Jumpstart Your Novel With Sheree L. Greer
At the end of 2021, after finishing a novel-in-a-year course with James Klise at Story Studio Chicago, I was wondering: What next?
I’ve always kept tucked away in my brain something I heard Walter Dean Myers say at a Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Chicago Public Library. He told the audience that he wrote every day. Even if traveling, he’d sit in his hotel room. Every morning. And, I believed him. The man, he has since passed, was prolific. He wrote for about EVERY audience: picture books, coffee table books, middle grade, young adult, historical fiction etc etc. He was a great man. A progressive, breaking so many barriers with his humanity and words.
So how does one write every day no matter what?
I, on the other hand, need to be pricked and prodded. Thus, I signed up for Jumpstart Your Novel with Sheree Greer through Story Studio Chicago.
The premise was that as I began a dreary, Covid-filled year, our third since the pandemic, a weary white winter in Michigan, a 2022 yawning before me—that I would need some inspiration. So I signed up for a 6-week course meant to bring into a network of like-minded writers wishing to get their work off the ground.
I chose to open up on my laptop an old ms, as they say “in the drawer.” I knew it was good, but not good enough and, especially the opening pages, needed to be stronger and more accessible for a reader.
Once again the instructor reminded us of what has become standard practice, asking us what are the stakes, what does the main character want—and how is this evident from the beginning. So I was forced to re-examine the ms as a whole and work backwards, deconstructing it to discover the motives of each of the characters and emphasize this as the novel progresses.
Thank you Sheree and workshoppers for helping to PUSH me forward!
I’ve always kept tucked away in my brain something I heard Walter Dean Myers say at a Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Chicago Public Library. He told the audience that he wrote every day. Even if traveling, he’d sit in his hotel room. Every morning. And, I believed him. The man, he has since passed, was prolific. He wrote for about EVERY audience: picture books, coffee table books, middle grade, young adult, historical fiction etc etc. He was a great man. A progressive, breaking so many barriers with his humanity and words.
So how does one write every day no matter what?
I, on the other hand, need to be pricked and prodded. Thus, I signed up for Jumpstart Your Novel with Sheree Greer through Story Studio Chicago.
The premise was that as I began a dreary, Covid-filled year, our third since the pandemic, a weary white winter in Michigan, a 2022 yawning before me—that I would need some inspiration. So I signed up for a 6-week course meant to bring into a network of like-minded writers wishing to get their work off the ground.
I chose to open up on my laptop an old ms, as they say “in the drawer.” I knew it was good, but not good enough and, especially the opening pages, needed to be stronger and more accessible for a reader.
Once again the instructor reminded us of what has become standard practice, asking us what are the stakes, what does the main character want—and how is this evident from the beginning. So I was forced to re-examine the ms as a whole and work backwards, deconstructing it to discover the motives of each of the characters and emphasize this as the novel progresses.
Thank you Sheree and workshoppers for helping to PUSH me forward!
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