The Method The Amherst Writers and Artists Philosophy Workshop Events Calendar, in-person, online, worldwide Find a workshop in your area Pat Schneider, founder of AWA Pat Schneider on Wikipedia Pat Schneider bio on the Poetry Foundation website A really good poem: Pat’s “Instructions for the Journey” Pat Schneider: “We send the children of the poor to fight the children of the poor.” (In...
I have learned a lot in the last seven years about caring for the writing self and the creative soul. Some of the things I have learned have helped other people, too. Doing the Amherst Writers and Artists method has become a way of life. Many people I have met while doing this have become dear friends whose occasional appearances are now cherished events in the week. The role of teacher is one I...
[Note: This is pretty much a literal transcription of the podcast.]–ct Good morning, or evening, this is Cary Tennis, it’s Thursday, April 29, 2021, and today I’m going to do things slightly differently because this is the story behind the workshops and the book, that is, the Finishing School workshops. So how it really began is like this: In 2004 I was finishing up an article...
Wouldn’t you feel great if you finally got it done? Finishing School is a way to get things done when nothing else has worked. It doesn’t matter what the thing is. Finishing isn’t about the mechanics of the task. It’s about the process, or method, of finishing. It’s very simple. It is easy to learn. If you have tried scheduling, will power, time management, getting...
This story is all in the comments below.–CT
Standing in the living room of the house we’d just renovated at considerable expense, the magnitude of what I’d done, debt-wise, was crashing in and I just thought, This is a beautiful space! People ought to come in here and create in this space! Then began this life-changing endeavor, the workshops. The thing is, it was a dream, it was a gesture of solidarity with other writers, and...
But writing in a magnificent French château surrounded by 300 acres of topiary, formal gardens, parks, woodland trails and vineyards can’t hurt. Maybe you’re perfectly content writing by yourself day after day in your kitchen on that old table, or at your cramped desk in the spare bedroom. Fine. À chacun son goût. You can find us this September at Le Château du Pin, a private French...
The Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method helps people write. It’s that simple. •It helps beginners and it helps professionals. •Plus it’s fun! How does it work? Well, I’ve been leading AWA workshops for over fifteen years and what I’ve seen in those seven years is people coming in who may have written a lot in the past and got stuck, or are currently writing but...
After the Saturday workshop I settle on the couch reading The Maverick Poets, that book edited by Steve Kowit, who I was lodging next to down at the Sun Esalen thing. But the thing I love after the workshop is that feeling afterwards like we’ve all been together in this room dreaming out loud together. So then I read that poem by Bukowski about the cat, “The History of a Tough...
Books I checked out of the library and read and enjoyed in 2013: Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story. Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story. Rober Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream. and Patricia Highsmith’s Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. Kind of an end-of-the-year thing. I read lots more books than that, but these stood out. (The below is verbatim from my San...
To begin without knowing how to do it: That has been my approach, and I have agonized like a man sitting in a field with many ingredients of a house laid out before him and a panicked feeling that he has begun before he is ready. He has begun without a plan. He has no blueprint. He simply got it into his head that he could dredge up many interesting things from the well and the lake and the river...
Dear Reader, Well, I’m in Monterey this morning, here to help some writers. Also here to write on my own. When I was writing the Since You Asked column for Salon.com, which I did for nearly 12 years, every day I wrote it I wanted to be proud. It was an extraordinary opportunity for a writer, for someone who really doesn’t know how to do much else and so has had to find jobs writing...
Dear Cary, What a delight that you are continuing. Bravo! The quality of the world dipped there for a moment, but now it is leveled up again, thank, goodness. I’ll be sure to do my part to spread the word so that everyone I know can enjoy your column. On another note, I do want to ask you a few related questions about my writing. Some background: On a deep and sweet level, I am an...
Even from as far away as Australia, I could feel the relaxed, open atmosphere he created among us and found it surprisingly easy to get writing. — Alice Allan, Melbourne, Australia I was writing descriptions without events, like jokes without punch-lines. The workshops led me to try more active, engaging and complex storytelling. I gave up some fixed ideas about what kinds of writing I do and...
Here are some of the links I mentioned in the 2013 Santa Barbara Novel Mentor workshop, about dialog, pitches, queries and beginnings of novels. dialog Writing Dialog by Tom Chiarella. I lent this book to somebody and have to get it back. It’s a good book. Useful. Interesting. 12 Exercises for improving dialog by John Hewitt. Some of these are pretty good. You can’t go wrong trying...
I just checked out our Yelp reviews today and I am honored and grateful for all the really thoughtful, funny and kind reviews we received. Here are a few of my favorite outtakes: “I still don’t understand exactly how it works, but every Wednesday evening, when I’m tired from the day, not feeling particular creative or even enthusiastic, I sit down to write with Cary and the...
Cary’s first-ever Tuscan writing retreat went better than we could ever have imagined. First of all, we’d like to thank all of our participants who traveled from all over the world to attend. After years of putting on writing retreats, we’ve noticed that those who participate in Cary’s events are a very special breed: talented, creative, intelligent, adventurous, fun...
I’ll be the first to admit it–I have a love/hate relationship with Finishing School. But at the end of last month’s session, I had gleaned 10 great lessons from the experience. Here they are: 1) I increased my tolerance. I had a fairly clear schedule in April and I thought that I’d just sit down and write for six hours, because that’s the time I’d carved out in...
The June 2012 issue of The Sun features a generous excerpt of Citizens of the Dream, my book about creativity. It runs after a fascinating interview with painter Ran Ortner and a lovely poem by Alison Luterman, and right before a poem by Tony Hoagland! What humbling and awe-inspiring company! It says quite a lot that The Sun saw fit to showcase the book. After you read the excerpt, I suggest you...
Reading a story in the New Yorker and fighting thoughts of jealousy and class resentment, thinking, how did I end up doing the workshops and getaways and publishing the books in addition to writing the column and thinking, if I had enough money, would I be preparing for the workshop–vacuuming the floor and straightening the furniture and getting ready for folks to come into the living room...
Rooming with Sy Safransky. We got to talk under the stars Friday night about this and that. Talking with Sy it’s never about this and that but it’s always kinda about this and that which makes it akin to the lightly ordered musings you find in the magazine. Writers giving workshops included poet Chris Burks, whose performances and performance-art-type gifts — a stone, a bell...