About the Class
This is a craft class built around your work — whatever you're writing right now. Not a fixed syllabus, not a sequence of prompts. We start with what you're making and figure out what it needs.
Sometimes that means reading a passage from a published novel and asking what it's technically doing. Sometimes it means watching a film clip and noticing how a director handles the thing you're trying to handle. Sometimes it means looking at a photograph, or listening to how someone describes an object, or just reading your own sentences aloud until you hear what they're actually saying versus what you meant them to say.
The references change depending on the student and the project. The question stays the same: what does this need?
How It Works
There's a difference between a sentence that's wrong and a sentence that isn't finished yet. Most of the work is learning to tell them apart — and then following the sentence somewhere neither of you expected.
Sessions don't move in a straight line. We might start with your opening paragraph, get pulled toward a question about one specific word, find a film or a passage that answers it sideways, bring that back to your scene, and end up with something better than either of us planned. The research and the writing happen at the same time.
You'll leave each session with something concrete — a detail that opened up, a decision that got made, a direction that felt right.
The Kind of Thing We Might Look At
Depending on what your project calls for — film, fiction, photography, music, criticism, things that are hard to categorize. Past sessions have drawn on everything from Nobel-level prose to old television to painters nobody talks about enough. The point isn't the reference. The point is what it unlocks.
What You'll Develop
Hearing what a sentence is doing, not just what it says
Finding the specific detail that does the work three vague sentences couldn't
Knowing when something is wrong versus when it just isn't finished yet
Using outside references — film, art, criticism — as tools, not assignments
Asking what a story calls for, rather than what convention expects
Following a sentence somewhere you didn't plan to go
Sessions & Pricing
When
Saturdays, 10:00AM–12:00PM EST. No official start date — the class is always running. You join when you're ready.
Pricing
$70–100/month depending on what works for you. First session is free. No one turned away for lack of funds.