Course Description for

Shadow Writing

with Gloria Kempton

Registration Fee and Course Length

Prerequisites

Standard course: $180 / 6 weeks. Click here to register.

Extended schedule: $224 / 12 weeks. Click here to register.
Extended course is designed for busy people and gives you two weeks to do each lesson but contains NO additional material.

No prerequisites.

Course Contacts

Course Description

This course is not for the faint of heart. Are you curious about writer's block (a myth), the dreams, longings, cravings, obsessions, and needs that distract you from your writing because of the strength of their grip? Do you suspect that there are depths that you can't quite reach in your writing for fear of turning up something unpleasant? In this class, we will turn toward these things. Step on the accelerator and move into one of the darkest places you've ever been as a writer—your own unconscious. This is where you'll find your most authentic writing self, so hang on for the ride. Both fiction and nonfiction writers are welcome.

By the end of the course you will have accomplished the most honest and authentic writing possible because of your willingness to explore your own shadow.

Week 1: What is the shadow? What is shadow writing? As writers, how do we move past the superficial and obvious into what's really true when writing about a topic, any topic? What are the benefits of shadow writing? How can our shadow help us connect with ourselves?

Assignment: Write a profile of your shadow self.

Week 2: Consider the longings and needs that are conscious for you. Now learn to write into the ones that aren't, that are hidden in the shadow of your consciousness. When you can bring these out in your writing, they will inform your own life and the lives of your characters in ways you never imagined.

Assignment: Write an essay or a fictional scene that explores a longing or need you've never before acknowledged to yourself or written about. Prompts will be provided.

Week 3: Too often, as writers, we come up to our fears and obsessions and, instead of owning them in our stories and essays, we run the other way, thereby weakening the themes we want to explore for ourselves and our readers. Learn to plunge in; you will survive.

Assignment: Explore a personal fear and/or an obsession in an essay or fictional scene or story. You will be asked specific questions to help you access what's hidden in your shadow.

Week 4: We are as afraid of the "good" in ourselves as we are the "bad.". But we can only achieve authenticity as writers when we can own both the good and the bad and integrate them into our creative self as we write. The shadow is where we must go in our writing in order to achieve this process.

Assignment: Explore your "good" and "bad" self in an essay or create a scene that includes the protagonist and antagonist facing off in an area the incorporates the bad in the protagonist and the good in the antagonist.

Week 5: Life and death—the last territory we must conquer as writers. Writing about death can scare the bravest of writers, but we often don't look so deeply into our lives and understand that writing about life can be equally as scary. While some of us do make an effort to write consciously about life and death, it's the unconscious—the shadow—that holds the deepest secrets and the most authentic writing of which we're capable on these topics.

Assignment: Write an essay that explores both life and death simultaneously or a fictional scene where your character is faced with death or, if staying alive, means making an unethical or immoral choice.

Week 6: Now that we've been awakened to some of the parts of ourselves that aren't readily accessible when we write, how can we assure that we don't go back to sleep in those areas? Shadow writing can be sustainable if there is a commitment to waking up to our authentic selves when we write.

Assignment: Create a plan to pursue shadow writing in whatever form it seems to want to show up.

Gloria Kempton has two passions: writing and working with writers. As the daughter of a successful freelance writer, she understood from an early age how to arrange the elements of an effective story so as to connect with readers: an action-filled plot, characters the reader will remember, a setting that enhances the plot, conflict that challenges the protagonist, tension-filled dialogue. When she submitted her very first story, it immediately sold. Since then she has published more than 600 stories and articles in more than sixty publications in the juvenile, young adult, family and religious markets.

Gloria has also written two novels and eight nonfiction books. She is currently working on several projects; a mainstream novel, a book of essays about her years as a prison volunteer, and a book for writers on unlocking the unconscious. She coaches writers in the Seattle area and teaches creative writing classes at writers conferences. Gloria is a former Contributing Editor for Writer's Digest magazine, and her most recent book is Dialogue (Writer's Digest Books).

As the former editor of two magazines, acquisitions editor at a publishing house, and a freelance novel and nonfiction book editor at ten major publishing houses, Gloria understands what happens on both sides of the desk. In her classes, you will find support and encouragement, as well as honest evaluation of your work. You can count on being asked a lot of questions that will help you get to the core of what it is that you want to communicate in each piece that you write. Instruction is individualized because you are unique and your writing should reflect your unique voice.