Undergraduate Novel Writing Workshop

This workshop is not for the faint of heart

Many people dream of being writers. It's a romantic idea to create something out of nothing. But what does it really mean to write? More specifically what does it mean to find the time to actually write, and decicate yourself to a strict regime of waking up at four am to write. Here's what the writers had to say.

Five Things You Should Know Before Writing a First Draft in this Workshop:

1. ) Do your research

The students in the novel writing workshop prepared by reading 12 novels from the canon of great American literature during the summer. Get to know the ins and outs of a novel. That means know the arch of a story. How does a scene begin, how does it end? What happened in between? Familiarize yourself with the canon of great American literature.

2.) Prepare to be sleep deprived

Waking up at four a.m. is no easy task by any means. You’ll have to have the self-discipline to rise and write with your fellow classmates. Students in Gill’s workshop are expected to sign in at four a.m. and write a minimum of two pages per day, turning in 10 pages by the end of the week. There are no exceptions. Be prepared to adjust your sleeping habits because being a night owl will take its toll pretty quickly.

3.) Remember that this is a first draft

You will not write A One Hundred Years of Solitude in this class and don’t set yourself up to. The books that you see at Barnes and Noble or at your local library have gone through so many stages of revision before they became a cohesive novel. This is a first draft that will feel and sound disjointed. Scenes that you dreamt of in your head will look different on paper. At some point, you are going to wonder how the novel you started, turned into the one you are currently writing. That’s okay. In this workshop, you are writing a rough draft. Let it be rough.

4.) Write your truth

Pace yourself. When you write in this class expect to write from your own experiences. Gill’s will begin his first class with a saying, “Anything that happens to you is fair game.” The story you may be writing may be fictional, but it also has truth. Your writing should always strive to be truthful and honest. Your experiences are yours, don’t be afraid to write them.

5.) Don’t look back

In this class more often than not, after a workshop, you’ll want to go back and rework your first move or question everything you have written. Everyone does this at one point but the only way out is through. Gill’s strategy of making it to the end of a novel is not to look back. Trust me, when I say the only way to write is not to look back. Most people will get stuck reworking their first chapter for years but you will not be able to do that in this workshop. You will take what you learned or got criticized and apply it to your next chapter. In the end, you will be able to move big things around and rework those moves.

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MEET THE WRITERS

"Well its like a very interesting concept because you’re writing toward a place. An ending. So how can you even know what the perfect sentence is if you haven’t written your ending yet? I think once you get to your ending it’s ten times easier to go back in and make those sentences perfect because you basically found your story. You found your novel, you know exaclty what it’s about. So how can you try to find a perfect sentence or a perfect chapter. How can you try to make it perfect if you haven’t gone all the way through?"

-----Karishma Shah

Its a huge project to undertake almost like the discipline and skill set of just actually committing to something like this. I think that transferes into different areas in life. That even if I never write another book again, which part of me hopes I do but if I never write another book again I feel like this type of discipline and motivation is something I can use in future grad school, future careers and things like that.

------Jasmine Robinson