DATE & TIME
Saturday, September 21, 2019

10:00 AM - 4:00 PM (with 60 min. lunch break)

COST
$175 ($140 for Paragraph Members)

LOCATION
Paragraph Union Square

INSTRUCTOR
Diana Goetsch

Free-Writing Intensive (Part 4: Negative Capability)

Negative capability, the skill famously coined by Keats, is at the heart of literary creativity, and there is no better tool for training in negative capability than free-writing. Using a series of counter-intuitive and delightful protocols, participants in this workshop can develop the stability and openness needed for “being in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts without any irritable reaching after fact or reason.”

The Free-Writing Intensive, a series of day-long workshops, is designed to liberate us from habitual patterns and alter the “DNA” of how we write. Participants in this workshop (which was first introduced ten years ago at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival) are often startled by what comes out of their pens. “I was quite taken, moved, and frequently overwhelmed by the experience,” said one writer. “It’s the truest writing I’ve ever done,” said another.

The Free-Writing Intensive is perfect for all genres, and an antidote to “writer’s block,” as we generate a volume of new material over the course of the day. (You need not have participated in Parts 1-3 to register for this session.)

Diana Goetsch (www.dianagoetsch.com) has published eight collections of poems, dozens of nonfiction articles, and is currently at work on a memoir forthcoming from FSG. Her work has appeared in leading magazines, newspapers and anthologies including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, The American Scholar, The Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize anthology. She is a renowned teacher of writing, having taught at numerous universities, MFA programs, and conferences. Most recently, she was the Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School.