Writing Lessons

One way to lose those wintry blues is to sit right down and write yourself a letter, or a poem, a short story, a novel, a treatise on plowing the driveway or a memoir of those golden days of youth when dark skies meant a great old sledding day to come. For many people, taking up the pen — or sitting down to the keyboard — is the new option and to help these new writers along, get them started or guided, there are a number of options available.

Several groups — Inkberry in North Adams and The Berkshire Writers Room and Word Street in Pittsfield — provide workshops for writers. In addition the avid author-to-be might find one-on-one mentoring, private writing groups or college tutorials.

For 13 years, from 1991 until last May, poet Karen Chase presided over her own support workshop for writers in Lenox. Chase’s Camel River Workshop offered writers a place to develop without fear and with the understanding that the process is what really matters.

“The workshops at Camel River always included poetry and prose and the stimulation between the two forms, which I really loved,” Chase said in a telephone interview last weekend. “People just came and wrote and we didn’t discuss the work. Each session was 10 workshops and after a few years I introduced a single critiquing session in the middle.

“Doing any kind of art is enriching if you want it to be,” Chase said, “and there’s really no higher value set on writing. You should do it if you want to do it. That’s the proper drive, not because of talent or because you want to become famous or rich, but just because the process is rewarding to you.”

Berkshire Writers Room

That philosophy has been the driving principal behind the 15-year-old Berkshire Writers Room. It offers five monthly workshops for writers: Creative non-fiction (facilitated by Bob Gray), poetry (headed by Aaron Beatty), writing for children (run by Wanda Boeke), fiction (with group leader Georgia Duillet) and scriptwriting (under the leadership of Sherry Steiner). Each of these groups meets for about two hours once a month and authors are invited to bring pieces they are working on, read them and receive feedback from the facilitator and the other members of the group. These meetings generally take place in the evening on Wednesdays or Mondays. Check the Writers Room Web site at http://www.berkshirewritersroom.org for locations.

These groups are free to members of the Berkshire Writers Room. Membership is $20 a year and brings with it a monthly newsletter and a free copy of their annual publication, The Berkshire Review. Facilitators are volunteers and are not paid for running their groups. Anyone interested is invited to attend two meetings without becoming a member.

Word Street

Also in Pittsfield, at 163 North Street, is the Storefront Artists Project affiliate, Word Street, founded just about a year ago by Frank Tempone, a teacher in the Lee public school system. Their drop-in center is open to teens and youth in the afternoons and on weekends, but they are also working with adults in groups, on line and sometimes individually as well. A Word Street subscription, or membership, costs an adult $35 per year ($60 for two years) and brings with it access to their writing facility and library after the normal drop-in hours, one free workshop course and a link system they call Write Match that “puts independent writers in contact with those who share common literary interests in the hope of creating independent writers’ groups.” Both Bob Gray and Aaron Beatty of the Writers Room have taught courses this past season for Word Street.

Working with Tempone is writing course coordinator Vivian Dorsel. Word Street has just completed two very successful adult courses, one called “Structuring the Short Story,” taught by Dorsel and Stephen Dietemann and the other called “Write Until It’s Done: Crafting the Short Short Story,” run by Tempone. The course cost for non-members was $35, $30 for members and both are likely to be repeated in the spring.

On-line Word Street offers courses including Margarita Carderas’ “Mirror on Dialogue” and Tempone’s “The Many Faces of Creative Non-Fiction.”

Laura Marshall, also of Word Street, is about to embark on a workshop she calls “Collaborative Fiction through Interactive Storytelling.”

“We’ll be using an interactive brainstorming tool wherein each participant creates a character for a designated story setting,” Marshall explained, “when the workshop meets the characters will come together, and the story will develop from there. After the collaboration session, participants can retreat and write the story they have begun.” The course is planned for Wednesday evening, March 23, at 7.

Obviously a lot is going on in Word Street’s basement rooms on North Street and more information can be found at their Web site, http://www.wordstreet.org. A new telephone number, to be activated this week, is 997-3307.

“One thing we’d like to see,” Tempone said, “is proposals from writers for other courses we can offer. Another thing is for people to let us know what they’d like to study and how. We have a lot of talented and qualified people here who can offer their services and are willing to help. We just need to know what people want.” Instructors are offered a fee, paid from a portion of the registrations, for their services.

Inkberry

Inkberry, located at 61 Main St. in North Adams, is the brainchild of Rachel Barenblatt and Emily Banner. An “independent nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the literary arts in and around Berkshire County,” they present workshops all year long.

Barenblatt, for example, will be offering a four week, on-line course, beginning March 28, called “Speak Up, Speak Out.” For $60 it is described as follows: “American democracy depends on a well-informed and vocal citizenry. If you’ve ever wanted to become better-informed about the issues that matter to you, and to express political opinions in a cogent and effective way, this is the class for you! In this workshop, open to writers at all levels, students will identify issues that they care about; examine what makes op-eds work; and write opinion pieces (letters to the editor, op-ed articles and essays) of their own.”

