October 2024 Modules

Welcome to the Readings in Prose page for the Advanced Old English Series in which students explore, in alternating months, a work of prose and then a work of poetry to introduce students to the breadth and depth of Old English texts available for study. Each month Dr. Swain surveys the group to see what they want to tackle next from month to month.

Have you finished (or nearly finished) a whole story draft? In this module, you will learn how to craft an ending that makes your entire story shine. You will also learn techniques for ensuring readers are immersed in your story and experiencing the emotional journey you intended. We will use collaborative feedback and discussion during class to help you refine your skills as a storyteller.

Novel in a Year Note: Anyone is welcome to join our Novel in a Year modules at any time (the only exception is Tree Workshop (Novel in a Year 11) which, while open to all who have a mature writing project ready for close scrutiny, is designed specifically for students who have completed at least 4 previous modules in the Novel in a Year sequence). Each module is designed to stand alone without prerequisites. However, for the richest experience, the full twelve-month sequence of modules will carry you from blank page through to completing your novel. In a writing journal, you will track your progress and moments of unexpected, joyful discovery as you continue your novel. Whether you are looking to publish commercially or simply writing for yourself, our program is designed to nurture your individual writing journey. Our workshops place kindness first, lifting up excellence and encouraging you to tell your story in your own voice. For more information about our Collaborative Feedback model, check out our video here.

Write Our Hearts

Come for gentle writing. Introspection. Self expression in a circle of caring and community. Come gather virtually in the Cottage in the Woods with Sparrow: she literally wants us to prep food ahead and get away from the family and the dishes for forty eight hours to write our stories. It's so hard to find time for ourselves, so let's intentionally make that time. From Friday evening through Sunday afternoon there will be writing to prompts, conversation, ideas, blocks of free writing time. Does your heart ache to express a private grief on the page? Is your subconscious telling you to rewrite a story? Do you need to rewrite your story? This weekend will use the brand new Autumn Leaves set of prompts.

Here's the plan:
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Friday the 25th from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM Eastern: Community, Evening pages, and Escape
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Saturday the 26th from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern: Recovery of Wonder
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Saturday the 26th from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern: Nap time.
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Saturday the 26th from 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM Eastern: Recovery of Hope
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Sunday the 27th from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Eastern: Consolation and Eucatastrophe
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Our goal is to write our hearts. Is that memoir? Is that a new story just for yourself? Is that a long, long prayer in the form of a poem? Writers might write between sessions as well as during. Some writers bring their characters to Writing Retreat and write in that character's voice as they work deeper and deeper meaning into their Stories.

You are going to end this amazing experience with something that is uniquely yours. Whether this turns out to be a narrative, creative nonfiction, or a huge list of Be-Happy-Attitudes, this deserves to be on your page, just for you.

C.S. Lewis is one of the most prolific and influential writers of the 20th century. And yet, in his early career as an Oxford don, he viewed himself as a failed poet. Moreover, his most canonical and transformational writing happened during the most stress-filled periods of his life. This short course allows students to peek into the writing life of C.S. Lewis. Our goal is to see through the lines of printed text by visiting the letters and archival remains of Lewis in a virtual setting. Most of C.S. Lewis's papers remain undigitized and unpublished, available only locally at archives in North America and England.

As Professor Brenton Dickieson has visited these archives, he is able to invite students to appreciate C.S. Lewis's writing life by looking at the way that he consciously and unconsciously built his literary career. This course is for writers who are developing their own habits and literary life-prints, as well as folks who are curious about C.S. Lewis's life beyond the biographies and bestselling books.

Now that Hammond and Scull are releasing their magisterial “Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien,” the time is ripe for a dive into Tolkien’s poetic works. In this first module, we will begin with an orientation to Tolkien’s career as a poet, and then we will focus in on the poems of his earliest period as a writer — the poems he was writing when he still thought it might be as a poet that he would make his mark on the literary world.

The module will be structured as follows:

Week 1: Overview of the Poetic Corpus and Tolkien’s Career
Week 2: Introduction to the Early Poems
Week 3-4: Close look at 1-2 poems (in each session)