WRITING CLASSES AND COACHING

Special note: I will be serving as the 2011-2012 Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, and so will not be teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area again until summer 2012.

I teach writing, primarily at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and Stanford Continuing Studies, and primarily memoir writing and personal essay. I also teach and coach one-on-one, and offer intensive editorial consultation, when I feel I’m a good fit for the particular writer and his or her sensibilities and project. If you are interested in one-on-one work, you can contact me at rachel dot howard at gmail dot com.

I’ve been very fortunate to teach many open, intelligent, and committed writers, and to witness their progress. Some unsolicited feedback from recent students:

“Your generosity and acute comments to everyone really impressed me . . . Looking back on my own erratic but unending writing education, including earning an MFA along the way when I worked in book publishing, I can say that your class amazed me in its patient, comprehensive, elegant coverage of the most important elements of craft. I kept thinking, These students don’t know what they’re getting! But they did, they knew, or sensed. For me, it was the best writing class I have ever taken, including in two graduate programs. But, as they say, when the student is ready the teacher appears. You were that teacher for me, Rachel.”

“Your feedback is so chock full of wisdom and insight; I know I will be reading it over and over as I go forward . . . I can’t thank you enough for the guidance this term . . . Thanks for helping me take myself seriously.”

“Thanks once again for forcing me to face the deeper issues in my stories . . . You keep me on track.”

“I was really looking forward to your feedback because you seem to have a talent few do – namely, an ability to be honest with your feedback.”

My teaching philosophy:

I balance an awareness of the emotional and imaginative process behind creative writing with the practical study of craft. My goal is to help each writer gain greater freedom in his or her work—because the ideal result of technical mastery is expressive freedom. Technical mastery is gained through the close, careful reading of other writers—and sometimes through simple trial and error, instinct and intuition. I help students find their model writers, and guide them in developing the ability to analyze just how those sentences are doing the seemingly magical things they do.

I believe half the hard work of writing is being fully yourself, and honing your own sense of reality and truth. I encourage my students to develop their own internal awareness of what their writing needs, and to follow that above all. I believe that it is always possible to be both candid and constructive. I believe it is never my job to discourage any writer, or to impose any aesthetic. I have seen that you never know when a writer will suddenly strike something true and beautiful.

I believe that the practice of writing is an unfolding dialogue, and part of my job is to welcome new writers to the conversation. I believe that the writing life is one of the richest lives I can imagine. I tell writers to read voraciously and to experiment fearlessly—because in writing, as in life, there really is nothing to fear.

My past classes at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto:

Fact Is Not Truth–Memoir and the Art of Honesty

Description: You want to tell your story and you want to tell the truth. But how does truth differ from mere fact in memoir? And how do we find and give form to the deeper truths that compel readers to compulsively turn pages?

Memoir poses a contract with the reader: “This really happened.” Whether your story is outrageous or ordinary, riveting memoir need not depart from facts. But it must dig beneath them to unearth a deeper emotional honesty.

In this class, we’ll use Vivian Gornick’s craft book The Situation and the Story to help examine the personal story you’re trying to tell, and how you can best tell it. We’ll look at excerpts from memoirs by writers such as Jo Ann Beard, Alexandra Fuller, and Susan J. Miller, and do lots of in-class writing which we will share and discuss. We’ll explore how memoirists use fiction techniques to transport the reader beyond surface factuality, and we’ll find the truth that can drive your personal story. Each student receives private feedback on his or her writing between classes, and individualized writing assignments. Plenty of time reserved for practical Q and A. Ethical quandaries–”What will my family think if they read this?”–welcome.

In the optional fourth session, participants submit up to 20 pages of their memoirs-in-progress for in-depth group discussion and a detailed letter of personal critique.

*Please note: This class is for students already at work on a memoir, as well as those just starting out. It serves as an introductory class for students interested in continuing on to Intermediate/Advanced memoir workshops.

Instructor Bio: Rachel Howard is the author of the memoir The Lost Night: A Daughter’s Search for the Truth of Her Father’s Murder, one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2005. Her personal essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and O, the Oprah Magazine. Her advice is quoted extensively in The Autobiographer’s Handbook: The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Memoir II: Intermediate/Advanced Workshop

Description: This combination seminar and workshop provides ongoing craft discussion, support, and critique for committed memoir writers. During the first half of each class we’ll examine published memoirs, with an eye to guide and inspire your own writing. What is your story really about, and how can your evolving understanding power the writing process? How can you keep opening up parts of your story that feel too hot to touch? We’ll balance an awareness of the emotional process behind memoir writing with the practical study of technique, talking about building tone and style, finding lines of tension, and thinking about theme to discover new layers of meaning that can shape your larger work. Weekly writing assignments (returned with weekly private instructor feedback) will keep you experimenting and producing new pages.

Then we’ll turn to your workshop submissions, aiming to reflect back to the writer what has been communicated, and to describe further opportunities we see. We’ll point to strengths, and offer ideas for substantive revision in a thoughtful environment. Every writer will have the opportunity to submit to workshop twice during our eight weeks together. Ultimately this class will help you gain greater perspective on your work by listening to others. But my deeper goal is to help you build a strong personal writing sensibility by encouraging you–amidst the flurry of feedback–to listen foremost to yourself.

*Please note: This class requires completion of an earlier Grotto memoir class, or instructor consideration of a writing sample, to ensure correct placement.

Monster Memoir Manuscript Workshop

Description: Are you deep into writing a memoir and tired of having it critiqued in 20-page snippets? Ready to get bigger-picture response to issues like structure and narrative arc, but not quite at the stage when you need a full manuscript review? This is a memoir workshop for writers at that wonderful but tricky middle stage when piecemeal feedback no longer cuts it.

At our first meeting, participants will share where they are in their writing process, how they’re conceiving their books, and what kind of direction they feel they need. In subsequent sessions, we’ll look at a long section of your memoir–between 75 and 125 pages–in tandem with a projected outline, if you choose to submit one. Along with substantive, thoughtful group feedback, each session (one writer critiqued per session) will include clarification of craft topics such as setting up the story engine, character development, lines of tension, and finding the narrative “turn.” You’ll learn a wealth about memoir by critiquing fellow workshop members, and benefit from a thorough discussion of your own work. You’ll emerge with a clearer sense of your book as a whole, and clear steps for taking it towards completion.

NOTE: This workshop is limited to six members. A firm commitment to reciprocating feedback and attending all sessions is required.

Gesture Writing: What Writers Can Learn from Artists about Capturing Life on the Page

Description: The visual artist looks intensely at life to capture reality as only she can see it. And so does the writer. But capturing the vibrancy of life on the page means moving your brain out of “information organizing” mode, into an intuitive way of finding subtle organic connections. Artists practice this way of working through “gesture drawing.” Many of the best writers practice this way of working through “sketching” in their notebooks–and I don’t think they could achieve the richness of their writing any other way. In this one-day workshop, you’ll learn how to use your notebook in the same way artists use their sketchbooks. Plentiful in-class exercises will teach you how to “sketch” scenes, chapters, and whole book outlines. If you’ve never worked like this, the results will likely surprise you. If you’re ready to move past rambling “morning pages” and leave lifeless “information processing” behind, this class for writers of fiction and narrative nonfiction will show you a new way.

Instructor Bio: Rachel Howard is the author of The Lost Night: A Daughter’s Search for the Truth of Her Father’s Murder, one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2005. Her personal essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and O, the Oprah Magazine. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College, and her short fiction has appeared in ZYZZYVA. She is a part-time artist’s model, and saw her own writing improve tremendously as she absorbed art instruction while posing.