What, really, is going on here?’ Then: ‘And how do I feel about it?’”

“Find a teacher you like and take EVERYTHING they teach.” You would be her. You got me writing. You and class assignments got me sitting down to “the place where writing can occur” almost every day and it’s fucking beautiful and I thank you.

You foster an atmosphere that is my ideal of what a writing class should be–both great crits and support. It felt like a family campfire or an ancient storytelling circle, where everyone shared the stories of their lives.

I was impressed by how much the writing level in the class improved in a short time

Our individual conference was a powerful moment. When I met with you, I was groping in the dark. The light Switch was on a far wall. You listened to me talk confusedly about my memoir and got me to see in what direction I needed to go.

The first night of class, you looked me in the eye and told me you’d enjoyed my piece on Italy, that you thought I could sell it. You were so direct and specific that I couldn’t brush it off as your being nice or trying to make polite conversation. It set the tone for the next nine weeks.

What I learned:

Become a vicious user of the delete button, murder darlings,

Go ahead and write whatever comes to mind, but don’t stop until you’ve found the structure, the thread that ties all the parts together

Let a piece simmer on a back burner. When you go back to it you’ll have fresh eyes and a better perspective.

Boy was I pissed at you when you gave us an assignment last Thursday night. I thought, how could she ruin my vacation? I worked all Friday night on it so I wouldn’t have to take my computer down to Carmel with me but as brought it along anyway. All I’ve been doing is writing. I realized what you have been hoping we will find out, which is that writing is something you do everyday. It is healing me because it takes my focus and puts it on a tiny screen where the answers can appear out of nowhere it seems, where the action and emotion are a half step away and hence can be understood with more clarity that if I kept them bottled up inside.

There’s so much stuff out there to read. Books and books on writing. Bad mags. It goes on an on. Having you cull and focus and select is worth the price of the session in itself.