The Blue Hills Writing Institute offers courses throughout the year; check this page often to see what new courses have been added!

A seminar for work on a memoir project. Special topics include redesigning the project as you go along, sustaining the work, overcoming writing blocks, revising and editing longer works, integrating constructive feedback, and preparation to continue the work once the seminar is over. The group will focus on each participant’s work, with readings in the group sessions and individual conferences. This workshop includes individual meetings with the instructor, and takes as its goal the planning, developing, and sustaining of memoir writing.

Enrollment is by approval of the Instructor. Please submit a brief project outline to the Continuing Education at least one week before the class begins. (People who participated in the Blue Hills Writing Institute Advance Memoir program in previous summers need only submit a letter about the progress of their work since then).

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Writing Around the Corner - Setting Stories in Your Hometown
Dates: Monday, August 11 and Tuesday, August 12
Instructor: Suzanne Strempek Shea

Suzanne Strempek Shea notes, “I began writing fiction by looking out my window for short story inspiration, and ended up setting four novels in the ethnic enclave where I was raised and still live.” In this workshop you will look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of writing about the place - and people - you know best, whether you are a native or transplant. You’ll also see what some other authors have done with what they found when looking out the windows of their hometowns across the country and the globe. Not certain if your hometown would make a better story in fiction or non-fiction? You’ll discuss choosing the right genre, including the pros and cons of either approach. And you’ll look at the work of authors whose publishing careers have included both fiction and nonfiction. Workshopping, exercises and handouts will be included.

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Storytelling: The Craft of Creative Nonfiction
Dates: Wednesday, August 13 and Thursday,  August 14    
Instuctor: Connie Griffin 

Memoir, travel and nature writing, personal and lyric essays, features and profiles, as well as numerous other difficult-to-categorize narratives define the literary moment of the day. The public demand is strong and creative nonfiction offers a rich terrain in which to develop a satisfying writing life. No matter your areas of interest, if you have a story to tell and a desire to tell it there is a way to do so as well as an outlet for its publication.  This workshop will assist you in that endeavor by giving you the tools you need to find a workable form for the story you want to tell and a strong narrative voice through which to tell it. We will explore literary techniques for working with scene, setting, and dramatic action, and experiment with ways to achieve thematic resonance in creative writing. We will give special attention to the assimilation of fact into the imaginative act of storytelling, the treatment of memory, dialogue, and point of view, as well as the tension inherent in the use of narrative strategies in nonfiction writing.

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Preview the courses coming in Fall 2008! 
Nine Month Memoir
Your Memoir/Your Memories
Personal Narrative: Weaving Your Wisdom

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Past Course Offerings:

Writing Using the Power of the Archetypes Within You
Powerful writing, like purposeful living, requires us to be fully aware of who we are and where we are personally. Using his new book Stories We Need to Know, Allan Hunter will guide you through the six archetypal stages of personal development, putting you in touch with the archetypes that have been part of our culture for the past 3000 years. Each workshop segment will outline a specific archetype and explore with writing exercises how you can activate the positive power of that stage.

This workshop is designed to extend your writing capabilities and your mind. It will not focus on line editing nor on how to organize your memoir or novel - it will instead show you an entirely new way of looking at your writing and from this will come an enhanced sense of what can be done in your writing and in your life.

The Nine Month Memoir
This is an intense, results-oriented workshop intended to motivate writers to move ahead with their memoirs. In a hands-on, mutually encouraging seminar atmosphere, you will discover the best ways to start, develop, and conclude a satisfactory draft of approximately 40,000 words (picture the size of The Great Gatbsy ) within a nine-month period.

The Nine Month Memoir is designed to provide the ongoing support that can be critical to the creative process. The course is normally taken on a non-credit basis, but those who need to earn undergraduate credit may opt to do so. The course may be retaken on a non-credit basis as many times as a participant may want to.

Each semester will be designed for those who have seriously considered writing a memoir, but have been unable to develop a working structure or generate a continuous narrative flow. Committing to the nine month plan is encouraged but entirely optional. The emphasis will be on devising your best writing plan, developing productive habits of composition, staying on task, and achieving measurable goals.

In the fall semester students will be expected to map out their life story in a series of key episodes that will then supply an overall structure. From there, students will work towards reaching as much of a rough first draft as possible. The emphasis will be less on prose style than on coverage and effective design. Creative collaboration will be encouraged as all work will be shared in seminar reading sessions and on-line.

