OLLI Talks: Getting Unstuck: Tackling Writer’s Block with Constraints (DRAKE HALL)

The blank page: is there anything more terrifying for a writer? Writer’s block is something that all writers struggle with from time to time. In this two-hour course, learn about one method for breaking through stuckness in your writing life: using constraints. Constraints are rules or guidelines we use for ourselves in our writing, and they can range from writing in only rhyming couplets to allowing yourself only five hundred words in each sitting, to revising your poetry into prose and then back into poetry again. While adding constraints on our work can seem like a counterintuitive way to solve the problem of not knowing what to write or how to move forward in our writing projects, restrictions can help us generate and shape material in ways that a blank page simply can’t. During this workshop, we’ll discuss the constraints used by various writers and spend time using them to generate ideas for our own writing. Writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry are welcome. 

*Cherie Nelson Senie is a writer, editor, and educator from Kansas. She earned her MA in Literature and MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University, where she taught in the English Department for six years. She served as the editor of the literary magazine Ruminate, and her essays have been selected as a finalist for Best of the Net 2020, a winner of Prairie Schooner's Glenna Luschei award, and second place in The Florida Review's Editor Awards. Her debut essay collection, God Stars, is forthcoming from Orison Books. As a teacher, she has taught writing and literature to a diverse range of students, from pre-K through adult learners. She currently works as the librarian and Gifted and Talented teacher at Beattie Elementary School, where she created and manages the student-run literary journal, Beattie Uncovered. 

Notes

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