Writing in Unknown Shapes
A cross-genre writing class for writers with ambitious creative visions, working in ambiguous forms
Practical tools and flexible strategies for creative work that doesn’t fit in a box
Writing in Unknown Shapes is under construction! I’m scheming changes to the structure and delivery, and life keeps getting in the way. I’m optimistic that I’ll be re-launching the course in early 2025.
〰️
Signing up for my newsletter is a great way to get updates about the class!
Is this you?
You’ve been working on a memoir that is also a research project, a novel that is also a memoir (or a poem!), an essay or a chapbook or a love letter to the world that is also a story.
You have fragments, half-starts, sketches—if you’ve been able to start at all—but you can’t seem to piece them together.
You can make out the form or sequence if you squint, but that clarity seems to vanish when you actually sit down to write. The notion of “literary form” doesn’t feel like anything you can actually work with, and you feel overwhelmed by all the threads and possible directions your project could go in…
Inside of its flux, this kind of writing can feel like an extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) feat.
But I know from experience that learning new ways of looking at the process, acquiring flexible narrative frameworks, and applying simple literary tools to complex work can make it not only possible, but also sustainable, transformative, and even enjoyable.
You just need some foundational concepts to demystify the process without oversimplifying it, and structured guidance from someone who has been through the process before.
That’s why I created Writing in Unknown Shapes.
Because I’ve been there.
I spent years grappling with a messy manuscript that shape-shifted between fiction and nonfiction, and took on so many narrative schemes I lost count. Each time I felt certain that I’d found the “perfect” structure, my project’s complexity defied this temporary solution and I’d fall back into a cloud of doubt. Only a few years earlier, I’d had a great experience writing a prose-poetry novella, and wasn’t sure why this project was so hard. It took uprooting my life to attend an MFA program to find my footing with this project. I was able to find tools and concepts I could use on my own terms, and support with moving through the project’s challenge.
I don’t believe there’s a “magic bullet” or perfect system that will (or even should!) dissolve the challenge associated with cross-genre, genre-queer, or complex writing projects. But I do believe it’s possible for you to gain the tools you need, so you can navigate these challenges with confidence without sacrificing your own idiosyncratic approach to form.
Writing in Unknown Shapes includes:
Weekly video lectures
Office hours
Writing prompts and exercises
Discord community
Lifetime access to course materials
⠀“The course gave me very concrete ways of moving forward with my project. Lots of little tricks and prompts to try out and new ways of understanding where I’ve been stuck and why. I haven’t received a lot of formal training around narrative strategies so I feel like I am coming out of this workshop with more in my tool belt. I have felt so stuck with this particular writing project and I feel so much more movement and energy around it now.”
— V Lane Hoy
Here’s what’s we’ll be getting into:
We’ll be working through six in-depth modules. These video lectures will provide conceptual tools and frameworks you can apply to your work. They’re accompanied by weekly workbooks with lots of writing prompts and exercises, plus additional resources and optional reading associated with each week’s focus. Two integration weeks provide some breathing room during the term.
The Video Lectures
Part I: Foundations of Your Practice
Week One: PROCESS AND PRACTICE
We’ll start out by establishing the foundations of your writing process, and an approach that we’ll continue to build upon. This week’s lectures will focus on (and elaborate) stages of the writing process as a helpful heuristic applicable to experimental and other kinds of writing. We’ll especially be paying attention to how opening ourselves up through writing can give us an entry-point into more polished or structured work.
Week Two: FINDING YOUR ANCHOR
This week will be all about delving into the relationship you have with your specific project, and honing in on the questions and ideas it’s rooted in for you. If you’re not working on a specific project, this framework–a way to cohere a multifaceted project–will still apply! I’ll discuss the “anchor draft” as a tool I’ve found helpful for both grounding and conceptualizing a project.Through exploring what’s at stake for you in the anchor draft, you’ll also explore the boundary–the crossroads–of your relationship with the project, and what you hope to share with the world.
In addition to the asynchronous video lectures for this week, there will also be a live writing workshop about bringing playfulness and visual imagination into your writing practice (which will be recorded for those unable to attend in real time).
Week Three: INTEGRATION WEEK & OFFICE HOURS
This week will provide breathing room to absorb the previous weeks’ material and work with writing prompts. There will also be an opportunity to submit questions for office hours.
Part II: Narrative Shapes and Vantages
Week Four: STRUCTURE AND STRATEGIES
This week, you’ll work towards giving definition to the shape of your work, while also considering literary tools and devices for writing into its unknown form. In particular we’ll focus on narrative strategy and structure, and how conceptualizing narrative as a spatial form can facilitate that tricky organizational work. This week we really delve into the heart of working with (and in) unknown shapes!
Week Five: VANTAGE, VOICE, AND CHARACTER
As we continue to build on the work from the previous weeks, we’ll turn to the role of a narrator in cohering (or complicating) prose work. Thinking about narrators overlaps with narrative strategy, but there’s just so much to say about them that they deserve their own week! Narrators can be incredibly powerful and also sometimes very hard to work with–especially when your narrator bears resemblance to–or is–a version of yourself. I’ll elaborate some of what I’ve come to understand about narrative vantage and voice. We’ll also explore character development and story arc—something which can sometimes be the secret glue of even a very “thinky” or cerebral project.
Week Six: INTEGRATION WEEK & OFFICE HOURS
This week will provide breathing room to absorb the previous weeks’ material and work with writing prompts. There will also be an opportunity to submit questions for office hours. Additionally, I’ll host a live writing workshop this week about creatively repurposing “found” genres, structures, and plot for the purpose of genre-ambiguous work (which will be recorded for those unable to attend in real time).
Part III: The Long Haul of Revision
Week Seven: LEGIBILITY AND RE-VISIONING
Lots of revision tips here! We’ll also consider the tricky negotiation between our own intentions and others’ reactions to our work. As a part of that, we’ll explore productive ways of responding to (and asking for) feedback–especially when writing more experimentally–as well as what it might mean for a work to be complete. In addition to this week’s recorded lectures, we will also have a special guest for a live conversation about long-term creative collaboration, and sustaining creative/critical practice outside of literary establishments. (A recording will be available for those unable to attend in real time.)
Week Eight: RESPONDING TO BLOCKAGES AND SUSTAINING YOUR PRACTICE
In our final week together, we’ll descend further into our exploration of the obstacles we encounter in the writing process–from the abstract to the quotidian–and zoom out to consider the longer scope of our project. We’ll have our final office hours this week as we bring closure to our work together.
Plus…
Office Hours
Here’s where we get to connect with each other, and connect the course curriculum to your own specific writing practice. You can submit questions about course curriculum—or anything on your mind about your writing, practice, or project.
Private Discord Community
The Autumn 2022 session will also include optional live events. There will be two prompt-based creative writing sessions (on Sunday 10/30 and Sunday 11/27 at 10am PT), plus a live conversation with a special guest. These sessions will be recorded for those unable to attend in real time.
Our private Discord server will provide space for us to connect with each other. I’ll post discussion prompts and questions that further develop the weekly curriculum.
“Writing in Unknown Shapes was a place for me to engage with my writing process without the added layers of expectation, judgment and shame that can be present in traditional academic settings. In class and in one-on-one coaching, Siloh held a supportive space for creative exploration and offered techniques and perspectives that opened my mind to new possibilities and grounded me in why I started writing in the first place. I highly recommend her services to anyone who is seeking support in their writing life.”
— Cy Ozgood