Memoir Writing/Life Writing
This course offers students the opportunity to create meaning out of the details and perspectives of personal experience. The student will look at how to begin memoir writing, how to plan for a longer work, how to decide what to put in and what to leave out, and, in general, how to get what is in your heart and mind down on paper. We depend on constructive feedback on student writing. The underlying goal is to develop the skill of having fun writing about your life because, without that, it is almost impossible to write with clarity, integrity, and power.

Therapeutic Uses of Writing
This is an experiential course that will introduce writers to practical techniques and exercises designed to go beneath the surface of writing- and in the process it will liberate the personal stories that every writer needs to explore. We will move beyond journaling and freewriting to a space where creativity can thrive, perhaps for the first time. As we do so we will discover what it means to write authentically, for ourselves, and how to recognize that quality in others' writings.

The Family Memoir: The Delicate Art of Writing About Your Kin
Do you feel the urge to write about your experiences in your family? The stories deepest within us, and most personally meaningful, are often from family life. But how to recount them for others? How do you gain enough distance from your memories to write them well, but not so much that you sacrifice emotion? Which details must you include to convey an essence? Which facts must you leave out to preserve privacy – your own and other people’s? How do you choose a voice? How do you find a style? How do you manage intense feelings – sorrow, tenderness, betrayal, disloyalty - while you write?

In this workshop we will explore questions that come up for writers attempting to narrate family stories. Our goal will be to help participants feel clearer about what they want to write, and how they want to write it. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have written and reworked a short scene so that its frame satisfies them, and its style touches upon one which they imagine using for a longer piece.

Spiritual Autobiography: The Art of Writing Our Souls
Do you long to explore the meaning of your life on earth? Have you ever wished that you could pause to contemplate the turning points, crises, passages, and rebirths that have made you who you are today, and maybe even to write the story of your unique personal pilgrimage?

Plumbing our soul stories in writing can be an experience of great liberation and fulfillment. The goal of this course is to help writers and non-writers bring their inner stories into the light of day, in personal essays, expanded journal pieces, and spiritual autobiographies. Participants will be exposed to non-traditional approaches to finding their “subject,” and will proceed in an open-ended and individualized process. Members can choose to follow the structured exercises that are offered, or they can pursue more free-form work; they can read their writings out loud or maintain meditative silence, as befits their personal preferences.

Members will be encouraged in their personal styles and coached towards the voice and the inner story that most wants to be “told.” Ample feedback will ensure that participants can refine one solid piece of work by the end of the workshop, and leave with a tool kit of writing strategies that will allow their work to continue as an ongoing spiritual practice.

Memory, Meaning, and Memoir
In his essay, "The Whole Truth," Peter Ives writes: "if in your writer’s soul you remember the smell of wool mittens more than you remember climbing Everest with your father, you may have to write the wool mittens." Our pasts provide a rich reservoir of material for writers of memoir and sometimes it is the humble rather than the grand moments that sustain us. Since associations are often stirred by sensory experiences, it is important to develop a writing practice so that you will be ready with pen and paper when such bursts of vivid recall spring forth. This workshop will work with writing as an ongoing process and assist participants in developing a practice that will not only outlive the class, but become woven into their daily patterns of life. Drawing on prewriting techniques such as "clustering" and "freewriting," we will explore the mysteries of memory and the amazing qualities of the creative imagination, watching as what has been most meaningful to us in our lives, through revision, takes on narrative shape and becomes the story shared.

How to Break Into Newspapers and Magazines
Do you have a collection of pithy personal narratives without homes? Do you enjoy writing short essays, but suffer from a lack of direction after the writing? Join this class to help you shape your essays so that they resonate with audiences and find their way into newspapers and magazines. You will relish the satisfaction of seeing your words in print and receiving feedback from your readers. This course welcomes unpublished writers and writers with some publishing experiences. We will begin with your writing: explore topics for the short essay, consider purpose, audience, and voice. In an intensive two-day seminar, you will complete at least one essay, 800 words or less, fine-tuned for submission. You will also be guided to resources to help you navigate your way through the query process and submission guidelines. This course is the perfect springboard into the world of publishing for those writers eager to learn and share.