It’s my favorite time of year, when every store–drug store, grocery store, and (cue the angels singing) the office supply store–is stocked with back to school supplies. I go in with the long list of necessities sent out from the district, I complain about the 72 sharpened pencils and 36 pens (though I buy them, to be sure), but let’s be honest: I go in with a list of my own.
I can’t help it. There’s nothing like a feel of a crisp new spiral notebook and the draw of good pencil. Even when my kids are through their high school years, I will quietly slip away into the seasonal aisle of Walgreens and run my hand along the row of Mead and PaperMate and Pentel.
I know I’m not alone. Something about the school season fires up a writer. And why not? We’ve just spent the last three months soaking up sunshine on family vacations and quiet bike rides alone and gathering story.
So let’s take advantage of that energy. Use it to get back to the page, to fine-tune a collection of stories or to craft a whole new essay. There are plenty of opportunities, online and in person, to put pen to paper and find a community of writing souls who will carry you through the winter months.
#Writing in Study Hall
Once a month, I lead Study Hall: #AmWriting, where a few of us come together and talk craft, read samples of great works, and write write write.
Sunday Study Hall exceeded my expectations. Christi facilitates and provides the structure. The visual and audio elements enhance the experience. Readings, prompts, and the company of kindred spirits spiral out across time zones. I always leave the session enriched by the conversation. ~ Kathy Collins
We spend a lot of time with writing prompts, which push writers in new and unexpected ways. And sometimes the conversations alone are enough to inspire a new structure in a piece that’s had you stumped for a while.
Try one session. All you need is a laptop, high-speed internet, and a desire to hang out with a bunch of other writers. Our next meet-up is Sunday, September 9th, 3:30-5pm (CST). REGISTER HERE or contact me with questions.
#Learning in the Classroom
If you’re partial to face-to-face interactions and are local to the Milwaukee area, Red Oak Writing offers several Saturday morning craft workshops this fall for writers.
(Extra)Ordinary Content on October 20th with Patricia Ann McNair. “For writers of all genres, this workshop will guide participants to identify and use their most compelling material to create new work and reinvigorate ongoing projects. Drawing from memory, imagination, and observation, writers will discover their own extraordinary content.”- Diving into the Details on November 10th with me. “Details play a significant role in our writing, whether we write poems, essays or novels. Details build story, deepen story, and provide more ways for readers to connect with story. In this workshop, we will look at all three functions of details as they apply to setting, place, and person….”
- Story, Truth, and Beauty, Baby! on December 8th with Barry Wightman. “Ready to take your writing to the next level? Looking for ways to amp up your prose, streamline it, make it jump from the page? Like great music, great fiction is built from magic moments that produce shivers—riffs, choruses and solos that enchant the reader.”
*Photo above from Red Oak Writing’s website
Building #Community
If you’re new to writing or have been on hiatus for a while, Principles & Prompts is an online course that offers community and a fun, low-stakes space for exploring creativity, story structure, and writing prompts.
“Christi Craig’s on-line class, Principles & Prompts, is an ideal environment to open your mind up to not only learn, but also do and the six-week course provides a perfect escape during an otherwise busy time of year. Christi has the uncanny ability of incorporating works, both written and film, that nudge the muse to tackle the writing prompt that follows. Although there is no pressure for perfection or finished pages, I have to say, the synergy of the group compelled me to do more than slap my thoughts together.” ~ Elin Stebbins Waldal
Principles & Prompts opens for registration in September. I love teaching this course and witnessing the stories that evolve from letting go and diving into the work.
Whichever way you lean–Pentel or PaperMate, online or in person, grab your pencil. Stake claim on your notebook. Find your tribe and put your stories to paper. Your voice matters, and your muse is calling.
What was surprising to me that day, was the fact that the world did not come to a screeching halt to celebrate what was, for me, something important. It just kept chugging along, not endorsing or condemning me and my little book. The same thing happened when my daughter was born. I stepped outside the hospital to find a bunch of bleary-eyed, uninterested people going to work. “This isn’t just a normal day,” I thought. Don’t they know?”
This is a departure from the way I grew up. When I was a kid and tagged along with my dad, he would carefully and precisely locate each city’s bookstores like they were an oasis in a savage desert. As if they were fire escapes from the tragic, burning fires of everyday mundanity and bourgeois commerce. We didn’t always know where to get food, water, or gasoline, but there was never any doubt about where to locate an out-of-print book.
In his new collection of stories, acclaimed author and humorist Matt Geiger seeks to “de-familiarize” us from the world, from the smallest detail to the most cosmic mythology, in order to see it all as if for the first time. Turning his “philosopher’s vision” to his own abundant Neanderthal DNA, parenting, competitive axe throwing, old age, and much more, he sets out in search of comic profundity. With a nod to the limits of human knowledge and understanding, particularly his own, he draws from the wisdom of an 83-year-old pin-up legend, Anton Chekhov, Santa Claus, modern boxers, Medieval monks, and of course, small children. Blending whimsy and gravitas, he unveils beauty, joy, and symmetry in a seemingly broken world.
Matt Geiger’s debut book, The Geiger Counter: Raised by Wolves & Other Stories was published in 2016. It won First Prize in the Midwest Book Awards and was named as a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the American Book Fest. He is also the winner of numerous journalism awards. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, his daughter, ten animals, and several metaphysical questions. Learn more about the author at 