The idea for her new course took shape during the fall. “I found myself becoming more politically active than I had ever really been before,” Barenblatt stated. “I always had an interest but last summer and fall I felt that my voice was important and there were things I really wanted to say. That persisted after the election had happened. I don’t want to give the impression that this workshop has any partisan slant — my own political views are irrelevant. We want students from every end of the political spectrum. When people speak up about what matters to them it strengthens our public discourse and sense of democracy and it allows us to feel we are part of a larger dialogue.”

The on-line course can expand as far as it needs to, although Barenblatt says that a dozen or so participants is usual. “Just because I think it sounds like a great course, doesn’t mean that others will, but I’m hoping for between eight and 12.”

Another on-line course being offered for seven weeks beginning January 30 is Martin Blackman’s “Sustaining Ourselves as Artists Through Transitions.” For $125, class members will “explore poems, stories and myths that recognize the importance of grappling with difficulties.” Students will examine “Beowulf,” poems by W.S. Merwin, Mary Oliver and Fleur Adcock, read Thomas Moore’s “The Soul Arts” and create their own works.

At Inkberry’s headquarters writers are invited to participate in live classes at fees from $10 to $190. At the low-investment end you can read the poet Rumi with William Darrow, a professor of Islamic Studies at Williams College. At the top end of the scale you can participate in a weekend workshop, “Art Imitates Life,” under the guidance of Barenblatt and Banner at the Porches Inn (the fee includes a room for Friday night, March 5, and a tour at Mass MoCA).

More to the point for writers is the Wednesday Night Writers workshop led by Emily Banner. For 10 weeks, from Feb. 2 to April 6, and for $180, you can participate in a general writing workshop that will include a one hour, one-to-one critique of your work. The workshop, as it is described on the Inkberry Web site, “is all about getting words on the page We’ll spend our two hours writing in response to generative exercises, then sharing and discussing work (sharing is optional).”

More information on Inkberry’s many programs can be found on their Web site at http://www.inkberry.org or by telephone at 664-0775.

The Writers Workout

Berkshire Community College has something special going for people who are serious about putting pen to paper. Sonia Pilcer, author of “The Holocaust Kid” and “Little Darlings,” has been offering a workshop course there for a decade: “The Writers Workout” — aerobics for writing through exercises. The 10- to 12-week course (a new one begins on Thursday, Feb. 10, from 6 to 9 in the evening) provides a different writing exercise to do each week. The authors get to read their pieces aloud while their fellow students read along and then there’s feedback.

“It’s more like responding to what they hear and how it makes them feel,” Pilcer explained, “and I tell them not to get overly invested and to get used to writing and writing and writing and not get hurt by the process. And you know, many long projects emerge from this.”

According to Pilcer the classes usually start with a dozen registrants and then taper off. “They do have to write,” she said. “It’s not the same schmatta that some of them bring to every workshop. I make them start writing anew each week.”

Pilcer has been teaching this sort of class for a long time. She started at City College in New York, taught at The Writers Voice at the 63rd Street Y, a program she helped found, and when she settled in Columbia County had workshops at the libraries in Claverack and Hillsdale before she came to BCC. Her students have had a couple of published novels have come out of this process, including Lisa E. Davis’ suspense novel “Under the Mink.”

Pilcer also teaches private workshops, usually biweekly, and provides a strong discipline of 1,000 words per week. “The deadline is good,” she said. “People can kvetch about how hard it was, but the deadline definitely helps as does being told what to do. They are given a concrete idea and told to work with it. Who knows? Someone might hit the mother-lode and write about a certain time in their lives — you never know where this might take you.”

She has another group that often meets at the Helsinki Tea Room in Great Barrington on Fridays. Most of these participants have already taken “The Writers Workout” beforehand so they have a shared language and set of principles through which they work. The sound advice that Pilcer brings to all of her students is easily summed up by her in a philosophy and a slogan.

“There is the craft and there is the vision and so much has to do with psychology, with resistance, fear and negative thoughts and the mistaken idea of censoring before you begin. I tell them to make a little placard that says ‘Write stupid. Write ugly. Write.’”

Other groups abound, some private, some public. Small writers’ groups, some devoted to one genre, some more general, take place throughout the county. You usually have to know someone to be invited to one of these, but if you don’t ask, you won’t know.

The urge to get out in the winter, to explore something new, a hidden treasure within yourself, should be motivator enough for anyone to start writing. And, as Pilcer asked, “who knows?” You might hit the mother-lode.

J. Peter Bergman is the former president of The Berkshire Writers Room and founder of the Scriptwriters Group.